Boil Times

[Morrey]

I do a 60 minute boil following kettle souring a 50/50 2 row to wheat base. During this boil I am killing off lacto, hopping for bittering, making sure I drive off DMS plus I am very grooved into boil losses to arrive at my volume amounts into fermenter. This also helps me nail down my post boil OG.

A friend asked for my recipe and questioned why I did a 60 minute boil, so I explained my reasons as listed above. There is a "no boil" kettle sour recipe floating around that uses extract. That may have introduced some concerns or questions, but extract at least is not typically concerned with DMS.

Has anyone thought of reduced boil times...or no boil times using an all grain recipe? This may be an old dog-new trick process for me, but as I stated above, I'd be hesitant to change the 60 minute boil that works for me.

Thoughts?

 

[RM-MN]

I do BIAB all grain and with my very finely milled grains I do a 30 minute mash (sometimes only 20 if I'm in a hurry) and a 30 minute boil. I've never detected DMS in my beers but I have to adjust the amount of hops to account for the shorter boil and reduce the water since I don't boild off as much. Between those two I cut an hour out of my brew day. I do think you would need at least some boil time to isomerize the hop oils for bittering so a no boil recipe would need something to get bitterness back into your wort.

 

[Sadu]

I brewed a porter using 30 min mash and 30 min boil. Tasted great, but efficiency was the worst I have ever got (62% where I normally get 80%ish). For this reason I wouldn't do the short mash again but the 30 min boil seemed to be fine if you don't need a lot of bittering hops. Interestingly, this short boil version came out brown rather than black. My normal version of this recipe is very much black.

 

[RM-MN]

I brewed a porter using 30 min mash and 30 min boil. Tasted great, but efficiency was the worst I have ever got (62% where I normally get 80%ish). For this reason I wouldn't do the short mash again but the 30 min boil seemed to be fine if you don't need a lot of bittering hops. Interestingly, this short boil version came out brown rather than black. My normal version of this recipe is very much black.

A short mash demands a very finely milled grain. Unless you milled it yourself you will not get great efficiency with the short mash. I've been exceeding 85% with mine.:rockin:

 

[drez77]

I do BIAB all grain and with my very finely milled grains I do a 30 minute mash (sometimes only 20 if I'm in a hurry) and a 30 minute boil. I've never detected DMS in my beers but I have to adjust the amount of hops to account for the shorter boil and reduce the water since I don't boild off as much. Between those two I cut an hour out of my brew day. I do think you would need at least some boil time to isomerize the hop oils for bittering so a no boil recipe would need something to get bitterness back into your wort.

I have been doing 30 minute boils now for just over a year with no issues. Many of those beers were lagers that had over 90% pils and I have not noticed any DMS. I have turned many on to the 30 minute boil and all have reported great success with it.

 

[Morrey]

Good replies and gives me some piece of mind to move toward a 30 minute boil especially with a very light beer like this Gose being discussed. I also note this theory can apply even to darker beers if all things are considered.

To shift from 60 to 30 minute boils:

*I'd need to adjust the amount of hops added at 30 to give me 8 IBU's, predicting slightly more hops to meet the IBU goal. (BeerSmith helps here)

*Cut my volume losses due to evaporation down appx in half. I am losing 1.25G per hour now, so divide in half and adjust full strike volume down by .625G as an example for a 5.5G batch.

*I don't see the word DMS screaming out by anyone which had been a concern of mine. I had considered 60 min boils necessary to eliminate DMS, but this doesn't seem to be a real issue.

THANKS!!!!!

 

[aeviaanah]

Our last 3-4 batches have been 30min boil with no DMS detected.

 

[Morrey]

I brewed a porter using 30 min mash and 30 min boil. Tasted great, but efficiency was the worst I have ever got (62% where I normally get 80%ish). For this reason I wouldn't do the short mash again but the 30 min boil seemed to be fine if you don't need a lot of bittering hops. Interestingly, this short boil version came out brown rather than black. My normal version of this recipe is very much black.

Do you attribute this lighter brownish color to a lower boil off volume and your wort is not quite as concentrated? Or less flavor/color extraction due to short mashing?

If your wort is not as concentrated due to a lower boil off, is your efficiency number suffering due to the lower boil off....or do you attribute it to the short mash time? Reason I ask is I just read an article that claims starch to sugar conversion occurs in just a few short minutes after mash in. This article supports a shorter mash time that I have been using typically 60 min.

I am mashing 60, boiling 60 and have averaged 81.06% for my last 6 or 7 batches. I am hesitant to change anything but you guys are making a strong case here at least for a shorter boil.

 

[RM-MN]

I have been doing 30 minute boils now for just over a year with no issues. Many of those beers were lagers that had over 90% pils and I have not noticed any DMS. I have turned many on to the 30 minute boil and all have reported great success with it.

I just did 2 quick searchs on Google for SMM and DMS and what I found was quite different from my experience. Here's what I found different.

1. I don't do a vigorous boil. I rarely boil off even half a gallon. That should leave DMS in my wort.
2. I do a short boil, not the 60 to 90 minutes that are supposed to drive it off.
3. Chilling slowly is supposed to continue to create DMS from the breakdown of SMM when the temp is over 140 but I sometimes do a no-chill with the lid on the vessel.
4. A warmer ferment is more vigorous and will drive off the DMS, but I try to keep my ferments cool so they progress slowly. I've fermented with Nottingham in the upper 50's, not a vigorous ferment at all.
5. It can be driven off by bubbling CO2 in the keg, but I bottle.
6. DMS can be detected in low levels, like 10 to 150 parts per billion but I've never noticed it in my beers. Perhaps I simply cannot detect it but then neither can the people I have given my beers to.

I'm hoping to find where I have seen it written that the modern malts have little SMM but I don't know quite where to look.

 

[RM-MN]

Do you attribute this lighter brownish color to a lower boil off volume and your wort is not quite as concentrated? Or less flavor/color extraction due to short mashing?

If your wort is not as concentrated due to a lower boil off, is your efficiency number suffering due to the lower boil off....or do you attribute it to the short mash time? Reason I ask is I just read an article that claims starch to sugar conversion occurs in just a few short minutes after mash in. This article supports a shorter mash time that I have been using typically 60 min.

I am mashing 60, boiling 60 and have averaged 81.06% for my last 6 or 7 batches. I am hesitant to change anything but you guys are making a strong case here at least for a shorter boil.

I'm no expert on this but I wonder if the lighter color was due to the lessened Maillard reactions that the boil causes. I've tried very short mashes with really finely milled grain and while I can get conversion very quickly (less than 5 minutes) but it takes longer to extract the color and flavor from the malt. A beer made with a 10 minute mash is pretty flavorless. At 20 minutes the color and flavor were there but I do not recommend a mash of less than 30 minutes and even then with the caveat that your grains must be milled very fine.

 

[PaulSh]

I have found that less boil time is not always good. I think anything below 30 mins is too little.

 

[Sadu]

Do you attribute this lighter brownish color to a lower boil off volume and your wort is not quite as concentrated? Or less flavor/color extraction due to short mashing?

If your wort is not as concentrated due to a lower boil off, is your efficiency number suffering due to the lower boil off....or do you attribute it to the short mash time? Reason I ask is I just read an article that claims starch to sugar conversion occurs in just a few short minutes after mash in. This article supports a shorter mash time that I have been using typically 60 min.

I haven't given it much thought to be honest. The original was 1.051 and black. The short boil we over boiled and ended up with less efficiency, less volume, higher 1.054 gravity. So despite the higher gravity there was less colour. The recipes weren't identical, I adjusted the grain and water amounts for the shorter mash and boil. I have a good pipeline and haven't got to tapping this batch properly yet, but I'll do a side by side tasting and get some pics. My theory is either less maillard reactions in the short boil, or the short mash not extracting all the colour from the grains.
I don't have my notes handy but I crushed the grains myself and it should have been a reasonable crush, better than the HBS default. I find it interesting that others are getting good efficiency from short mashes, might be worth revisiting this.

 

[RM-MN]

I haven't given it much thought to be honest. The original was 1.051 and black. The short boil we over boiled and ended up with less efficiency, less volume, higher 1.054 gravity. So despite the higher gravity there was less colour. The recipes weren't identical, I adjusted the grain and water amounts for the shorter mash and boil. I have a good pipeline and haven't got to tapping this batch properly yet, but I'll do a side by side tasting and get some pics. My theory is either less maillard reactions in the short boil, or the short mash not extracting all the colour from the grains.
I don't have my notes handy but I crushed the grains myself and it should have been a reasonable crush, better than the HBS default. I find it interesting that others are getting good efficiency from short mashes, might be worth revisiting this.

When I experimented with very short mash times I found the the flavor didn't get extracted nearly as quickly as the conversion so I ended up with beer with the normal amount of alcohol but little flavor. I was doing a blond ale so there was little color to be extracted. Since you reported a poor efficiency with your short mash, indicating that you probably didn't have the grain milled fine enough to get full conversion, it is likely that you also didn't get all the color and flavor extracted either.

 

[crane]

Good replies and gives me some piece of mind to move toward a 30 minute boil especially with a very light beer like this Gose being discussed. I also note this theory can apply even to darker beers if all things are considered.

To shift from 60 to 30 minute boils:

*I'd need to adjust the amount of hops added at 30 to give me 8 IBU's, predicting slightly more hops to meet the IBU goal. (BeerSmith helps here)

*Cut my volume losses due to evaporation down appx in half. I am losing 1.25G per hour now, so divide in half and adjust full strike volume down by .625G as an example for a 5.5G batch.

*I don't see the word DMS screaming out by anyone which had been a concern of mine. I had considered 60 min boils necessary to eliminate DMS, but this doesn't seem to be a real issue.

THANKS!!!!!

For my kettle soured beers I just bring it to a boil after souring then kill the power and chill. I don't add hops to the boil as the bitterness at that low of ibus is overpowered by the sourness. If I add hops it's dry hopping or whirlpool hops for flavor and aroma.

I haven't detected any DMS in any of those beers. On all my other beers I still do a 60 or 90 min boil. I guess it's still just force of habit.