I see a lot of extract recipes which say to boil half of the extract then add half at knockout and let sit for 10 minutes for pasteurization. I assume the reason for this is that the low boil gravity increases hop utilization. That’s fine, but is there a downside to not boiling half of the ME? For instance, won’t we end up with a bunch of protein that doesn’t come out in the hot break? This particularly confuses me because I don’t see any all-grain recipes which suggest to leave part of the mash extract out of the boil until the last 10 minutes. Do people ever do this with all-grain brews?
FYI, I’m a total noob, but I’ve been loving the hobby and I’m on my fourth small-batch of all-grain brew. I’ve never used extract, but I plan to in the future. I’ve gotten all my info from Palmer, “How to Brew”, which seems like an excellent resource, but has failed to satisfy my curiosity on this one point.
There’s a reference in there to a wikipedia post on the technicalities of it as well.
I recently brewed the Innkeeper and the Irish Blond Ale, both extract kits from NB and they both turned out much darker than I expected. I’m planning to start BIAB soon but will likely split up my extract additions in the next few batches to try and lighten up my beers a little. Taste is most important to me but even my wife who doesn’t drink beer has mentioned, ‘all your beers are so dark.’
Thanks guys. I didn’t realize extracts were already boiled some. I guess if you boil it, again, for a full hour then you get too many Maillard reactions and it darkens up.
