Boiling with lid on

Last weekend my buddy and I brewed up our first batch of beer ever. It's a True Brew Red Ale. We just followed the directions even though we got some awesome advice from the guy at the shop(next time we try to get fancy) we wanted to just see what we could do by following the steps. When it came time to boil the extract we put it in stirred and put the pot back on the burner and left the lid on. We had a slight boil over, but then continued to put the lid on and just listen for trouble and lift the lid off and the foam would go down, repeat. We did this for a little over an hour until we thought "is this ever going to foam less? hmmm maybe we should not put the lid on" We took the lid off and no foam at all for 5-10 minutes, so we continued on. Just curious if this was good, bad, or doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things?

Our readings were on the low side, but I don't have the numbers with me now to post.

Not worried, just curious.

 

It is my understanding that you do not want to boil with the lid on because it won't let certain undesirable substances to evaporate out of the wort. I wish I could be more informative but I am pretty new at this too. I am sure someone more knowledgeable than myself will come along and explain with better detail.

 

I always boil with my lid off. Especially when I'm trying to boil down 6.5 gallons to 5 or 5.5. Also, if you start to get a boil over, spraying it with a fine mist of water usually stops it.

 

One of the main things about boiling with a lid on is that you won't have any boil off and it won't drive off any DMS which can give your beer a creamed corn type off flavor. Definitely boil with no lid on!

 

Well I can Relax and I can Don't Worry, but I don't have any homebrews yet. Guess I will just keep ”making” empty bottles for when this batch is done.

 

Doesn't make much difference for an all-extract brew, as the DMS is removed by the concentration process. Once you start using specialty grains, definitely lid off. Might as well do it from the start.

 

RDWHAcraftB
One of the best things for first time brewer to do is empty all that free beer from your 2 cases of new bottles you bought! Hell you might as well start working on the bottles for the 2nd batch too.