Caramelising First Runnings

[Ross]

TP,

I just boiled 5L of my first runnings in the kettle until it turned to toffee on a spoon & then poured in the rest of the wort - Worked great in my Imperial Mild & will be the foundation for my BananaObalma (Black Banana Beer) being brewed this weekend.

cheers Ross

 

[manticle]

TP: I don't know if you've ever made toffee or your own candi sugar but this is essentially the same. It will just be boiling wort for what seems like forever. All of a sudden the bubbles wil seem to get bigger and slower. Dipping a spoon in will show you that the wort is starting to coat the spoon instead of just drip off. This is the point where you need to watch it like crazy. Like Ross, I like to take it to a thick toffee syrup but the point between this and burnt useless nasty is very, very fine.

By the way - even if you think you've hit burnt useless nasty, let it cool for a bit, then taste. First time I really got brave with this process I thought I stuffed it. On cooling I realised I'd made thick brown wort caramel which was super lovely. I reckon 1 or 2 more minutes would have been stinky crust city.

 

[TidalPete]

TP,

I just boiled 5L of my first runnings in the kettle until it turned to toffee on a spoon & then poured in the rest of the wort - Worked great in my Imperial Mild & will be the foundation for my BananaObalma (Black Banana Beer) being brewed this weekend.

cheers Ross

Thanks Ross. :icon_cheers: I thought of boiling in the kettle but am unsure whether I should just recirculate the rest of the first runnings (Mashout temp) for the time it takes to caramelise the 4 litres I plan to do & then sparge or just shut the pump down & wait?
On reflection I'd say the former?

Just saw your post manticle & it's very helpful. I'll be watching the kettle like a hawk.

TP

 

[Bribie G]

Pete, you and I must have been Apache Blood Brothers in previous lives whatever, I'm going to do a wort caramelisation on Saturday with my first Yorkie of the season. Was going to brew today but time has got away on me. I also have a thin 10 litre stockpot from Sam's warehouse, and I have found that it doesn't burn as such, but there is a bit of gunk on the bottom that does need a scrub off with a stainless steel kitchen scrubber afterwards. I have found that a regular stir with a stainless steel spoon works ok. The thinness of the pot base shouldn't be as much of a problem as you fear.
I'll post on Saturday and let you know how I get on, looking at reducing 2L down to 300 ml.

 

[TidalPete]

Pete, you and I must have been Apache Blood Brothers in previous lives whatever, I'm going to do a wort caramelisation on Saturday with my first Yorkie of the season. Was going to brew today but time has got away on me. I also have a thin 10 litre stockpot from Sam's warehouse, and I have found that it doesn't burn as such, but there is a bit of gunk on the bottom that does need a scrub off with a stainless steel kitchen scrubber afterwards. I have found that a regular stir with a stainless steel spoon works ok. The thinness of the pot base shouldn't be as much of a problem as you fear.
I'll post on Saturday and let you know how I get on, looking at reducing 2L down to 300 ml.

Cheers Bribie. Here's to a happy brewday. :icon_cheers:

TP

 

[dr K]

Ross.I tasted your Imperial Mild in Kanbeera

K

 

[clatty]

Ross.I tasted your Imperial Mild in Kanbeera

K

Want a medal dr K?

 

[Ross]

Ross.I tasted your Imperial Mild in Kanbeera

K

You sure did good doctor, it was certainly an interesting brew...

Cheers Ross

 

[dr K]

Want a medal dr K?

I have sufficient, both Imperial and Republican.

K

 

[Ross]

A slightly different twist on the theme...

I've been thinking what caramelising some of the finished beer would be like? The idea was to reduce & then add boiled water to original volume & add back to the keg.

Would there be enough sugars to get the flavour sought?
Would the bitterness increase from the prolonged boiling?

Has any one tried it or heard of someone who has?

cheers Ross

 

[Thirsty Boy]

A slightly different twist on the theme...

I've been thinking what caramelising some of the finished beer would be like? The idea was to reduce & then add boiled water to original volume & add back to the keg.

Would there be enough sugars to get the flavour sought?
Would the bitterness increase from the prolonged boiling?

Has any one tried it or heard of someone who has?

cheers Ross

what would the purpose be Ross? You'd lose a bit of alcohol and maybe darken it a bit... but what else?

I think I've asked before.. but has anyone tried just making a caramel out of DME?? Same process your would use to make candy sugar out of cane sugar, but starting point is DME.

Takes 5 minutes to make candy sugar and might save a whack of time boiling all that wort down to syrup.. to end up with the same thing.

 

[Ross]

Thirsty,

To try & put a bit of caramel character into a mild that is missing the mark - losing a little alcohol is a bonus.
I'm assuming there are still some sugars there, so just wondering if this would work. i don't want to be adding fermentable sugars back to the finished beer.

cheers Ross

 

[Bribie G]

what would the purpose be Ross? You'd lose a bit of alcohol and maybe darken it a bit... but what else?

I think I've asked before.. but has anyone tried just making a caramel out of DME?? Same process your would use to make candy sugar out of cane sugar, but starting point is DME.

Takes 5 minutes to make candy sugar and might save a whack of time boiling all that wort down to syrup.. to end up with the same thing.

I'm doing a series of ales ATM, I'll try it in the next brew. 300g ???

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Thirsty,

To try & put a bit of caramel character into a mild that is missing the mark - losing a little alcohol is a bonus.
I'm assuming there are still some sugars there, so just wondering if this would work. i don't want to be adding fermentable sugars back to the finished beer.

cheers Ross

Maybe a little brewers caramel - not really anything in the way of fermentables in that stuff. But then again, to get any real flavour out of it you have to use so much that it'd make your beer pretty much black.

Dunno - but I'm going to try to boil down a bit of beer just to see what happens.

TB

 

[Thirsty Boy]

ahhh - brainwave (warning contains possible stupidity)

I was talking about making candy sugar / caramel out of DME as a shortcut to boiling down wort.... Well, obviously Ross can't do that because that might introduce fermentables back into his beer -- but what if you did it with malto dextrin powder? That stuff is just sugars... malt sugars... dextrins in fact - which are unfermentable malt sugars.

So put a little water and some malto dextrin powder in a pot, heat it up and make some caramel out of it.

Would that do the trick??

PS - am currently boiling a cup of belgian blonde down to syrup to see what the hell happens

TB

 

[RdeVjun]

An interesting proposition that Ross. I guess sugars which are normally caramelised as wort are then processed into water vapour, alcohol and CO2, all of which will be evaporated if it is subsequently boiled, however there should remain some unfermentable sugars and other complex residues including hops, presumably that stuff gives beer much of its character. I'm a fan of wort caramelisation but just how these residues/ essence would react to caramelisation I have no idea. Yes, I'd also be wary of bitterness increasing although it may not necessarily need to be a huge proportion that is subsequently caramelised. Wouldn't hurt to try it though?
I know that reducing wine in cookery leads to some intense flavours which are quite potent and just delicious. Occasionally I'll use some beer like that too, but I never reconstituted and added it back to some other/ more beer! The prospect of adding some character to a Mild is appealing too, so hope it goes well.

Thirsty, I've yet to try out caramelising some DME or straight sugar process as per previous post, but it is on my list of to- dos for my TTL- style. It could save a considerable amount of energy and farting about if it works satisfactorily.
Bribie, I suppose the amount could be equivalent to a couple of litres of wort that would otherwise have been be caramelised... plus a bit more to account for any losses/ tasting etc, so I'd guess 300g would be a good starting point and yield plenty of it.
Aaahh stuff it! I'm staying home today to experiment- all in the name of science! :super:

Edit: Clarity.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

OK, so I just did the boiling some beer thing.

I boiled 250ml of beer (belgian blonde ale, about 7 ebc, 6% abv) down to nearly nothing - it probably got down to 15-20ml before it went syrupy in any way. The smell coming off the stuff (after it stopped smelling frankly nasty at any rate) was all about bread crust and toast.. no caramel.

So I ended up with this



I added back enough boiling water to make the volume back up to 250ml, making sure I scraped down the sides of the pot and got back as much of what went in as possible. This is what came out. A glass of the original beer on the left - the reconstituted syrup on the right



So - got a bit of colour development then.

And this is what happens when you add some of this reconstituted syrup back into your beer. I added 10ml to 90ml of the original beer to simulate what would happen if you did this to 10% of your keg ( a couple of liters)

original left, altered right



Added a little colour. How's it taste??

Well, it didn't add any caramel - it added maltiness. So the difference between pale and munich. It was toasted breadcrust all the way. thats what it smelled like, thats what it tasted like.

A 20% solution added a very small amount of what you might call caramel/toffee - but in that burned and slightly sour way you get when your toffee goes wrong. Bit of extra body, definite strong maltiness/kilned character and an edge of astringent bitter/sour.

So I tasted the tincture itself... not all that pleasant. I have tasted the same thing when making malt "tea" to learn about malt flavour - got it from amber malt, got it from melanoidin malt. Bitter, puckering, sour acid structure like you get in an espresso. Also there were significant floaties and haze -- It would take a bright beer down a peg or two in the clarity stakes to add 10% of this stuff.

Conclusion -- you could do this to add colour and maltiness to a beer. A little structure and mouthfeel perhaps ... but caramel??? Not so much. Worth it? Only if you were desperate to save a truly bland beer.

TB

 

[Ross]

Fantastic Thirsty - Thankyou :icon_chickcheers:

cheers Ross

 

[manticle]

ahhh - brainwave (warning contains possible stupidity)

I was talking about making candy sugar / caramel out of DME as a shortcut to boiling down wort.... Well, obviously Ross can't do that because that might introduce fermentables back into his beer -- but what if you did it with malto dextrin powder? That stuff is just sugars... malt sugars... dextrins in fact - which are unfermentable malt sugars.

So put a little water and some malto dextrin powder in a pot, heat it up and make some caramel out of it.

Would that do the trick??

PS - am currently boiling a cup of belgian blonde down to syrup to see what the hell happens

TB

While anything is worth trying, it kind of makes sense to me that caramelising the actual wort you are making the beer from will give the best tasting results. Otherwise you could just add in some LME maybe?

It's not that much of a pain - I use about 4 litres in a fry pan which tends not to boil over and reduces to thick toffee in about the time it takes to boil the wort. Reduced DME would just taste like DME wouldn't it? I find iI can discern a nice caramel in the porter I make with it (although yet to try it without).
Anyway let us know how you go.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

While anything is worth trying, it kind of makes sense to me that caramelising the actual wort you are making the beer from will give the best tasting results. Otherwise you could just add in some LME maybe?

It's not that much of a pain - I use about 4 litres in a fry pan which tends not to boil over and reduces to thick toffee in about the time it takes to boil the wort. Reduced DME would just taste like DME wouldn't it? I find iI can discern a nice caramel in the porter I make with it (although yet to try it without).
Anyway let us know how you go.

But that doesn't address Ross' issue, which was the point of using malto dextrin.

If you are talking about DME - then I strongly suspect that by the time you reduce it and boil the shit out of it... something that is largely maltose will caramelize to taste pretty much the same as something else that is largely maltose. Its not like DME is something exotic... its dried AG wort after all.

LME - is really quite uncaramelized. They go to a fair bit of trouble when they make it to ensure that.

Its more or less a null point for me - I suspect if I want caramel character, I'll just use caramel malt or some actual caramel - just suggesting an option for people who think this adds to their beer. I might try it out of curiosity once time... maybe.

Glad to be of service Ross. I was interested to see what happened.