The importance (or otherwise) of the boil volume

[RichardG]

I've just recently moved to extract brewing on the long road to AG. Mostly I'll be brewing fairly straight forward and known recipes (Daabs simple bitter is a case in point), but I'd also like to play around with new ideas and ingredients, e.g., adding ginger in somewhere. Now most of the recipes on the forum are for 20L - 25L, but I'd rather not produce 40-odd pints of something which proves to be undrinkable! So for the 'experiments' I'd like to produce a smaller volume, say 10 pints or 5L - 6L. Now this got me thinking about the various aspects/processes of brewing. The one I'm not clear about at the moment is the volume of the boil, and whether this is affected at all by reducing the volume, or whether it's the ratio of boil water to hops boiled that counts. I understand that boil gravity can be relevant, but then I'm reducing the extract used also, so that shouldn't be an issue (or is it?). Wouldn't the same apply to hops? After all, to achieve the same IBUs with a smaller volume you'd need fewer hops, right? Or does the boil volume actually have any significant impact at all? Does it actually matter whether you boil the hops for a 20L brew in 3 gals or 1 gal of water? Sorry this is a bit rambling, but if someone out there can give me a cogent explanation I'd be most obliged. Cheers!

[boingy]

If you want to experiment with unusual additions to you beer you could always make a full 5 gallon batch of beer complete with a full boil and then split the wort across 4 or 5 batches and add different flavourings to each batch. Depending on the flavouring you might need to boil each batch to extract the flavour and kill any bugs but probably only for 10 minutes or so.

Possible additions:

Ginger, lemon grass, coriander, anything citrus etc.

I'm not saying they will all turn out nice though!

[RichardG]

Chris, many thanks for the fulsome explanation. That makes things clear.

Boingy, what a simple idea! Why the heck didn't I think of that?

Both, many thanks for your input. Most useful to the novice as ever I must say. Cheers!