How many hot breaks can there be?

I just used my propane burner yesterday for the first time, and all I can say is it is MUCH BETTER than worting in the kitchen.

That being said, I had 3 seperate hot breaks during boil/worting. Do I need to monitor my burner more closely?

Is this possible? Each time I caught it before spillage and froth-over, but am wondering how my Irish Red will turn out.

did you get the boilovers when you added the hops?

Boil-overs aren't necessarily due to hot break. Most of the time, the hot break reduces the amount of foam.

Once you get the wort to boil, reduce your heat to just keep it rolling. Any time you add to the boil, you may have a boil over because you are introducing a means for the oxygen bubbles to form on the surface of the additive. If you keep the heat relatively low, during the boil, it will lessen that problem.

david_42 said:

Boil-overs aren't necessarily due to hot break. Most of the time, the hot break reduces the amount of foam.

Click to expand...

very true, however when adding hops (pellets especially) Ive had the boiling wort shoot up to the top of the kettle quite a few times

ok,

All 3 hot breaks were within the first 10 minutes. See below:

0 minutes: Hot break - reduced heat
1 minute: added 1st hops - next hot break, reduce heat
4-5 minutes: hot break, again reduced heat
8-10 minutes: once again hot break, reduced heat and from this point kept a rolling boil/froth.

Hot break is continually produced when boiling wort. The foaming you experienced is common unless you give the break enough time to coagulate with a good rolling boil before adding your hops. Adding hops will again start a foaming process as Hopfan said. reduce heat until foaming isn't a problem. Unless you have a large kettle you'll have to keep vigil on your boil.

Yup, hot-break is the chunks of stuff that forms in boiling wort, what you're talking about is boilovers and they're part of the brewing apprenticeship. Next time, keep a spray-bottle of water nearby and you should be able to tame the boilovers with heat-control and a few spritzes of water.

can these hot breaks have negative effects besides spilling?

While on the subject, whats the best way to deal with hot breaks? Just lift the pot off the heat for a couple seconds, and turn the heat down?

Spray bottle does work great along with a quick hand at the valve.

As experience grows, you'll learn your burner. A hard rolling boil without boil-over is what I've been told is the best place to be for hop utilization.

"can these hot breaks have negative effects besides spilling?"

"While on the subject, whats the best way to deal with hot breaks? Just lift the pot off the heat for a couple seconds, and turn the heat down?"

Technically, as boo boo pointed out, these events are not "hot breaks," they are boil overs. They are not actually synonymous.

I guess I should have said, whats the best way to prevent a boil over from the hot break? I have to pick my pot off the flame a couple times to get to the rolling boil after the hot break to avoid a boil over. Is there something that im missing? maybe higher heat?

Inside: spray bottle
Outside: Hose with spray attachment

In cooking, there is a disk you can place in your pot for boil-overs. I saw one post about this but I can't vouch for it.

I faintly remember something about putting a copper penny in the boil pot to reduce/prevent a boil over. Anyone else heard about this also?

cpbergie
Junior Member


Join Date: Jan 2007
Posts: 24

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I guess I should have said, whats the best way to prevent a boil over from the hot break? I have to pick my pot off the flame a couple times to get to the rolling boil after the hot break to avoid a boil over. Is there something that im missing? maybe higher heat?

The best way is to moniter the boil and when excessive foaming shows, reduce the heat. You can use an anti foaming agent and you can just get a larger kettle.

I boil in a HUGE pot and don't cover it. Since I started doing that I've never had one. I am now so ridiculously overconfident that I don't even watch the boil sometimes, which is REALLY looking for trouble.

what about adding a penny to the wort??? so you don't need a raging boil the entire time. i brewed with a propane burner last weekend and i had to turn down the heat or i was going to get quite a workout. was that ok? i still had rollover.

Okay, I'm not going to start a new thread, but I thought I'd throw this question in here.

I'm still doing extract with steeping grains, but I'm trying to do the steeping in such a way that I'm kinda getting a partial mash. I put the grain bag in around 150ºF and over the course of 1/2hr I slowly raise the temperature to 175ºF. This seemed to work well this morning, as I seemed to get a low more material, color, flavor, and aroma removed from the grains.

I noticed, though, that I seem to have a lot more debris floating in the pot today than usual. I assume this is the hot break, but I'm not 100% certain how one handles the hot break. Is this just proteins etc. that you want to separate out from the wort, or is it just a temporary phenomenon that has not significance? Perhaps there is a section in How To Brew that explains this. I'm not sure which section to look in for information about hot breaks though.