Could you brew extract without a boiler and chiller?

[Black_Sheep]

Do you think you can still brew from extract using a hob top method, like you would for kits?

I was thinking:

Steep special grains in pan of boiled water at 70C for 30 mins.
Add the run off from the grain to a 7L pan of bolied water with a tin of LME, your Hops (in a bag) and DME, bring to a rolling boil for 90mins adding your copper hops as required.
Put the pan in a sink full of cold water and possibley ice packs? Change the water for fresh cold stuff every 10 mins? After 40 mins get down to around 30C.
Have 18L of 30C water in the FV with a crushed Campden tablet.
Mix the two and check all is below 30C before pitching the yeast, aerate for 5 mins.

Any drawbacks? Would this method acheive a hot and cold break?

[floydmeddler]

I brewed similarly to this a while back. What I did to cool was, 48 hrs before brewday I froze 2x2L bottles of cheap ASDA spring water. I added this to the wort and it cooled in minutes. Obviously you'll need to account for the introduction of this extra water in your measurements.

Basically, you just cut through the frozen ice bottles with a knife and it slides out no probs. Worked a treat!

Get some protofloc (2 teaspoons) into your wort for the last 15 mins. Can't see why it wouldn't create a cold break.

[Black_Sheep]

Thanks Floyd I'll give it a go.

[OldSpeckledBadger]

The other thing to remember when boiling say 7 litres is that bringing up the volume will cold water will result in the final temperature being around 30C. It's easy to calculate as:

(boil-volume * boil-temperature + cold-water-volume * cold-water temperature) / final-volume

so if your boiling 7 litres you'll add 16 litres of cold for a 23 litre batch. ATM my cold water is 14C so this would give

( 7 * 100 + 16 * 14) / 23 = 40C

Cool that 7 litres down to 65C in the sink and you'll get

(7 * 65 + 16 *14) / 23 = 29.5C

From experience I can say that you can do the cooling in a few minute in just a sink of cold water.

[Black_Sheep]

Good points there, thanks for the advice. I'll double up the hop dosage, I have frozen a couple of bottles of mineral water and will keep these on standy but I still think I'll put the wort in a sink of cold water, because it's been pretty efficient in the past. I see now why the boiler is so important, it's a tricky one as I don't have the space, I'll have to think on.

[likesbeer]

I've done 3 or 4 extract brews this way, I have a slightly bigger pan and can boil about half the brew length (carefully), instead of putting the hops in a bag you could strain the whole lot through a collander or sieve when pooring in the FV. This should give better utilisation from the movement in the boil, plus does a nice job of airating. I also use some DME and add to the FV so that I'm not trying to boil something with an OG of over 1100 as I didnt think that would be a good idea (thanks Chris for the reason). Mine have all come out very nicely done like this, hopefully yesterdays will too.

[PureGuiness]

This is how I did it and it seems to be turning out ok.

viewtopic.php?f=24&t=23376

[Black_Sheep]

Thanks PureGuiness, I did it yesterday and followed a similar method. I steeped 280G Crystal Malt in a muslin bag @70C for 40 mins in the bottom of the stock pot with about 2L of water. I then added 500g of light spraymalt, boiled with 70g made up of Cascade, Goldings, Cenntenial and Progress (CGCP) and 30g of Willamette. These were some odds and sods that needed using up. I made up the volume to a couple of inches short of the top of the pot. I boiled this for 60 mins and it didn't stick to the pan, which was great. I then added 30g of CGCP and 20g of Willamette.

I then took the pan off the heat, into a sink of freezing water with 2 x 1l bottles of frozen mineral water, it appeared to drop from 95 to 40c in less than 10 mins. I put 1kg of Dark spraymalt and a Brupacks 1.5kg tin of Amber malt into the bottom of the FV. I stirred in the wort, filted through a musiln bag in a sieve and added the partially melted contents of one of the mineral water bottles and topped up to 23L using cool water pre treated with 1 crushed campden tablet. It was a 23L total brew, I watched it hit 29C and pitched a Danstar Windsor yeast starter using Chris X-1's method and aerated for 5 mins. The starter had been busy in the airing cupboard for 4 hours.

I left the FV lid loose and there was a mighty eruption of foam in the morning. It's subsided now, it smells beautiful now I need to leave it and not sample it. . I can't wait to get my chops rounds this one.

[WishboneBrewery]

I might have to try the frozen bottled water thing, sounds like a good way to avoid making or buying a copper immersion cooler

Good stuff

[kennoway_brewery]

Brilliant thread especially the pictures from PureGuiness! I'm in a third floor flat so using a boiler isn't really an option without stinking out all 4 rooms.

I'll be using this method this weekend.

Out of interest what size of stock pot did you use, 10 litre?

[PureGuiness]

My main stock pot is about 11.5 ltrs to the brim.

Even with boiling on the hob you still get all the smells that you would from a bigger boiler - and alot of moisture in the air. The smells are all good though and as long as the place is well ventilated the moisture shouldn't be a problem.

Happy brewing!

[kennoway_brewery]

Nice! I'll keep my eyes open for one that size.

I love the smell of beer but don't think my misses would agree