I'm not sure if it will clump or not Goid, but it will end up with the trub which includes your hot break. It is believed by may brewers that it is beneficial to your brew, that's why I do not skim it off.
It is said to both improve your beers head and be beneficial to your yeast production.
Hot break begins the form after around 5-10 minutes into the boil.
batz
Sooooo much misinformation and/or slightly off kilter information.
Warning - Clarification for its own sake! Not for people who get narky about over complicating things or who lose concentration if a post is longer than two paragraphs. Do yourself a favour and skip to the next post.
Hot break is a generic term that simply covers all the **** that previously being in solution, comes out of solution as your wort heats up, mostly proteins or proteins bound to other stuff. This happens continuously from the moment the first enzymes in your brew (enzymes are protiens remember) begin to denature at about 40 odd degrees and keeps on happening continuously until the wort cools down.
The rate at which it happens increases a lot as the wort hits the boil, because naturally things are getting hotter - but the difference between 99 and 100 really isn't that much - but also because as the wort boils, it starts to bubble and much of the chemistry of break formation happens on the liquid gas interface of the bubbles. You start to notice the hot break after the worts been boiling for a while, because the movement of the boil brings the protiens, polyphenols and small particles of break into conact with each other causing them to knit into larger,
visble particles - The great percentage of it happens earlier in the boil, but its been and is happening the whole time.
"The" Hot Break is some sort of figment of homebrewer imagination - so if you cant spot it, thats OK.... it doesn't actually exist.
However:
Its not a bad idea to wait until the foamy scum dissapates before you tip in your hops.... while its there your wort is at a point where its kind of vulnerable to boiling over. Tipping a whole bunch of small particles (hops) into it can make it foam up suddenly and end up on your floor
Its also not a bad idea to wait till your wort has been boiling for a little while - for instance 10 or 15 mins or until you start to see some hot break forming into particles. After that you know that a fairly good proportion of the total hot break has happened. Which is nice, because as hot break forms, it can bond to the bittering substances in your hops and reduce their total bittering potential. By putting in your hops after much of the hot break has already formed, more of their bitterness is available for your beer. A good economic thing if you dont want to spend too much money on bittering hops (really a commercial rather than a home consideration, the difference isn't all that great) and also a consistency thing - because different grists will have different amounts of break material and therefore differently affect how your hops are able to bitter your beer - mostly avoided by adding your hops "After the Hot Break" and ticking off a smallish box on the long list of "things I could do slightly more consistently in my brewing".
So the advice in the above thread is mostly right - and now know why (roughly)
Yours in overcomplexity - TB
