Interrupted brew day - stopping the boil?

[oglennyboy]

Gday all,
Had a problem today while boiling a BIAB wheat beer in my electric urn. After removing the bag, popping in the first hops & bringing up to boil it all looked normal, so I wandered off to drink beer & browse forums
Came back after an hour to find hardly any evaporation, and after fiddling around it seems the thermostat has pooped itself, as it will not boil (and poorly at that) for more than a couple of minutes before shutting off for 10mins or so. Has a concealed element, and scraping the bottom feels like there's no build up. The last couple of 50% wheats have been no drama, including a 1.100 monster last month.
So it's all shut down & covered till I can put the cooled wort into a couple of containers (still 33 litres left) and try to get the urn running properly.
Are there going to be any problems with the long hopeless poor boil? I saw a bit of grey scum that was a bit slimy, so scooped all of it out. Bitterness is probably going to be off given it's got something like a whole hour of boiling to go, but will there be issues with the hops oil already in the wort copping a 2+ hour boil (Halletauer, only 20g @ 5%) and tasting bad?
Is there anything I should do (or should have done!) before I try again tomorrow & proceed to finish it off as if nothing went wrong?
cheers!

 

[technobabble66]

Hmmm.... Bit tricky maybe.
Basically it should be totally fine overall.
Primarily, the first concern is sterility of the wort. If its boiled for 20-30 mins, it should be sterile enough for a day.
Next issue is the hops. More boiling equals more bitterness & less flavour. However, if you're intending to boil the first hops addition for over 1 hr, you're not going to get much flavour from it anyway and the bitterness will be close to max'd - maybe an extra 10-15% i'm guessing with an extra hour or 2. There shouldn't be anything too dire coming from boiling the hell out of your hops other than a little extra bitterness and not much flavour. So your screwed up boiling procedure probably won't make a big difference.
I'm guessing the slimy scum is just hot break - so probably no issue either way with that.
The big problem is whether you can get a boil going tomorrow - if you can't you might be in a *little* trouble in terms of finishing off your planned recipe. Namely in terms of hops/bittering, etc. Also it'd be good to get it back up to boil for 20 or so mins to re-sterilise it before transferring to FV and pitching yeast.
No idea what's happened to your gear, but best of luck getting it going tomorrow. I'd guess, as you've suggested, your thermostat has crapped itself. FWIW, at worst, just any boil will suffice, though a mild rolling boil is obviously preferred. In terms of what else to do, make sure you've sealed your urn (i.e.: just stick the lid on and cover any steam vents with some gladwrap). Maybe try to decide what to do if the urn isn't cutting it tomorrow *before* you take off the lid and fiddle around with it.
On the bright side, generally hefe's don't need much bittering. So if nothing works tomorrow, maybe you can just transfer it to the FV and throw the Hefe yeast in it - A mild Hefe!

I hope some of that helps!
Good luck!

 

[stux]

Or Get an over the side element, finish brew.

Fix urn

Now have a useful tool and use to ramp your urn to boil in double time in the future

 

[manticle]

I have read in a couple of sources that boiling hops overly long can extract less pleasant compounds. I've certainly boiled close to 120 mins with a bittering charge with no noticeable effects but beyond that I can't say.

 

[oglennyboy]

Thanks for the replies. I got it back up boiling yesterday to sterilise after the overnight for about 20mins, and to pop in a bit of hop flowers. Same cut-out issues even with the thermo pulled back. Tasting it this morning and it seems fine, but pretty lightly hopped to 15IBU or so, so probably not going to pick anything.
Undershot OG by 10pts but plenty of extra volume so it evens out I guess

On clean-up the problem is obvious.... worst scorch ever, much worse than earlier similar wheats. A good lesson: keep scraping the bottom! 9 months since my last wheaty, been doing ales so I'd forgot how painful they could be.
A metric arse-load of cherries in secondary will sort out any lingering flavours I reckon.
cheers!

 

[oglennyboy]

And because I'm a glutton for punishment, after scraping off the scorch and looking at the concealed element (which tbh, had a bit of a fkd look to it) I thought she'd be right and I'd bung a quick 30 minute brew through after reading up on GrumpyPaul's 10 minute IPA thread.
Of course the urn is rooted, so the current experiment is now a Little Fella clone done at the miserable temperature of 95 degrees, no more than a gentle simmer. Luckily the volumes were already set for lower efficiency and bugger all evaporation, so the only problem I can see is hot break, reduced bitterness and probably a bit hazy. DMS is hopefully not too big an issue with modern highly modified malts?
Found an interesting paper from 1965 on wort at different mash temps and simmer temps and the effect on taste etc. Might not be a total loss, but longevity is likely reduced to a couple months. Probably not a problem
Link to the paper: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/j.2050-0416.1966.tb02933.x/pdf
cheers

 

[stux]

Shoulda got the Over The Side

 

[oglennyboy]

Hahaa yep! But at short notice in Hobart the only place I found wanted $160! Ebay to the rescue, a new urn on the way for $115, so at 20-odd brews it's about 5 bucks a brew. Cheaper than yeast
With a replacement element plus immersion from Ross, I'll be triply redundant for next time.