So I have a 22qt pot (5.5gal). How much water can I use with extract and still avoid a boilover if I am sitting next to it and mixing it in? I am brewing the hop devil double ipa from Midwest, so there will be about 6 different kinds of hops added during boil. I will be using a blichmann burner
You could go 5 gallons if you don’t use a super vigorous boil and watch it very closely. Be aware that if you’re boiling via stovetop, some stoves take a very long time to get that much water boiling…some won’t boil it at all.
I have a horrible time controlling boilovers. I use 3 gallons in a 30 qt turkey fryer and come awfully close to disaster on multiple occasions.
Am I right that when I do an extract kit that targets 5 gallons in the instructions (2 gal water + wort + top off water) that I could add most of that 2 gallons of water to the wort boiling (wrong term?) process and just top off with faucet water to get to the desired 5 gallons at the end? And this might actually be a better process and make better beer if I have a big enough kettle?
Seems like that’s what I’ve gathered from comments on here, but I’m not totally sure.
Hm that’s interesting. I wanna start with as much water as possible because of hop utilization. My first brew was on a glass top stove so not that much heat over there but I will be going to a blichmann burner next so the heat output will be exponentially higher. I guess I should do a 2.5 gal batch first to see how close I get to disaster and then I can play around, maybe I will boil the other 2.5gal in a different pot and add it at the end, I hate the idea of adding 2 gallons of bottled water to the beer since even bottled water has tons of bacteria.
Have you ever been hospitalized with a illness from drinking bottled water that is purported to be full of bacteria? I just could not resist.
Begin with the volume of water recommended by the recipe. Hop utilization will be tied to this volume.
I boiled over while using a 15 gallon keg that only had about 3 gallons in it.
I could fill any pot up to within 1/2 gallon and not have a boil over.
Your question has no correct answer. It depends on how much attention you pay to the pot.
[quote=“flars”]Have you ever been hospitalized with a illness from drinking bottled water that is purported to be full of bacteria? I just could not resist.
Begin with the volume of water recommended by the recipe. Hop utilization will be tied to this volume.[/quote]
This is the same reason I think plan tap water is fine for top-off water. Also, the recipes for extracts do not change due to the higher gravity wort. It’s funny, the recipe is built assuming you use a full batch boil but the instructions tell you to only boil 2.5gal.
Either way, it’s best to boil as much as you are comfortable with. You know the expression, “A watched pot never boils”? Well, a not-watched pot boils over!
[quote=“flars”]Have you ever been hospitalized with a illness from drinking bottled water that is purported to be full of bacteria? I just could not resist.
Begin with the volume of water recommended by the recipe. Hop utilization will be tied to this volume.[/quote]
I’m not saying it has e-coli in it. But it does have bacteria, it comes out of a river or spring.
I ended up using 4 gallons in my 5.5 gal pot. It did boilover after I added the liquid malt extract even though I was constantly stirring in it like crazy the whole time. To my surprise when I added hops nothing much happened 
Aaaand… just to prove my point:
I was thinking about this over the weekend, and it occurred to me that when I started with three gallons of water and added 12 pounds of LME, a pound of hops, and two pounds of corn sugar (seriously, the 115th dream IPA kit has that much junk in it), I was probably almost at full volume. No wonder I almost blew over and had hop-spew stuck to my jacket when I was done. Obvious though it is, I didn’t think to factor in the volume I was adding to starting water when choosing a starting volume. Pro tip from a rank amateur, there…
I learned my lesson, I don’t think ill be going over 3 gallons from now on. You can imagine how pissed I was when I got wort all over my brand new blichmann burner. Half of the holes in the burner were clogged with burnt sugar. I had to spend an hour scrubbing it with a toothbrush and oxyclean.
Keep an eye on the wort. When it the hot break is forming, turn the flame down. Keep a spray bottle handy with water in it to knock the foam down.
Then turn the flame back up.
[quote=“Nighthawk”]Keep an eye on the wort. When it the hot break is forming, turn the flame down. Keep a spray bottle handy with water in it to knock the foam down.
Then turn the flame back up.[/quote]
Spray bottle - good tip, ill keep that in mind thank you
also don’t go nuts worrying about hop utilization. BYO or Zymurgy or one of the podcasts did a study on partial volume boils vs. full volume boils with identical post-boil OG’s and identical hop additions, and National-or-above-ranked BJCP’s couldn’t tell the difference. In fact, in one of the beers, they perceived more hop aroma/flavor in the partial volume.
I am not saying don’t adjust for it, but trust your software and more importantly, your palette. Don’t stretch the limits of your system for this nuance.
Had one hand on the heat dial and a spray bottle in the other hand this weekend and no overboil, pretty damn close though I really need a bigger pot
I just ordered a ten gallon pot, and can’t wait to try it out. Haven’t brewed in a whhile so it should be fun. Shouldn’t have to worry too much about boil overs since I only do the five gallon kits. I always just turned down the heat and stirred the foam around, and I never had a boil over-came pretty close a few times though.
