Brew Smith with low "boil" temp for automated brewing

Hello all.

I am working on an automated brewery using keggles.

I read the zymatic pico brew manual for inspiration and discovered that they "boil" at 207 F for a longer time.

Since my ultimate goal is to be able to run unattended during boil, I was considering lowering the temperature to reduce the chances of boil over.

Is there a way to have brew smith compensate for lower boil temps?

Well, boiling is boiling. It doesn't matter what the temperature is, if something is boiling it's boiling. Where I live, wort boils at about 209 degrees. Wort would never boil at 207. It might simmer, but it won't boil.

So that's where this gets trickey- where you live, wort may boil at 210F. So, you could boil over before me. http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/boiling-points-water-altitude-d_1344.html

I've never used a pico brew, but I'm guessing that they are hopeful that wort would boil too hard for too many people at 207? Although, if someone lives in the mountains, the wort would boil at maybe 198, so that's a problem.

I would guess that picobrew is trying to be "safe" with major boilovers, but someone in colorado would have alot more trouble than I would with that.

I guess the thing to do is to figure out what temperature you need for a boil and try to get there without risking boil overs, if you can't watch the pot. After the hot break, there is almost no risk of boiling over, but from the end of the sparge until the hot break, I really have to watch carefully. After the hotbreak, I wander away all the time.

I think that the pico does not actually achieve boil. I was curious how you would change your brew schedule to compensate.

Ramdough said:

I think that the pico does not actually achieve boil. I was curious how you would change your brew schedule to compensate.

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I'm not sure there is a good formula for the hops oils isomerization percentage with less than boiling. But the formulas we have for boiling wort and IBUs isn't all that great either, so I would say it would make minimal difference for the most part.