Late malt addtions....what are the pros?

I was paging though some of the NB recipes for some ideas and I noticed that a lot of the recipes call for a 15 minute addition of extract. This ranges from 30% to 80% of the grain bill and I was wondering what is the advantage of this. When I do partial mash batches I add all the grain bill at the beginning. Are there advantages of adding some to most of the extract at the end of the boil? I always thought the wort needed to the 60 minutes of boil to break down proteins.

You get better hop utilization with lower gravities so if you’re pitching a bunch of extract towards the end the hops have already had a chance to react with your wort for 45 minutes before the sugar content is kicked up.

Reduced chance of caramelizing/scorching the wort with the late addition.

If you were doing a pre-hopped kit, you could get by with a 15 minute boil. Enough time to pasteurize the water.

http://www.amazon.com/Coopers-Australia ... roduct_top

caramelization also leads to darkening colors; some folks are trying to brew a lighter colored beer. i used late extract for 90 percent of my beers; it was slightly inconvenient because it added some time to the process but still i did it…one of those things; is it necessary? nope.

It’s never necessary, but the advantages are:

-better hop utilization. you could theoretically use less hops…

-less carmelizaion. really only a consideration for very light colored brews…

-less time to bring kettle to boil. thicker liquids take longer to boil…

remember, extract has already been boiled; it’s basically concentrated wort. I don’t brew very light styles so the only time I’ve ever used late addition of extract was for a high gravity barley wine. I only had a 5 gallon mash tun at the time and couldn’t do the entire batch all grain. If you’re doing a partial mash like this it can be a good technique to add the extract at :30 minutes or so…