brewing concentrated extract wort

Yep. Did it every time until my latest batch because I bought a 10 gallon pot. Nothing wrong with it.

 

That's actually the way most kit instructions are written, because most beginner kettles are not big enough, and because most kitchen stoves aren't hot enough for full boils.

 

You'll get a little less utilization out of your hops but there's nothing wrong with that. Just means you'll have to use a little more hops.

 

Except the kit maker may have taken that into consideration when designing and testing the kit recipe. IOW I wouldn't necessarily recommend that newbies take their kits and fell like they have to add more hops.

 

Having said that, I have been able to brew up to 6 gallons of water on an electric stovetop. The pot itself is really too big for a stovetop, but it nevertheless worked. I did a full boil of 5 gallons on the stovetop with my last kit. It was not the full-on rolling boil we might like to achieve, but it was technically a boil.

 

Certainly if the kit advises you to brew it that way then the amount of hops it lists should be correct. However, if it is meant for a 5 gallon boil and you do a 3.5 gallon boil you'll need to compensate with some additional hops.

 

Two things to keep in mind:

1. If you're adding water to your wort, make sure it's sterilized first. In practice, this means you'll probably boil the dilution water separately from your wort, in which case you'll need to let it cool before adding. This can take a while, so give it several hours to cool off!

2. If you have a second kettle, you could try to do a split boil. For example, put 3 gallons of water in each pot, split your ingredients evenly between them and combine at the end (or a little before the end if you think you can maintain the boil once it's going). This has the advantage of letting you cool everything together in one kettle, which is great, but it requires your kettle be bigger than 5G.

 

There is no requirement to sterilize the water that is added. I have used filtered tap water many times for the addition with zero issues.

Oh, and buy the book How to Brew by John Palmer.

Cheers!

 

You can even have ice in the primary that will cool down the wort and bring you up to 5 gal.

 

I mean, you don't have to sterilize it, but if you don't then you're taking your chances. Seems weird to go through the trouble of sanitizing everything in the process only to ignore your water, no?

 

"A good bet for your first batch of beer is the bottled water sold in most supermarkets as drinking water. Use the 2.5 gallon containers. Use one container for boiling the extract and set the other aside for addition to the fermenter later." from How to Brew by John Palmer.

 

Municipal tap water is sanitized. Sterilization is not necessary (you don't routinely sterilize your equipment, do you?)

 

I actually got my initial worries about tap water from How to Brew, specifically his part on adding ice to hot wort to dilute it:

"People often wonder about adding ice directly to the cooling wort. This idea works well if you remember a couple key points.

• Never use commercial ice. It can harbor dormant bacteria that could spoil your beer.
• Always boil the water before freezing it in an airtight container (like Tupperware). It must be airtight because most freezers also harbor dormant bacteria."

I suppose that municipal tap water might be generally safe to use, but I don't know for sure. I don't bother with it either way, since I do full-volume boils at this point.

 

...with chlorine/chloramine that will give your beer a medicinal off flavor if not removed.

To the OP: Using a late extract addition is a great way to counteract some of the issues that can arise when doing a concentrated boil.

 

Good point. But I was addressing the need to sterilize the water. Chlorine/chloramine will need to be dealt with regardless.

 

Add most of your extract to the kettle later in the boil rather than at the beginning. Decreases the concentrated boil's hop utilization penalty and lessens wort darkening.