BeerBorg

Why does BrewDemon's instructions only have you boil 4 cups of water for your wort for a 2 gallon batch?

How does the volume of water for your wort vs the batch total volume affect your brew?

You only need to boil a gallon, but you to it off with cold water to the full volume.

1 quart, not 1 gallon. 4 cups, not 4 quarts.

Just enough to liquefy the can contents, which you add to a gallon of cold water, than top off with cold water.

RickBeer wrote:1 quart, not 1 gallon. 4 cups, not 4 quarts.

Just enough to liquefy the can contents, which you add to a gallon of cold water, than top off with cold water.

Yup as RB said, and when doing it like it says, will have a good yeast pitching temp. It does work like it says when doing it by the directions............Later on if you move on to other things, there will be a little more things to think about, but that system will work just fine as is.............

Welcome! Keep us posted.

Welcome to the Borg!! With the Hopped Malt Extracts that come in the BrewDemon and Mr Beer kits, they already have been boiled with the malt and hops, with IBUs rated for the finished volume. What you are doing is boiling the water to get the HME, which is very thick and syrupy, to mix into a thinner slurry. When you turn off the burner, you add the HME and stir till completely incorporated. At this point you should have a designated amount of cold water in the fermenter according to instructions, which really brings the temp down, from there you top off with more cold water to the finish volume per instruction. As stated that should bring you down to a temperature that is safe enough to pitch the yeast, usually between 60-75 degrees.

Thanks for the replies. If I had other ways of cooling down the wort quickly, like an ice bath or copper wort chiller, is there any benefit to boiling more water for the wort? I just didn't know since it was a beginner kit if the reason they had you boil less water vs total batch volume was to help you with cooling down the wort quickly with just using cold water or if it was due to that the 4 cups of water boiled and then mixed with the HME was the ideal volume of wort for that recipe.

Zero benefit. Just follow the directions.

pkpreader wrote:Thanks for the replies. If I had other ways of cooling down the wort quickly, like an ice bath or copper wort chiller, is there any benefit to boiling more water for the wort? I just didn't know since it was a beginner kit if the reason they had you boil less water vs total batch volume was to help you with cooling down the wort quickly with just using cold water or if it was due to that the 4 cups of water boiled and then mixed with the HME was the ideal volume of wort for that recipe.

Mainly for ease of use for the beginner to get their feet wet in the hobby. Brew per directions for the kit till you get to how long to leave it in the fermenter, at that point forget the directions, you want to keep it in the fermenter for 3 weeks, then bottle condition @ room temp for 3-4 weeks, then chill what you are going to drink for 2-3 days so the carbonation can be absorbed back into the beer. This will bring out the best in these types of kits.