Technique to try ingredients before you brew with them.

Ingredients
1

Hi All,

Here is a technique I came up with to brew multiple quart batches, at once, to try different ingredients.

http://www.brewgeeks.com/try-ingredients-before-brewday.html

Hope you find it useful!

2

quite interesting

3

Do I understand correctly that you are running your microwave for 60 minutes straight? How are you keeping that from boiling over? I’ve microwaved wort in a mason jar before and once it hits boil I have to stop it every few seconds and it never seems to get beyond that boilover stage.

4

He is using fermcap to prevent boilovers.

5

I’m still surprised he’s getting no boilover even with the fermcap. I guess I am underestimating the power of fermcap.

6

Without Fermcap you do have to watch it and I have had to use the stop/start technique sometimes when I don’t use Fermcap, but when you get past the hot break, it’s fine. When not using fermcap, I keep the volume down to about 200ml.

7

i have been pondering this.  any particular reason to boil for so long if you don’t do 60 minute additions? also i think a similar way of boiling would be just to get a canning kettle and put the beer jars into water that is boiling around them, you could probably control this a bit easier

8

Great question and I agree, in most situations 30 or even 15 minutes is enough. Jars in water will work but it takes a long time to boil. It’s probably better to bring the wort to boil in a microwave and move it to a canning kettle for hop timings. Once you get the jars to boil, you’re right, with a canning kettle you would get better control.