I've made some other fermented drinks in the past (mead, wine, cider), but just brewed my first batch of beer last night, using morebeer.com's Dunkelweizen kit and Wyeast 3068. Things seemed to go pretty smoothly, with one exception: I never obtained a full, rolling boil of the wort.
I had 3 gallons of water in the pot, and set an alarm on my probe thermometer at 211 degrees. At that point, it looked like there was a bit of a boil going (bubbles coming up in the center, foam around the edge of the pot, but not really vigorous), so I added the hops (in a hops bag), started a 60-minute timer, and kept the heat on high. Over the hour, though, the wort never reached a really active boil. In fact, by the end of the hour, the temperature had dropped to 210 degrees. At that time, the activity level looked about the same as when I'd added the hops.
I went on my merry way, and chilled, racked, oxygenated, and pitched.
What effect is this likely to have? I'm not thinking my beer is ruined, but I'm wondering if there would be harmful effects at all. However, I'm relaxed, I'm not worried, and I've had a Franziskaner (I don't have any homebrew yet, the condition I'm trying to address).
I had 3 gallons of water in the pot, and set an alarm on my probe thermometer at 211 degrees. At that point, it looked like there was a bit of a boil going (bubbles coming up in the center, foam around the edge of the pot, but not really vigorous), so I added the hops (in a hops bag), started a 60-minute timer, and kept the heat on high. Over the hour, though, the wort never reached a really active boil. In fact, by the end of the hour, the temperature had dropped to 210 degrees. At that time, the activity level looked about the same as when I'd added the hops.
I went on my merry way, and chilled, racked, oxygenated, and pitched.
What effect is this likely to have? I'm not thinking my beer is ruined, but I'm wondering if there would be harmful effects at all. However, I'm relaxed, I'm not worried, and I've had a Franziskaner (I don't have any homebrew yet, the condition I'm trying to address).