Please excuse my ignorance and don't laugh but

[bernardsmith]

What is the reason for boiling the wort? If I have extracted the sugars by mashing grains or if I have a can of LME or DME what is the reason or reasons for boiling the wort for 60 - 90 minutes? Presumably I can boil hops in water to isomerize their acids. Is the issue that I boil the wort to enable proteins to coagulate and drop out of the liquid? Is there no enzyme that could be added that would perform that action? Is the issue by boiling I enable certain DMS precursors to boil off but if I don't heat the wort after the sugars have been extracted are those precursors produced? Is the issue to simply pasteurize the wort? Then why at such a high temperature and for so long? Why wouldn't UV pasteurization be at least as effective? What is the deal with boiling five or six gallons (about 50 plus pounds ) of sticky liquid? I'm really very curious

 

[BargainFittings]

Generally any of the many reactions can be done in a different way but the easiest way is to boil the wort.

You reduce your liquid content and strengthen the wort, bitter and flavor the wort, coagulate the proteins and sanitize all at the same time.

If there was a better, cheaper, easier way the big brewers would definitely be doing it to save money / time.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

Yes. To all of your examples simultaneously. And because gas/electric is cheaper than all the other stuff.

 

[bernardsmith]

Yes. To all of your examples simultaneously. And because gas/electric is cheaper than all the other stuff.

Dollar-wise they may be cheaper but boiling takes time and time is more expensive than anything else. And human beings are not in fact built to multi-task effectively so watching my kettle boil means that I cannot do anything else

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

And human beings are not in fact built to multi-task effectively so watching my kettle boil means that I cannot do anything else

I am actually built to muti-task quite effectively. In fact, I am biologically wired for it. I can breath, metabolize, cause muscles to function, fart, disseminate visual and audible cues all without so much as a thought.

Stop watching the kettle boil. Either get a larger kettle to handle to foam or use kettle aids.

 

[gingerdawg]

Dollar-wise they may be cheaper but boiling takes time and time is more expensive than anything else. And human beings are not in fact built to multi-task effectively so watching my kettle boil means that I cannot do anything else

Erm, That's the time you take to drink the previous batch.....

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

Erm, That's the time you take to drink the previous batch.....

Exactly. While the wort boils is the time you clean out the MLT, heat the cleaning solution in the HLT, rinse and stowe everything used for mashing, etc..

 

[alphaomega]

You dont have to boil the wort, you could make a berliner weisse.

 

[kh54s10]

Generally any of the many reactions can be done in a different way but the easiest way is to boil the wort.

You reduce your liquid content and strengthen the wort, bitter and flavor the wort, coagulate the proteins and sanitize all at the same time.

If there was a better, cheaper, easier way the big brewers would definitely be doing it to save money / time.

This ^^^

If there was a less expensive, easier, faster, better way, it would be standard practice. If you can work a way to do it given these criteria, without boiling, you could become rich!

 

[peterj]

It is very necessary for all of those things you mentioned. Also, time is not more expensive than anything else. An hour of my time is worth far less than buying a UV pasteurization system (plus all of the other various things I would have to do to the wort to simulate a boil). An average person makes about $50,000/yr, so their time is worth about $24/hr. The government has said that the minimum legal value that businesses can place on an hour of their employees time is $7.25. But since I brew on my off time and there is nothing I would be doing instead that would be making me any money, the opportunity cost for that hour of my life is basically $0.

As far as boiling hops in water to isomerize them, you would have to boil them for an hour anyway to fully isomerize them. Plus that wouldn't even work because the highest possible concentration of isomerized alpha acids that can be dissolved in a solution is equal to about 80-100 IBUs. So if you had 100 IBUs in a gallon of water and mixed that with 4 gallons of wort, you would only be able to have a maximum of 16-20 IBUs in the beer.

Boiling will concentrate the wort, sanitize the wort, isomerize alpha acids, extract flavor and aroma from hops, precipitate unwanted proteins, contribute minor flavor through maillard reactions, reduce the pH of the wort which helps the yeast, drive off DMS, and probably some other things that I'm forgetting about. There isn't any other feasible way to get all of those things done in an hour that's more efficient than boiling.

All that said, there are some beers that actually don't need to be boiled. There are many no boil Berlinerweisse recipes out there. It works for that beer because it's a low gravity sour beer with little to no hops.

 

[frozennorth]

If you do not have an hour in life that you can spare, why get into a hobby? IMHO the process is part of the love of the hobby. Well, that and great tasting beer.

 

[Xpertskir]

Because that's how beer is made

 

[evrose]

...so watching my kettle boil means that I cannot do anything else

I can't tell if you're serious, or your just being argumentative, but this is just silly.

Set an alarm. Walk away from the boil. Return when alarm goes off.

I set the boil going and spend the hour playing with my daughter. Hop additions get separate alarms where I divert for 10 seconds to toss a pre-measured hop addition in to the boil.

Bam. Multi-tasking.

 

[bernardsmith]

I am being serious. You must have a huge boiler. I have a small kitchen with an electric stove and my stock pot holds 3 gallons, so there is a real risk of a boil-over. You seem to have solved the problem of boil-overs.

 

[CB_in_Tokyo]

If you are brewing with prehopped extracts, then boiling is not technically required.

Medieval period "Ales" were made without boiling the runnings. They had a very short shelf life as they contained a lot of organisms, but were more nutritional as they had a higher protein content.

Modern process includes boiling for a variety of reasons. sanitation, hop oil isomerization, driving off DMS and reducing protein content through the hot and cold breaks.

If you just want to make beer as quickly as possible, and are not concerned with the quality of the final product (as long as you get something that works for you) then by going the prehopped extract route, you can skip the boil. An all grain brew day for me takes typically 6 hours, but I enjoy the process, and the learning.

This guy

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAJKWCdaPq4[/ame]

has a brew day of under an hour, and I think he even boils with prehopped extract briefly. it is all about what you want to accomplish with your brewing.

 

[BigPerm]

I am being serious. You must have a huge boiler. I have a small kitchen with an electric stove and my stock pot holds 3 gallons, so there is a real risk of a boil-over. You seem to have solved the problem of boil-overs.

I will admit that I thought your original post was a hoax bc you clearly know all the reasons TO boil, so now I understand your problem. I'll assume you're an extract brewer, so I'll tailor my answer that way. Yes, doing extract beers in a small pot, ESPECIALLY on electric, is a pain in the ass. Here are some suggestions for you.

1.) Add your extract at the end of the boil. Steep your specialty grains as recommended and boil the hops in this liquid. You do want to at least bring it back to a boil to make sure everything is dissolved. You can shut off the heat and hold for 10 minutes before chilling to ensure everything is sanitized. This minimizes hands on time and reduces the potential for boil-over, not to mention scorching from god-awful electric burners.

2.) If boil time is a big deal, you can always add double your bittering hop volume and boil for only 30 minutes. Caveats: more hops = more $$, utilization is not necessarily linear, you may get flavor contributions for the shorter boil. Add flavor/aroma hops at same schedule as your recipe, just boil more bittering hops for shorter time.

Hope you find a solution that works with your system/lifestyle. And for god's sake, don't buy a UV sterilizer!

 

[jbaysurfer]

What is the reason for boiling the wort? If I have extracted the sugars by mashing grains or if I have a can of LME or DME what is the reason or reasons for boiling the wort for 60 - 90 minutes? Presumably I can boil hops in water to isomerize their acids. Is the issue that I boil the wort to enable proteins to coagulate and drop out of the liquid? Is there no enzyme that could be added that would perform that action? Is the issue by boiling I enable certain DMS precursors to boil off but if I don't heat the wort after the sugars have been extracted are those precursors produced? Is the issue to simply pasteurize the wort? Then why at such a high temperature and for so long? Why wouldn't UV pasteurization be at least as effective? What is the deal with boiling five or six gallons (about 50 plus pounds ) of sticky liquid? I'm really very curious

I'm really very serious. It seems you want to mount a challenge to the notion of boiling. How about you just give it a try and see how it goes? Good luck with that UV pasteurization thing. I hope you like skunks.

 

[jbaysurfer]

I am being serious. You must have a huge boiler. I have a small kitchen with an electric stove and my stock pot holds 3 gallons, so there is a real risk of a boil-over. You seem to have solved the problem of boil-overs.

Good luck finding that enzyme that precipitates the proteins out of your wort, but I do know where you can find some of this:
http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/...yXSZqi4jzbOWhvzLny8JGKBymGVEpHDtZOxoCimPw_wcB