A Good Boil Time for Wort

[mr_stout]

Is it necessary to boil wort for an full hour? I saw a beer recipe that said to boil for only 30 minutes. What are your opinions?

 

[jalc6927]

The jury is out on this subject. Many variables

Boil for an hour until you know that you can boil for less time.

Hop additions and other things come into play when your boil time deviates from the established norm.

Most recipes are based on 60 or 90 minute boils

Personally I've made changes to the anecdotal rules except this one

 

[Jtk78]

I've cut it down to 40-45 minutes for one of my recipes. First hop addition only boils 20 minutes, and there was no pilsner malt. Still wanted to make sure I drove off any DMS so I went the time noted. All my other recipes have been at least a 60 minute boil, some a little longer.

 

[SoCal-Doug]

If you ask 5 people, you will get 12 answers

First of all, you need sufficient boiling time for hop isomerization for the levels of bittering and aroma that you desire. In other words... get the oils and acids out of the hops and infused into your wort.

Next, you want enough boil time to get rid of "DMS". SMM (S-Methyl Methionine) is in all malts and will create DMS (Dimethyl Sulfide) any time a malt is heated (both by mashing and boiling). DMS is very volatile (meaning kinda wimpy and will easily go away) and when vaporized by boiling gets out of our wort. There are differing opinions how long, but most go with "at 40 minutes, 50% of the DMS is gone and at 90 minutes of boil, 80% of the DMS has departed". DMS kinda gives off a creamed corn smell. A heavy stout or skanky IPA wont be an issue, but a pale lager with lots of pilsner malt may smell/taste a bit funny with a short boil time.

And finally, some malts are more prone to darkening by boiling. If you don't mind an extra SRM or two, boiling 60 or 90 minutes doesn't hurt at all.

In a hurry, boil less but know what effects it may have. Have the time, grab a home brew and keep on boiling

 

[chris_the_goat]

Extract? Definitely not necessary, except for hop related reasons. If you want bittering with no flavor you need to boil longer (45 minutes or so).

All grain? Probably, I have done a half hour boil before, but need to do more batches like this to be confident. My hypothesis is that it is fine for beer that will be drank quickly. I feel like you probably drive off more impurities/clarify the wort better with a longer boil. This might not matter in a pale ale, but I think it could affect a barleywine. Or it might not.

 

[Cevan65]

On my 7th beer, my first hop addition was at 10 so I boiled for 45 min, as opposed to 60 in the prior batches. We'll see how it turns out.

 

[Miraculix]

I don't boil at all and do a boiled hop tea on the side. Works pretty well so far.

 

[jalc6927]

Also if you grind the malts finer and use a brew bag, you can cut boil time to 30 minutes, just have to adjust hop additions and any extras

 

[SoCal-Doug]

Also if you grind the malts finer and use a brew bag, you can cut boil time to 30 minutes

Kiss my what?

Please do explain. I'm a 3-Vessel brewer but you triggered my curiosity as to the correlation of grind and bag vs SMM->DMS, proteins, etc.

 

[Nebraskan]

I can cook a roast in my Instant Pot pressure cooker for 45 minutes and it's tender. Using same ingredients, but in the oven at a 3-4 hour cooking time at 350, it's just as tender, maybe more, but tastes a whole lot better. There is something about boiling the wort for an extended time, like cooking, it marries flavors and brings out certain flavors you don't get quite the same with less cooking. There is a name for this, Maillard Reaction, but I like to think it is a lot like the cooking of food to marry flavors rather than just browning of the sugars. You'd have to look up that word, but basically cooking is an important step.

 

[SoCal-Doug]

The Maillard reaction definitely effects more than color. It effects flavors and aromas. Much less in beer than in breads, meats and other foods, but it still changes things.

In darker brews, a short or no boil time wont be as detectable as pale's or brews with heavy doses of pilsner malt. If you dig DMS or your senses don't pick it up, skip the boil all together. You've probably drank too many of those hipster fad over-hopped brews and killed your smell and taste

 

[Miraculix]

The Maillard reaction definitely effects more than color. It effects flavors and aromas. Much less in beer than in breads, meats and other foods, but it still changes things.

In darker brews, a short or no boil time wont be as detectable as pale's or brews with heavy doses of pilsner malt. If you dig DMS or your senses don't pick it up, skip the boil all together. You've probably drank too many of those hipster fad over-hopped brews and killed your smell and taste

I was initially also worrying about dms but Dms only starts to appear when the Wort is heated above 80 degrees. Google raw ale dms to get more information on the how and why.

The Dms problem is caused by boiling and solved then by continuing boiling it, no boiling, no dms.

Just brewed a raw Pilsener with 95% Pilsener malt, I can confirm from that, no dms detectable.

 

[RM-MN]

Kiss my what?

Please do explain. I'm a 3-Vessel brewer but you triggered my curiosity as to the correlation of grind and bag vs SMM->DMS, proteins, etc.

The fine grind and bag really are most applicable in the mash. With the really fine grind that I get with my Corona mill I fine that I can cut the mash to 30 minutes, have full conversion, efficiency over 80%, and full flavor. I also do a 30 minute boil. The fact that I used a bag doesn't matter for that, just the amount of hops so I get the proper bittering with that shorter boil. I've read that 90% of the bittering happens in the first 30 minutes of boiling and that seems to hold for me. With that combination, I just cut an hour off my brew day.

 

[myndflyte]

In extract, you definitely don't have to boil for an hour. Just google 15 min boil beer recipes and you'll see these have been around for a while. As for all grain, I think you want to go at least 45 min.

 

[jalc6927]

The brew bag eliminates the dreaded "stuck sparge" when grain is mill finer.

The whole DMS, Tannins, etc is really overplayed at the 5-10 gallon brewing

Most people can't distinguish them at all, it's all about getting a good consistent process that works,

Using a brew bag in your Mash tun is one of those methods that solves all kinds of possible problems

For $22 it's a steal