I just put an Oktoberfest in yesterday, and walked away for a minute to find I ran out of propane with <10 minutes left in the 60-minute boil. I was really hoping to stretch that tank out to the end, and I almost got there… :-\
I did a roughly 80-90 minute mash in, and had a vigorous boil going throughout, and just about hit my target gravity/volume (ended up at 1.060, was shooting for 1.056).
I feel like I’ve seen enough material to make me feel “just OK” about it. Tough thing with lagers is, I probably won’t know until September…
For “normal” gravity beers 45m boil, hop additions start at 30m. I use either CMC or Best Pils as a base in a lot of my recipes and have never detected any DMS.
I’m a 45 minute mash and boil guy with my base malt being pils for almost everything. Considering dropping to 30 minutes for less hoppy styles. Loving the time it saves me.
My standard boil length is 30 minutes. I brewed a batch with a 5 minute boil using mostly pilsner malt last week, and haven’t noticed any DMS in a the sample I pulled. Going to be trying a no-boil (raw) brew next.
edit: Got my first taste of the 5 minute boil pils carbed up. Tastes a little young, but otherwise great. No discernible DMS. I feel I should add the caveat that it had a roughly 20 minute whirlpool after the boil, I use two pots (stove top) so the wort has plenty of surface area, and at no point did I cover it.
I’m re-reading this on going post and I thought of something that I often compare brewing too and that is cooking. Are we not really cooking our grain into an end product that can arguably be termed food? Here is an example based on two types of tomato sauce that I make. One is a pizza sauce (no meat) and the other is a meat sauce. They both have similar ingredients and similar processes except in my case, the pizza sauce is only cooked for 5 mins and the meat sauce is cooked for 4 hours. Albeit, the pizza sauce does get additional cooking time when cooking the pizza. Now they both taste spectacular if I may say but to me, nothing can substitute for that long slow 4 hour meat sauce. To correlate this back to brewing, lets say I make a Pils @ 1.050 OG and boil for 35 mins and then I make a Belgian Blonde @ 1.070 OG similar ingredients and similar processes. I think the Blonde will, hands down, always taste better. Just my opinion.
The thing is that the application of heat is physically and chemically transforming all these things. With your meat sauce, that’s good. Nobody wants random meat and veggies tossed on their pappardelle. (Alton Brown had my head spinning when he broke down all the sequential reactions to consider in optimizing his process for a nice Bolognese. PhD level stuff.) But in beer wort, the transformations are not so positive, aside from the formation and elimination of DMS (which as has been discussed is more often an imaginary bogeyman than a real problem.) The heat breaks down flavor compounds we desire, evolves unpleasant ones, and both generates precursors for and accelerates oxidative and other staling reactions. So the least thermal loading possible will make fresher, maltier tasting beer that stays that way longer. Moreover, the simple melanoidins and other caramelization and Maillard products produced on the kiln at the malthouse are much more pleasant and stable than those produced in the kettle. We can do better by assembling the flavors we want in the fresh malt in our grist, then trying to handle it gently to preserve those flavors as best we can. And the sooner your boil is done the sooner you can go have a beer. With a plate of Bolognese. Bonus.
So I take it that you are a fan of shorter boil times based on your above statements?
I will have to do an experiment on one of my recipes, quite possibly a Helles.
Instead of shorter boil times, I boil less vigorously for 60 min. I could use 3.5kw but I opt to reduce to 2kw. The result is a less concentrated wort (lower OG), greater end of boil volume, but also a noticeably lighter color (less Maillard reaction).
I’ve brewed several batches using the same grist and mash schedule. My data consistently showed ~70% of SG at 20 min, ~85% at 40 min, ~92% at 60 min, and ~99% at 80 min. I reached 100% SG at 90 min (because I was done LOL). I guest other systems get different numbers and a simple additional amount of grain or other fermentables can remedy any discrepancy between desired SG in the kettle and resulting mash SG. Of course YMMV.
I go 60 minutes too, very very gentle. Just a bare simmer, enough to give good circulation, lid on except for a mere crack, until the last 15 minutes. Then the lid comes off and the heat goes up some to keep it circulating well.
But the index of thermal loading is really evaporation I think. The difference I’ve seen in wort quality between under 60, gentle, and about 6% evaporation, and any process giving 10% or more evaporation, is night and day. And the impact on beer quality and stability tracks also. Advantages in flavor and aroma, foam, all sorts of things.
So boil length isn’t the real thing, it’s total thermal loading. Think the area under the time/temperature curve on a graph. You do need some time to utilize hops, and you need good circulation to coagulate protein.
I have read that a good “rolling” boil leads to better hop utilization. However, I do not notice a lot of difference with a bit more gentle boil when I am using whole cone hops. The only thing that sometimes concerns me when using pellets (I have switched to them in a lot of cases because of better availability) in a big hop bag is that I want the hops to be constantly moving around in the bag during the boil rather than forming a big tight ball of goo. A bit more aggressive boil gives me piece of mind on that issue as does using a large hop bag. Full disclosure, I do not whirlpool with my brew system. I have a false bottom and extract the wort from the center of the kettle when chilling. i might modify that in the future.
Based on the discussions in this thread and Martin’s article, I have reduced my boil times to 60 minutes from originally 90 and add the bittering addition 10 minutes into the boil. The only beers that get boiled for 120 minutes are my Barleywine, my RIS and my Wee Heavy. Gets me finished with the brew day a bit sooner.
A year or so back, in a conversation about hop spiders with a homebrewing friend, I coined the term, “turbulation,” to describe this, as in, “You need a bag large enough to encourage good turbulation.” He knew exactly what I meant!
I am surprised I haven’t seen any mention of boil temperature in this discussion. A pro brewer once told me that most breweries in our area boil for 90 minutes due to the lower temperature. We are at about 5300 ft elevation and wort boils at about 202 degrees F. The idea is that a longer time is needed to boil off DMS at a lower temperature, but I don’t know if there is any science to back this up. Anyone know?
