Late LME boil addition for full volume boil?

Northern Brewer General
1

Still a beginner, but I Do full volume boils (extract). Many recipes call for late volume LME additions. Was wondering that since I Do full volume boils, should I add LME late or do a full 60min?
Thanks

2

I only made two extract kits before going all grain and neither had late LME additions. But IMHO, you want to do full 60 minute boils, and if the recipe calls for a late addition of LME, do that too. By late addition does that mean at flame out?

3

Late addition of extract is mostly used for partial boil to keep the wort gravity/volume ratio roughly the same as a full boil. It helps the wort from being too dark, avoid scorching/carmelization and to help some with hop utilization.

There are some instances where you may want to do a late addition with a full boil. A friend and I brewed a 10 gallon batch of barleywine years ago and my mash tun wasn’t big enough to hold enough grain to reach the gravity we wanted so we added 9# of LME with 10 minutes left to keep the color light.

4

Thanks, that all helps. The recipe I did where there was a late LME addition was the black IPA. I think I was supposed to add it in the last 15 minutes. After reading a lot of online stuff, I really think that was just for the partial boil and for a full volume boil I should really be adding everything immediately and doing the full 60 minutes. Does anyone know if there is anything else I should change for doing full volume boils?

Thanks

5

—For instance, from what I understand, due to hop efficiency, I should be decreasing the amount of bittering hops 10 to 20% if I do a full volume boil because most recipes are made for a partial volume boil. Correct? Not that more bitter beer is necessarily a bad thing though.

6

That’s something you’ll have to experiment with, I would brew them first without reducing the hops. If you do reduce them only do the bittering charge, the late addition hops should stay the same. Some brewing software like Beersmith would be a huge help in figuring out your IBUs and hop amounts.

Also, if you brew NB’s kits you can check out the hop schedule for the all grain version of the particular kit you’re brewing since all grain batches are full boils.