Draw off some wort 15 min in to mash in to a smal kettle for all hopping

General Homebrew Discussion
1

The thing a am talking about is drawing off a small amount (5 - 7 liters) of your wort about 15 min into your mash, and start boiling this wort in a separate kettle from the one you will be boiling your main part of your wort when finished mashing.

You then do all your hopping in the small kettle which is boiling while you complete your mashing.
You then do you normal sparging or a no sparge.

You can just make a Raw beer. Add the wort from the small kettle, and just heat the wort to pasteurization temperature, staying below 80°C to prevent SMM conversion to DMS. Chill your wort add yeast and your done.

Or you can give it a short 15 min boil to achieve a hot break and to drive off DMS, add you kettle finings as soon as the kettle starts to boil. After 15 min boil add the wort from the small kettle. Chill add yeast and your done.

I must confess to not have tried these methods, and would appreciate comments, suggestions and feedback .

I have successfully used this method to adjust IBUs in one part of a split batch, but I havn’t done all my hopping just the bittering hop. That is how I came opp with this method (likely somebody has done this or something very similar before me), wracking my brain trying to figure out how to adjust the IBUs in one batch of two from the same wort.

I don’t think one would use much longer using the methods I describe here than the Short & Shoddy  Brülosophy method. Only you can use a normal amount of grains and hops with the methods I describe vs. doing Short & Shoddy brew you will have to (drastically) increase your grain bill and your hop amounts to compensate for the short mash and boil.

2

Is there any particular reason why you would employ such a method? Possibly an outcome other than that of doing a normal mash and boil?

3

Speed? Less energy use?

Seems there would be some sort of hop utilization issues.

One of our wort boil, hop utilization  specialists will surely explain the potential variations possible with such a procedure.
Looking forward to hearing it. That is an interesting method.

4

According to John Palmer’s podcast “High Gravity Brewing”, higher kettle gravity reduces hop utilization and a lower boil volume also decreases hop utilization.  So if you draw off a small amount of basically “first runnings”, you would most likely have to add more hops to achieve the same amount of bitterness that you would get from a full rolling kettle boil.
My opinion is that unless energy savings is what you are looking for, it sounds a bit counter-intuitive to me.

5

It depends a lot on your goals. With raw ale it is a common practice (in some areas) to boil the hops in a small amount of wort or sparge water but that would not be a great or particularly efficient process for hopping a west coast AIPA.

6

When I make raw ale, I just toss hops in the mash. Beersmith is pretty good about calculating the IBU, so I find this method easiest. After fermentation, if I want more hoppiness, I just dry hop.