Homebrewing advice wanted

So with an extract kit does it make more sense to:

a) Start with more water in the initial boil to achieve 5 gal (does that effect hopping much)
b) Top off to 5 gal after boil
c) don't worry about the 5 gal mark at all and try to reach target OG

or d) don't trip on any of this stuff too much.


Did I mention how fun this is?

when you Got Some shoot me a pm I will sample it for ya bro don't listen to Tote...he lives to far

Oh yeah sat/sun is the days bro...sounded like tinys hitting up sun.....tell him sat...FAC sorry for threadjack

So with an extract kit does it make more sense to:

a) Start with more water in the initial boil to achieve 5 gal (does that effect hopping much)
b) Top off to 5 gal after boil
c) don't worry about the 5 gal mark at all and try to reach target OG

or d) don't trip on any of this stuff too much.


Did I mention how fun this is?

Since you're new at this, I would go with option "D" for now. But if you want to "geek out" on it like so many of us do  , then here's my advice:

For extract brewing I advise figuring out your boiloff rate and trying to hit your target volume by the end of your boil. I say this for a couple reasons. First, you're going to get more accurate hop utilization if you're doing the full boil with the correct amount of water. Second, if you're ever intending to move on to partial mash or all grain brewing, you're going to want to get good at manging your volumes throughout the process. This is good practice for the future. When you brew using those other methods you can't just "top off" to fix your OG unless you somehow ended up with too much sugar from the grains, which is uncommon.

Also, keep in mind that when using extract, it's hard to screw up hitting the proper OG. It's not like partial mash or all-grain where you need to extract just the right amount of sugar by volume from grains. The extract has all the sugar you need. So, if you've used all your extract and you have the right volume going into your fermenter, then you can be guaranteed to have the right OG. The only way you could screw that up is by adding too much water and diluting your wort.

The lesson here is: when extract brewing, it's better to end up with too little volume at the end of your boil than too much. You can always add water to hit your target volume, but you can't take water away without boiling longer, thus messing with your hop utilization.

The other lesson is this: The great thing about home brewing is that even if you didn't do it just right, you still end up with beer.