Is the boiling point of wort above 212F?

When I boil water at 212F it is very noticeable. The water has bubbles continuously rising to the top all over. However, with wort I am at 212F and there is no "rolling" boil and no bubbles rising to the top. The wort basically has a bubbly film on top but it doesn't appear to be moving inside.

Is the boil temp of wort higher than that of plain water?

Well wort is basically sugar water, and if you remember from chemistry Adding one mole of sugar to one mole of water raises the boiling point from 100C to 100.52C. So yes wort does boil at a different temperature than plain water.

What Chris said.
It's the same principal antifreeze works on, as well as throwing salt on your ice covered driveway. It raises the melting point/boiling point of whatever substance you're working with.

You may want to check your thermometer calibration too however...in my experience, when my wort is at 212F, it is definitely a lot more active than the bubbly film you're describing.

elevation plays a role as well...

The boiling point of water is 212 it and will never get any hotter than that simple because it vaporizes into "steam".

Even with the sugary water, if you let the wort boil all day long, all the water will evaporate and all that would left would be the extract and sugars,

I know what you are talking about..you have to get more heat under it for that rolling boil. Try putting a lid on until the heat builds up. Once I had to separate the wort into 2 kettles to get to that point.

brewd00d said:

The boiling point of water is 212 it and will never get any hotter than that simple because it vaporizes into "steam".

Even with the sugary water, if you let the wort boil all day long, all the water will evaporate and all that would left would be the extract and sugars,

Click to expand...

The boiling point of any liquid raises whenever anything is dissolved in it.

You could do some calculations with the simplification that the only thing changing the density is sucrose. I would guess that the change is not much, but there will be a change. I would work out the formulas, but damn I'm lazy.

brewd00d said:

The boiling point of water is 212 it and will never get any hotter than that simple because it vaporizes into "steam".

Click to expand...

But we're not boiling water, we're boiling wort. I doubt it gets that much higher than 212 unless it's a full boil with an OG of well over 1.1, but the increased density will certainly raise the boiling temp, and moreso at lower elevations.