No Boil Home Brewing with Hopped Malt Extract

It is possible to brew a quality homebrew without spending two hours over the brew kettle. The trick is using hopped malt extract.

There is a second advantage to these convenient beer recipes too. Eliminating the caramelizing caused when a prolonged boil is needed to extract bitterness from hops keeps the beer very pale in color.

One more note: these beer kits add two pounds of sugar to the mix. Try using Pilsen Light DME instead, after all beer is made from barley malt not refined sugar. The extra light color of the Pilsen DME will allow the color of the beer kit to dominate the wort.

Here’s how:

Place one gallon of water in the brew kettle and bring it to a boil.

Reserve one cup of the DME for priming at bottling time.

Stir in the remaining DME, stirring until completely dissolved.

Turn off the heat and stir in the hopped extract. The secret here is to never let the hopped extract come to a boil. Doing so will cause the hop aroma and flavor to escape from the kettle and cause the wort to darken.

Cool the kettle to 100 degrees by placing it in a sink of cold water.

Add the cooled wort to a primary fermenter pail with enough cool water to make five gallons.

Pitch the yeast included with the hopped extract. It is not necessary to prepare the brewer’s yeast in any way. Just sprinkle it on top of the wort and ferment as usual.

Allow primary fermentation to work for seven days.

Transfer the fermented beer to a carboy for secondary fermentation under an airlock for another seven days.

Sanitize your bottling equipment. Bring two cups of water to a boil then add the one cup of DME and completely dissolve.

Allow the priming malt to cool then place it into your bottling bucket.

Rack the beer onto the priming malt. The action of transferring the beer will distribute the priming sugar.

Bottle, cap and allow the beer to condition for at least three weeks before drinking.