Hi all,
Been brewing beer for a while and have started doing something in the last couple years after hearing a Jamil podcast. It was all about thermal load and shelf stability. I used to just boil the crap out of the beer, full flame, sounded like a jet engine running while I did it. I have a keggle and brew pretty much just 5 gallon batches. I'd have boil overs like crazy if I wasn't paying attention.
Fast forward a few years and I hear Jamil talking about thermal load and not cranking up the heat so that your beer lasts more than a few months. Something about denaturing proteins and whatnot. At the time, I was sipping on what was the best stout I had made to date and reflecting on how it was just a year old and didn't quite taste as good as it was when first bottled and within the first six months. I was intrigued and was ramping up to brew up another variation on that stout but this time using a used barrel to age it. I decided to go low and slow on the boil and see how it did. I did and the boil time was just under 2 hours. Fermented it. Aged it in the barrel, pulled it when it tasted just right, bottled 1/2, kegged the other half. It was delicious.
Fast forward to last night. I pull one of those beers out that has been sitting inside the house, in the dark, in my aging cellar (it's really a closet, but it makes me feel fancy). Chill it ever so slightly, crack it open, and OMG, it's even better than I remember. It was brewed last year in April.
So basically, for the last year or so, I stopped worrying about boil time and focused more on hitting a gravity point for my intended style. I use Beersmith 2 for all my calculations and pretty much hit my targets 100% of the time, which is easy when you boil for gravity!! I've used this method for everything from Munich helles to schwarzbier to DIPA to stouts to everything I have brewed in the last year and a half. It's working pretty good for me but I was just wondering how many more people just might be doing this. Are there any disadvantages? I know I could potentially over caramelize the wort or scorch it, but when cleaning up, other than when I brew a crazy dark heavy beer, I am not seeing anything like that on the kettle.
I don't enter my beer in competitions so it hasn't been formally judged and I am simply a guy who likes to brew beer just to do it. Lately I've picked up beers that are a quintessential examples of the beer I am brewing and have buddies do blind taste tests, extremely unscientific methods being employed, but I just want to see how they stack up and if they taste right. They do and in most cases I get the nod over the commercial example, I suspect more due to freshness since I really like the German beers and make those more than anything else really, so my example beers could be worn out from the journey, so to speak.
Any feedback is appreciated! Thanks!
Been brewing beer for a while and have started doing something in the last couple years after hearing a Jamil podcast. It was all about thermal load and shelf stability. I used to just boil the crap out of the beer, full flame, sounded like a jet engine running while I did it. I have a keggle and brew pretty much just 5 gallon batches. I'd have boil overs like crazy if I wasn't paying attention.
Fast forward a few years and I hear Jamil talking about thermal load and not cranking up the heat so that your beer lasts more than a few months. Something about denaturing proteins and whatnot. At the time, I was sipping on what was the best stout I had made to date and reflecting on how it was just a year old and didn't quite taste as good as it was when first bottled and within the first six months. I was intrigued and was ramping up to brew up another variation on that stout but this time using a used barrel to age it. I decided to go low and slow on the boil and see how it did. I did and the boil time was just under 2 hours. Fermented it. Aged it in the barrel, pulled it when it tasted just right, bottled 1/2, kegged the other half. It was delicious.
Fast forward to last night. I pull one of those beers out that has been sitting inside the house, in the dark, in my aging cellar (it's really a closet, but it makes me feel fancy). Chill it ever so slightly, crack it open, and OMG, it's even better than I remember. It was brewed last year in April.
So basically, for the last year or so, I stopped worrying about boil time and focused more on hitting a gravity point for my intended style. I use Beersmith 2 for all my calculations and pretty much hit my targets 100% of the time, which is easy when you boil for gravity!! I've used this method for everything from Munich helles to schwarzbier to DIPA to stouts to everything I have brewed in the last year and a half. It's working pretty good for me but I was just wondering how many more people just might be doing this. Are there any disadvantages? I know I could potentially over caramelize the wort or scorch it, but when cleaning up, other than when I brew a crazy dark heavy beer, I am not seeing anything like that on the kettle.
I don't enter my beer in competitions so it hasn't been formally judged and I am simply a guy who likes to brew beer just to do it. Lately I've picked up beers that are a quintessential examples of the beer I am brewing and have buddies do blind taste tests, extremely unscientific methods being employed, but I just want to see how they stack up and if they taste right. They do and in most cases I get the nod over the commercial example, I suspect more due to freshness since I really like the German beers and make those more than anything else really, so my example beers could be worn out from the journey, so to speak.
Any feedback is appreciated! Thanks!
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