Boil over, foamy boil question.

I E-brewed, the AG Centennial Blonde recipe posted elsewhere on HBT. I used 5 gal of bottled water just because it needed to be used and added 3.5 more gal. of moderately hard well water. I ended up with about 8.2 gal. after mash out. I expected boil over with 8 gal in an 11 gal. pot and stood ready with a mist bottle. I never got the typical hot break where the foam quits and a rolling boil continues. I added Fermcap which only helped some. Even after several gallons boiled off, it still was near boil over. Attached is a pic of the boil in process and a pic with the heater turned off for just a few seconds to give you an idea of the level change. This is near the end of the 90min. boil and with Fermcap. Nothing changed for better or worse with hop additions or with irish moss addition. Any thoughts as to why the foamy boil? Could it be the recipe? Normal?

Constant for the duration of the boil:




Heat turned off:

Nothing in that recipe looks off to do this to the boil. have you used this brewing set up before ? have you changed or added anything new to your brewhouse or to your technique? well here is my guess at what happened you say this is a electric brew set up correct ? well water boils at 212 degrees and flashes to steam at 213 degrees my guess is that at the surface it was reaching that steaming point but due to the sugars and retention and viscosity of wort it created mini bubbles and foam. I suppose the best example that leads me to this conclusion is when you have a cappuccino and you steam the milk and it creates all those tiny bubbles and froth. This is just a guess though I could be way off.

Aschecte said:

well here is my guess at what happened you say this is a electric brew set up correct ? well water boils at 212 degrees and flashes to steam at 213 degrees my guess is that at the surface it was reaching that steaming point but due to the sugars and retention and viscosity of wort it created mini bubbles and foam. This is just a guess though I could be way off.

Click to expand...

You are correct. Too much heat. Brewed again today and I put the PID in manual mode for the boil and dropped to 50% power. I had a nice boil & hot break with a more typical boil off rate around 1 gph.