one thing i did change during my extract beer kit brewing .i use five gallons water right away during brewing . and steep the grains in a separate brewing pot with one gallon water once i do come to the 20 min steep of grains i do add this to the main brewing pot . and i did change the lme as well .add 1/2 lme and the dme .add rest of lme together with irish mosh 15 min before end of boil . do think the results come out nice. or am i wrong by doing this ?. i did find out end up with a exact 5 gallon worth.
You’re right on track with your brewing. Full boils are the way to go with extract, especially in terms of color and hop utilization. Your late addition of extract is great for lighter colored beers. Not so necessary fir dark beers like stout or porter. The main thing… If it works for YOU keep doing it!
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got the info from a all grain brewer we did brew in dec a batch together lots of info he had .use his system now works perfect only takes about a hour to get the five gall to the right water temp.
So you’re saying that you add half the LME and half the DME at the start of boil and then the other halves 15 minutes left in the boil? I just started doing full boils. Have done 2 so far. I did steep grains in a separate pot during the first one (2.5 gallons) and then added that to the main to bring it up to 6 gallons. The 2nd time I just started with 3 gallons for steeping in the same pot and then added 3 gallons to bring it up to 6 gallons but it took too long to get to boil temp in my opinion. I also had more evaporation than the method I used the first time. In both boils I added extracts at start of boils. I think next time I will try the late additions of extracts. Does this change flavor as well as color?
It causes less caramelization of the sugars in the malt extract, so it should make for a slightly drier beer as the sugars will be slightly more fermentable. Will you notice? Probably not…
But keep in mind that your hop utilization will be much better with a full volume boil, so you may want to adjust your hop schedule with this method. The easiest way, if you’re working off of NB kits, is to check the hop schedule for the corresponding all-grain kit and use that instead of the extract version, as it will be corrected for the full volume boil.
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I was wondering the easiest way to figure the hops amounts. I did chat with a NB rep online about the hop amounts full boil vs partial and was told to not worry about the difference, so I have just added the extract amounts so far. I recently bought a scale to start weighing hops, corn sugar etc. so I will do that next time.
Think of it this way… if you do a partial boil and extract 60IBU for a nice IPA, by the time you add 2.5 gallons you would have diluted your IBUs to around 30. It’s not really an issue until you start bumping up against the 100IBU limit of how much bitterness you can practically extract from hops, but something to keep in mind for your IIPAs and similarly hopped beers. 
BYO has a good article on hop utilization and specific gravity of the wort. Wort SG of about 1.048 being optimum. This is a single reference. There may be other discussions out there that differ slightly.
The article also mentions boiling the hops in water may not be a good way to increase bitterness. Mostly due to the effects the pH of water has on extraction of other compounds in the hops. Hop oil utilization is greatest at a pH of 8.0. My well water is somewhere just over 7. Never had it tested to know what it really is at different times of the year. Even though a pH of 8.0 will extract the most goodness from the hops, alpha acids, it may also extract tannins adding a harsh flavor to the beer.
You can calculate how much extract to initially add for the volume being boiled to achieve a 1.048 wort.
Adding only the DME first, if used, rather than some DME and some LME will further enhance the final product being lighter in color.
Factor in the dilution of the IBUs that @porkchop points out in his post.
did find out doing the full boil and adding 1/2 lme 15 min before the end its not as dark my beer
using 6 gallon boil lose about one gallon during the boil must say adding hops this way as well gives me beter flav
