No hot break

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McCall St. Brewer

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I have done about 4 or 5 full boil batches now and I have yet to experience any kind of a visible hot break. I see pictures here where people seem to have huge gobs of white stuff precipitating out of their wort and I have had nothing even close to that happen. I have seen what appears to be a bit of a cold break after I get my wort cooled with the wort chiller.

Why do you think this is not happening? Not boiling vigorously enough? Not boiling long enough?

Is this something to be concerned about?
 
Basically your wort should start to show some signs of coagulation. This may just be it going cloudy. It will coagulate more with the could break, it'll will then settle out in the fermenter or be filtered out by your hops and strainer.
 
Extract or AG? Most of the break material is removed during the manufacture of malt extract. For AG, I get a MUCH greater hot break now that I can boil aggressively with the Banjo. I never saw jack for break material when I was trying to boil on the stovetop and with the electric fryer.
 
So do I. I remember doing extract and the wort was super clean (excep for hop trub).

I have my inside fitting on a 12.50 gallon pot where I lose about 2.30 gallons of wort due to hot break. On almost all brews, I have only about 1/4" of clear wort above the insude (upward looking elbow) fitting.

Another point: the colder you get the wort, the faster the cold break will fall out of suspension.
 
Extract will produce nearly no hot break material.

I do all grain on an electric stove, boiling 6.5 gallons, and I see this happen -

Coagulation:
5923-100_0656.JPG


Immediately before the break:
5923-100_0657.JPG


And immediately after:
5923-100_0658.JPG
 
I suppose it's possible that I'm not boiling vigorously or long enough. The kettle that came with my turkey fryer is just barely big enough to get 6 gallons in. I have to really watch the temp to keep it from boiling over.

I do get a fair amount of precipitate when it put the chiller in.

Oh-- I am doing AG batches.
 
Boy, I don't get it. I always get a hot break- and then I start my hops additions. I do a vigorous boil, and it comes to almost boiling over and then after the hot break I have no worries of boilover at all. It's like cooking spaghetti- huge big head and then after the hot break, nada. Then I start my timer and my hops additions.

I'd guess you just don't have a vigorous boil if you're watching the pot so close to keep it from boiling over. My turkey fryer pot is 30 quarts, which makes me nervous- but so far, so good.
 
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