So my first 30m boil is in the history books… I really liked how it fit into the brew session. Everything seemed to flow and there was not much waiting whereas as the 60m boil was always dragging on. Nothing radically different to report at this point.
When I was setting up session in Promash there is a field for boil length and all I had to do was change to 30m and all worked out pretty easy. The IBU changes were pretty minor from 60m to 30m and so was the water (about .75G). We shall see…
Did you boil vigorously or was it like a hard simmer like the GBF guys say (heat stress and all)? I boiled my pumpkin oktoberfest this past weekend for 45 minutes at a hard simmer. Probably had 9-10% boil off. Doubting any DMS formed, but always nervous about it.
I didn’t really overthink it and did like I always did which is a hard simmer based on info out there. Honestly, I am using the LODO thing here as a cop out to shorten brew day. If there is any benefit, great, but that is not my intention. If this beer is off for some reason I do plan to kick the boil up higher than typical and see if it fixes things before I give up on the short boil. While boil off rate is influenced by many things like ambient air temp and humidity, I typically averaged 15% on the 60m boil so half that is still better than what I see thrown around on the pro forums (5%).
Approaching high krausen now and everything seems in order.
How is the low DO thing shortening your brew session? It doesn’t add much to my brew session, about 15-20 minutes, but I don’t see how it shortens your session.
I should have been clearer. I consider the shortened boil part of the LODO concept. I did not do anything else LODO (pre boil/smb/etc). I was always thinking about a shorter boil and when I read the LODO paper I just ran with it.
Ah, gotcha. I’m still mashing for 60 minutes, but shortening my boil to 45 minutes. It actually ends up being slightly longer due to hot break in the beginning and I tend to stop the timer when I add my chiller. Takes up to 5 minutes to get going again sometimes. So the boil length is probably more like 55-60 minutes altogether. I don’t have any definitive answers as to whether my efforts for Low DO are making any difference just yet. The sulfur bomb I had is now fine; no more sulfur, but aside from seeming slightly fuller and maaaaaaaaybe slightly more malty than typical for a beer that finished at 1.007, it doesn’t seem to have made much of a difference. But it’s much too early to tell on it also.
I also have an all Vienna pale ale kegged that seems really nice, really fresh tasting, but I don’t know if that’s just because of the Vienna (since I’ve never brewed an all Vienna pale before) or from the low DO process…or both. Who knows!!! Not going to lose sleep over it.
OK, so I kegged this 30m saison… Everything seems fine however, I will say with my BJCP cred I do think the shorter boil created a maltier beer. Definitely something a person would want in a helles and maybe not so much in a saison. It is still nice and dry/crisp but has dare I say something along the lines of “IT”. Further experimentation required and maybe this is an isolated thing, but at this point I really gotta suggest anyone chasing after IT at least has to try a shorter boil or a deliberately lower intensity boil to see if they get similar results or to see if if I am off my rocker. I have an IPA on deck and then a NGP and plan to employ same technique and will update thread…
Did the saison attenuate as expected? Interesting info.
Lost the hydro sample at kegging but will degas/etc and check it out and post. I have absolutely the worst time with hydro samples…
My N=3 with 30 min boils tells me that it will be my standard and that boiling longer will be an exception. The beers have come out stellar so far.
Thanks for posting. Did you notice any differences at all?
Nothing unexpected. These were not repeat recipes an they were also the first 3 batches in which I used Brewtan B. So pretty hard to say anything too definitive about them other than that they came out excellent. 2 of them were pils malt based and there is not a hint of DMS that I can pick up in any of them. Less time, less propane, less RO water to buy. So far it’s a win all around for me.
1.005-6. I did use 10% sugar but seems normal to me and a wee bit little lower than typical (the additional time on the yeast maybe).
Great info on the DMS! There are some guys still going 90m for that… I am with ya on the benefits. I thought of this the other day: Since you use less water there is even less propane used to heat mash/sparge/boil since you hit temps faster…
Are you mashing shorter as well? I’ve been doing 30m a few years now.
No I haven’t gone down that road yet. I feel like that one really needs to be done serially…same recipe/same grist in order to know what changes in conversion efficiency or fermentability I experience, if any.
How can a shorter boil result in a “maltier” beer? Did I miss something on an earlier post?
Only thing I can think of is not adjusting the hopping for the lower utilization of a 30 min. boil.
Maybe. But I believe further back in the thread there was a suggestion to be sure to do so.
Yep. Confused…
That’s the only thing that makes sense. Otherwise I’m at a loss.