Hello All,
I recently moved apartments and my gas stove in my new apartment is strangely weaker than the electric burner I was using in my old apartment. I am an extract brewer and have been fairly pleased with my results, I try as much as possible to do full volume (6 gallons starting for a 5 gallon recipe) boils. While my new stove is quite weak it does eventually get the wort to 100 C. However there is not that much motion on the surface and I definitely would not say the boil is “rolling.” Is this a problem? Is there a benefit to having a vigorous boil or is the fact that the wort is 100 degrees sufficient? Also if it helps, I am getting a decent hot break.
Thanks!
There needs to be some action, some turn-over of the wort during boil. Much more is not necessary. Some of it is kinetics: hot break, where proteins run into each other and stick, and moving around helps get rid of DMS.
Steve
Is DMS an issue with extract?
Don’t think so.
As much as I hesitate to contradict someone with so much more experience than I… I think it is an issue. It is created wherever heat is applied in each step: mash and boil.
Steve
There have to be DMS precursors (SMM) in order for DMS to be formed. Those are driven off when the extract is produced.
+1, there is a finite supply of SMM. Once it is boiled off, it is gone.
And SMM/DMS is only a worry in pale-colored malts like pilsner malts. With any malt as dark or darker than pale ale malt it’s not a concern.
There’s no reason your gas stove should be that weak though - are you sure the gas pressure is where it is supposed to be? It doesn’t sound to me like the stove is working the way it should.
I used to have problems boiling 4G on my gas stove. I now have an electric stove that boils 6g easily. Different burner powers.
Weird, my electric stoves were always way under powered. But then I started brewing outside long before we had a gas stove, so I guess I can’t directly compare the two.
some of the newer electric stoves are beasts. I have a BIG element on my electric stove, meant for big pasta pot type boils that will make water jump out of the pot. It’s about 14-16 inches across and if you crank it you can feel the heat across the kitchen.
:o
That is a huge element. I never had (and have never seen) an electric burner more than half that size.
Yeah, I have two large burners (same diameter) with a 0-10 knob. On one I saute in the 6-8 range. On the other I must keep it below 3 or scorch everything. I only go higher to boil water.
I’ve wondered about this. When I make a starter with DME and boil it for 10 minutes on the stove, why do I get hot break? I figured that would have been taken care at the maltster as well.
Okay, looking at it once I got home it’s maybe 12-14 inches across but it is still a beast. The other three elements on the stove are LED based I think, looking at them they appear to be clusters of small elements in the traditional spiral pattern but the big one looks like a classic one piece element, just under the surface glass.
You get hot break because there’s proteins there.
Malt extracts still contain the proteins from the grain mash. The extraction process only removes water and volatile compounds (SMM, for instance).
I thought when they made malt extract that they took wort through the boil, so I always figured that the proteins should have coagulated out.
You are correct. They actually produce the extract (liquid) under vacuum evaporation so that the boiling point is a lower temperature, thus no scorching. Dry extract is usually spray dried.
Link to BYO article on extract making.
http://www.byo.com/stories/techniques/article/indices/30-extract-brewing/1106-making-malt-extract