Fermenting on Hot Break?

[Crusty]

Great test jkeske & for me, no surprises with those results.
What we were led to believe to make great beer at home is highly debatable & I think we need to look really hard at the competition results all around the country. It proves beyond any doubt in my mind, that a turbid wort to the boil kettle along with fermenting on the break material & no chilling can & does produce exceptional award winning beers.

 

[Lurks]

Regarding Kühbeck, Back and Krottenthaler (2006) review paper linked earlier, and some of the papers that are reviewed in that paper, this seems to concentrate on a degree of lauter turbidity as quite distinct from brewing with hot break.

Also the above review appeared in a 2006 issue of the journal of the institute of brewing. In effect it was a literature review before the author's own study that appeared directly after. http://www.endoc.net/PDF2/0424.pdf

To put all of this in context in a paraphrase. There is no literature on brewing on hot break, all of these studies remove it. The authors state that lauter turbidity helps fermentation, which should be obvious by now, but the total compounds involved in the process are fairly low because they're removing the hot trub.

What can we take from this? Well, this study shows much benefit in turbid wort, assuming something gets into the beer which doesn't get removed in the hot break. That seems to be the same benefits discussed in this round of experiments on the podcast and so on. The literature has strengthened my intuition that it would not be necessary to stick all the hot break in to get the same benefits. The above study showed that a turbid lauter but removing the break resulted in low levels of staling and oxidation. It was there, but it was low.

I think this suggests that it's helpful to suck up *some* break. I'd be worried that long term staling is still a risk if you chucked the lot in.

(I tapped up something like this earlier and then thought it was too nerdy to post and cancelled... but since we've taken this turn...)

 

[treefiddy]

It's not exactly what people are after, but it's more useful than anecdotes.
The non-turbid wort whirlpools well, allowing for effective separation of break material.
The turbid wort doesn't whirlpool so well, allowing hot break into their fermentation vessel.
Close enough.


On a side note:

Crompton, I. E. and P. K. Hegarty (1991). "The importance of polyphenols in cold break formation." Proc. Congr. - Eur. Brew. Conv. 23rd(Copyright (C) 2013 American Chemical Society (ACS). All Rights Reserved.): 625-632.

Abstract: The pptn. of protein-polyphenol complexes is of considerable importance in the brewing process, resulting in the formation of both hot and cold break. Excessive cold break can lead to problems, such as off-flavors, poor fining and hindrance of accurate control of yeast pitching rate. The chem. characterization of hot and cold break is described. The factors which influence the quantity of cold break formed are described. Wort polyphenols are a major factor influencing cold break formation; removal of polyphenols from hot wort prior to cooling minimizes the amt. of cold break formed.

These guys reckon excessive cold break leads to problems, but that's not why I've posted this.

It looks like the inclusion of hot break helps cold break formation.
No chillers (and plate chillers to an extent) do their thing after separation of hot break (whirlpool), meaning that their cold break precipitation/separation could be less than optimal.
Whirlpool immersion chillers would get maximum precipitation of hot/cold break from wort.

So if you no chill and want to get rid of as much break material as possible, you should include more break material?

 

[Lurks]

That's very very interesting that hot break helps cold break form.

The literature seems to indicate that the mechanism for action in terms of enhancing yeast activity and dropping out of suspended proteins is based on particulates of various sizes in the trub. Which is also how pvpp helps. This is suggestive of pvpp in the kettle being (particularly?) beneficial to no-chillers and plate-chillers if they are excluding all hot break material.