paulrosen

Recipes 

I have a couple questions I hope someone can help me with:
1) Caramelization technique: In some posts, folks recommend firing the burner as soon as you start running the wort into the kettle. It seems to me like this would produce a pretty minimal amount of caramelization. To get something appreciable, it seems like you'd really want to take some portion of the first running and make some candy out of it. Does anyone have any thoughts about what portion of the starting boil volume or first running would be appropriate, and by what percentage to reduce it (or, as a different way of looking at it, to what temperature to take the reduction to get a suitable degree of caramelization)?
2) Fermentability of kettle caramelized goo: If I take some of my first runnings and made it into candy of whatever type is recommended as the answer to the first question, how will that affect the fermentability of the goo? In terms of figuring out a recipe, if I made half of my first runnings into candy and doing so reduced its fermentability by half, then I'd need to start with more grain to get where I wanted to go.

Thanks to anyone who can provide some help on this.

ehedge20

Recipes 

You do not want to boil the wort to a goo as this would not be fermentable at all. Any recipe I have read has said to runoff 1 gallon into the boil kettle and reduce by half before adding the rest of the sparge.

Also if you are sparging slowly then you could start the boil immediately to caramelize some if the wort. Just make sure you sparge a little extra to make up for the evaporation and adjust your hop timing as well.

paulrosen

Recipes 

Thanks, Ehedge.

So I'm still sort of curious about this (and maybe this thread belongs in beer science rather than general techniques).

From some further internet research, it seems that maltose doesn't really start to caramelize until it gets to about 350 degrees. In candy terms, this is the temperature you'd need to reach to make caramel, which I guess isn't all that surprising.

If for "kettle caramelization" to produce caramel from maltose, you'd need to get the temperature to 350, then if you take some portion of the first running and reduce it by half, you might get a little caramel; but it seems like mostly you'd get melanoidins. A reduction by half might get the temperature up a little and change the melanoidin profile, but wouldn't really make caramel. If this is the case, then it seems like boiling the whole batch more vigorously or longer would get you mostly the same result as kettle caramelization.

Does this seem right?

Bsquared

Recipes 

If I remember right Caramelization is a bit of a misnomer here, you are right caramelization occurs at higher temps, but what you are actually doing with this step is more similar to when you make Caramel candies (Heating Butter, cream and Simple Sugars to 245ºF) when you do this you are actually preforming Maillard reactions where the simple sugars and the proteins react to form melanoidins, Just like you said.245 is also high, but these reactions will occur at boil temps, just not a quickly. I tink this is why for some scottish ale recipes call for the addition of melanoidin malts.

RickFinsta

Recipes 

As your wort loses water it will lose both evaporative cooling effect as well as thermal conductivity, added to the lower molecular mobility due to higher surface tension and you have a recipe for localized heating effects, i.e., the bottom of your kettle could easily be higher than boiling temperature by a good margin.

ehedge20

Recipes 

Exactly.

weirdboy

Recipes 

I removed 1 gallon to a separate pot and boil it down to about a quart. I have seen others boil it down even less, like a pint.

I personally did not experience any issues whatsoever with attenuation. Went from 1.111 to 1.024 doing that, 78% apparent attenuation, using Notty. Of course, your mash profile will make a big difference.