Boiling wort.
- Thread starter davo002
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I think I post this about every 2-3 months, short answer is yes. You really do need to boil for 60-19 minutes for most beers so don't even try short boils if your aim is to make the best beer you can.
Mark
Edit
Sorry I tend to think all grain, if you are talking about kits it might be a different answer.
What sort of wort are you making that hasn't got hops in it?
M
Mark
Edit
Sorry I tend to think all grain, if you are talking about kits it might be a different answer.
What sort of wort are you making that hasn't got hops in it?
M
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Thanks Mark, I am brewing a Coopers Larger extract kit and just wanted to add a kilo of grain, to give it a lift. I presume the extract has hops in it already.
I have never brewed all grain and I’m starting slowly.
My plan was to put the grain into 67°c water for an hour, sparge the grain then add the extract and the wort to the fermenter.
Happy to take advice.
Davo002
I’ve done 30 min boils for 100% malt bill Pilsners and shock horror used a lager yeast at 18c. It produced a crisp lager with zero DMS.
There is probably so many positive biased articles out there to prove/ disprove your method.
The truth of the matter is, do what works for you. Try it, if it works it works then rinse and repeat. For mine I’ve got 4 kids and small brewing window, so I do a 30-45min boil with the majority of my hops going into the cube.
When was the last time anyone got perceptible DMS in their brews? Has the malting processes these days along with grain evolution diminished the amount of off compounds extracted in a mash?
I dunno, I just think there is a lot of brewing dogma out there. Just relax and have another Homebrew.
There is probably so many positive biased articles out there to prove/ disprove your method.
The truth of the matter is, do what works for you. Try it, if it works it works then rinse and repeat. For mine I’ve got 4 kids and small brewing window, so I do a 30-45min boil with the majority of my hops going into the cube.
When was the last time anyone got perceptible DMS in their brews? Has the malting processes these days along with grain evolution diminished the amount of off compounds extracted in a mash?
I dunno, I just think there is a lot of brewing dogma out there. Just relax and have another Homebrew.
Davo - you still want to boil your sweet water (that's what its called before it becomes wort), if for no other reason than to sterilise it. Anyone who has done an AG brew or two will know how bad the expended malt gets in a day or two, that's because mash temperatures wont kill Lacto bacteria on the grain, unboiled sweet water will almost guarantee an infected brew. There are very good reasons to boil for longer but a 15 minute boil should see to sterilisation. Read the info I posted above, there are lots of things going on in the boil and they all affect the final beer. In this case where the sweet water is such a small part of the whole, it wont make as much difference as it would in a full volume AG brew.
I doubt you will get enough extract from 1kg of malt to make your usual alcohol, 1kg of grain at best might give 760g of extract, that wont be all fermentable like sugar is and its unlikely you will get all of the ~760g, what's called efficiency is how good you are at getting out the available extract and most think ~80% is a good start. Best to check with an hydrometer to see how much you get and adjust accordingly.
MarkosBM
I'm going to disagree with a couple of things.
First, there might be lots of writings by armature/home brewers saying that 30 minute boils are adequate, you wont find any in researched or professional literature. There are ways to speed up boiling in commercial brewing, things like vacuum boiling, Merlin boilers... but we are talking about seriously expensive gear.
Breweries consider this sort of investment worthwhile because Energy is probably the biggest single cost in brewhouse operation, brewers know they cant make the best beer without big investments or longer boils.
Same for fermentation, if you want to make the best Lager it needs to be brewed cold. Again cooling is the biggest cost in fermentation and cellar operations. Pro-brewers aren't all stupid and they will save a bunch of money if they can.
Remember the excitement a couple of yeast ago when Carlton tried to reduce the alcohol by a fraction of a percent, that fraction of a % was worth something like $25M a year to them, so yes they notice the small change.
Yes you can make beer by cutting corners, use cheap malt, use lots of sugar, heaps of adjunct, add hops as iso-extract after lagering, shorter boils, warmer ferments.... but there is a price to be payed, you end up making beer more like the crap I home brew to avoid.
it isn't dogma, its well researched and tested, brewing is a science and an art, a bit like architecture, you can draw a pretty building but it still needs to be structurally sound.
Mark
I doubt you will get enough extract from 1kg of malt to make your usual alcohol, 1kg of grain at best might give 760g of extract, that wont be all fermentable like sugar is and its unlikely you will get all of the ~760g, what's called efficiency is how good you are at getting out the available extract and most think ~80% is a good start. Best to check with an hydrometer to see how much you get and adjust accordingly.
MarkosBM
I'm going to disagree with a couple of things.
First, there might be lots of writings by armature/home brewers saying that 30 minute boils are adequate, you wont find any in researched or professional literature. There are ways to speed up boiling in commercial brewing, things like vacuum boiling, Merlin boilers... but we are talking about seriously expensive gear.
Breweries consider this sort of investment worthwhile because Energy is probably the biggest single cost in brewhouse operation, brewers know they cant make the best beer without big investments or longer boils.
Same for fermentation, if you want to make the best Lager it needs to be brewed cold. Again cooling is the biggest cost in fermentation and cellar operations. Pro-brewers aren't all stupid and they will save a bunch of money if they can.
Remember the excitement a couple of yeast ago when Carlton tried to reduce the alcohol by a fraction of a percent, that fraction of a % was worth something like $25M a year to them, so yes they notice the small change.
Yes you can make beer by cutting corners, use cheap malt, use lots of sugar, heaps of adjunct, add hops as iso-extract after lagering, shorter boils, warmer ferments.... but there is a price to be payed, you end up making beer more like the crap I home brew to avoid.
it isn't dogma, its well researched and tested, brewing is a science and an art, a bit like architecture, you can draw a pretty building but it still needs to be structurally sound.
Mark
Thanks guys, I’m happy to boil for longer if it makes a better beer. It makes sense that it kills the bacteria.
I forget to mention I was also going to add a kilo of dry malt extract. This should bring the alcohol up.
Would it hurt to boil everything together or should I add the extract and dry malt to the fermenter at the end?
Davo002
Probably not necessary, there is also a good reason to be careful if you are boiling extract (LME/DME).
When wort is very concentrated its very easy to get scorching, doesn't take much to make an otherwise good brew taste burnt. If you boil concentrated wort you will get lots of Milliard reactions, means it can darken very quickly and develop typical toffee/caramel flavours.
As is so often the case in brewing it isn't a right/wrong either/or answer, developing colour and flavour might be desirable in some beers. You have chosen at do a very pale beer so perhaps not. but its an interesting technique to experiment with if you want an amber beer.
This is some of what I truly love about brewing, I remember talking to and old pro-brewer and he dropping "of course" into a conversation (often). As is in "you could do that but of course then this will happen..."All very nonbinary".
Doing a test batch of a new extra pale for work last Thursday, changed the L:G (liquor to grist or water to grain) ratio pretty dramatically (close to no sparge) it affects not only the colour but how fermentable the wort will be, which is dependant on the ratio of higher sugars to simple ones, that affects the maltyness and body so you have to adjust the bitterness...
Might be able to spend the rest of my life mucking around making beer.
Mark
When wort is very concentrated its very easy to get scorching, doesn't take much to make an otherwise good brew taste burnt. If you boil concentrated wort you will get lots of Milliard reactions, means it can darken very quickly and develop typical toffee/caramel flavours.
As is so often the case in brewing it isn't a right/wrong either/or answer, developing colour and flavour might be desirable in some beers. You have chosen at do a very pale beer so perhaps not. but its an interesting technique to experiment with if you want an amber beer.
This is some of what I truly love about brewing, I remember talking to and old pro-brewer and he dropping "of course" into a conversation (often). As is in "you could do that but of course then this will happen..."All very nonbinary".
Doing a test batch of a new extra pale for work last Thursday, changed the L:G (liquor to grist or water to grain) ratio pretty dramatically (close to no sparge) it affects not only the colour but how fermentable the wort will be, which is dependant on the ratio of higher sugars to simple ones, that affects the maltyness and body so you have to adjust the bitterness...
Might be able to spend the rest of my life mucking around making beer.
Mark
I can 100% assure you the 30 min boiled lager I made fermented at 18c with M76 was not swill, it was crisp, clean and flawless to my pallet and my local HBS.
So how much literature has been done on short boils? Have you tried it?
So how much literature has been done on short boils? Have you tried it?
Dude seriously? I've been brewing for close to 40 years, AG for getting about 25 of them. Of course I've tried shorter boils, and longer ones to, played around with ferment temperature, even studied brewing, passed exams and all that.
Based on experience. You can make beer cutting corners, you will make better beer doing all the basics right.
20 years ago a 120 minute boil was standard, a 1 hour boil would have been regarded as heresy, for good reasons and yes things do change, my default boil is 90 minutes for most beers, done one that was 15 minutes, that is what the brewery who make Kindl Weiss do so you try it (have had better Weiss beers). Have even tried a Sahti that isn't boiled at all (next to no hops either).
Do the basics right, especially when people are learning, sure experiment all you like but without understanding the processes and comparing to properly made beer, your investing the same in ingredients just to save half an hour on the boil, maybe a week or two on the ferment, try both and I will be surprised if you cant tell the difference.
Mark
Based on experience. You can make beer cutting corners, you will make better beer doing all the basics right.
20 years ago a 120 minute boil was standard, a 1 hour boil would have been regarded as heresy, for good reasons and yes things do change, my default boil is 90 minutes for most beers, done one that was 15 minutes, that is what the brewery who make Kindl Weiss do so you try it (have had better Weiss beers). Have even tried a Sahti that isn't boiled at all (next to no hops either).
Do the basics right, especially when people are learning, sure experiment all you like but without understanding the processes and comparing to properly made beer, your investing the same in ingredients just to save half an hour on the boil, maybe a week or two on the ferment, try both and I will be surprised if you cant tell the difference.
Mark
I wasn’t having a go at all, there are the conventionalists that adhered to the tried and true, as you say 20 years ago 120 min was the norm and a 60 min boil scoffed at.
I like to challenge convention, and make a damn good product in the process. It’s my opinion.
I like to challenge convention, and make a damn good product in the process. It’s my opinion.
Its amazing how many innovative and dogma challenging home brewers turn up here with the notion that all the professional brewers and even all the researchers on the planet are stupid.
Go find one brewery doing short boils or making lager hot, when you cant, ask your self why.
Is it because they like wasting time and money or because they really believe it makes for better beer?
Mark
Go find one brewery doing short boils or making lager hot, when you cant, ask your self why.
Is it because they like wasting time and money or because they really believe it makes for better beer?
Mark
Everyone's process is different.
I believe the Cooper's kit are generally no boil. Add hot water to the can contents in the fermenter, add sugar to dissolve, top up to recommended volume.
If I was doing a partial mash I would sparge enough to collect about five liters of wort. I would then boil, gently, for thirty minutes reducing to four liters and use that as the hot water to dissolve the extract and sugar in the fermenter.
Planning to do exactly this on one of their Australian Pale Ale cans shortly.
MO
I believe the Cooper's kit are generally no boil. Add hot water to the can contents in the fermenter, add sugar to dissolve, top up to recommended volume.
If I was doing a partial mash I would sparge enough to collect about five liters of wort. I would then boil, gently, for thirty minutes reducing to four liters and use that as the hot water to dissolve the extract and sugar in the fermenter.
Planning to do exactly this on one of their Australian Pale Ale cans shortly.
MO
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Hangover68
Well-Known Member
The kits would have already been thru the whole process and reduction into a syrup, no comparison to boiling or not boiling AG.
