DMS consistently on score sheets

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rocketman768

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I guess I have a DMS problem.

Seems like whenever the recipe has a significant portion of Pilsner malt, the judges always report cooked corn and DMS. I boil off 2 L/hr. It's all I can do with my stove. Boil for an hour, put in the 25' chiller coils, fit the lid on loosely, and it takes about 35 min to get down to 65F.

What's the most likely thing causing my DMS issues here? I only do half batches (10L), so 2L in an hour is a good 16% boiloff. I can't increase the boil-off rate, because I just can't have a dedicated propane burner. Is leaving on the lid on during cooling doing harm? I really don't want to leave it completely off for sanitary reasons. Should I just boil for 2 hours if I have Pilsner malt?

I should also say, I really don't taste the cooked-corn taste they mention. It's not that I don't detect this flavor though...I have had several homebrews that remind me of wet masa or tortillas.
 
with pilsner, i boil for 90-120, and let the heat rip. that dms has to boil out, and needs a solid boil to do its' thing
 
Two things. If you are going to use Pilsner Malts as a large portion of the malt bill, you will want a vigorous boil for 60 to 90 minutes. If that means buying one of these:

http://www.bayouclassicdepot.com/kab6-kick-a-banjo-burner-plus.htm

kab6-kick-a-banjo-burner-plus.jpg


Then you do what you've got to do to get the product you know you are capable of brewing. Sometimes the problem is the equipment. You may also look at a plate chiller and a pump at some time in the future.

I am not advocating this place to be the best buy for this burner, it was the first place I found in a quick web search.
 
I agree, Pilsner + weak boil + short (for pilsner) boil = DMS.
Either boil harder (say you can't do) or longer. The DMS precursor doesn't care if it is still a 16% boil off all it is seeing is a weak boil compared 4 ltr/hr
 
Or build a heatstick with a 1500W element, that should get you to a nice rolling boil.
 
making me nervous, just brewed with 1/3 pils and had to cut boil short at 40 min because it started raining and my burner was outside. Then took forever to chill cause it wasa 10gal with a 25' immersion.
 
I have not had this problem with pilsner, however, I do 90 minute boils and chill with the lid off. I've only had 1 infected batch out of 70 or so batches but I think that came from an auto-siphon.
 
I would also chill with the lid off. This may sound like a dumb question but you don't boil with the lid on do you because that could be contributing to your end problem.if you do
 
Or build a heatstick with a 1500W element, that should get you to a nice rolling boil.

I had to build a heat stick to get a decent boil on my electric stovetop. Doing so will definitely fix your weak boil issues and help drive off the DMS. The build is pretty quick and easy too, you'll just need to have an outlet (with strong preference for a GFCI) somewhere fairly close to the stove.
 
Yea, at the very least you're going to need to move to a 90 min boil- that's standard operating procedure when working with lots of pils malt.
 
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