Hot Break - All Grain vs. Extract question

[tomroeder]

Hi all....brewed my first all grain brew last night. Volume was a little low, and the gravity should have been 1.064, but I ended up with 1.060, so I did not want to top off with water and bring down the gravity.

My main area of concern are two things:

My hot break was almost nothing versus hot breaks when I am brewing extract. Now, one thing that I was considering is that when extract brewing, you are only using 2.5-3 gallons of liquid when you hot break, and last night with my all grain batch I had almost 7 gallons when boil was achieved, and the hot break was very fast, very low, in fact I may have not seen it at all.

I was brewing a Stone Smoked Porter Clone, from AHS.

Also, I noticed in my fermenter, there does not seem to be as much trub on the bottom of the fermenter. Not sure why that is...I may be just being a "nervous pervis" - Ned Flanders - , but I don't know. Anyone have any input?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Grizzlybrew]

My first question would be do you have enough fire to get 7 gallons to a rolling boil? If so, my guess (not expert advice) is that because a hot break is proteins flocculating to the surface of the kettle and when you dilute the proteins/unit of water by doing a full boil, the flocculation may be less notable.

That being said, I still get nice hot breaks doing 7-8 gal batches and reach and rip-roaring boil (the best are the geysers shooting up from the center of the kettle).

It may also have to do with your grain bill. Remember, certain grains will have a higher protein content than others. For now, relax...

 

[tomroeder]

My first question would be do you have enough fire to get 7 gallons to a rolling boil? If so, my guess (not expert advice) is that because a hot break is proteins flocculating to the surface of the kettle and when you dilute the proteins/unit of water by doing a full boil, the flocculation may be less notable.

That being said, I still get nice hot breaks doing 7-8 gal batches and reach and rip-roaring boil (the best are the geysers shooting up from the center of the kettle).

It may also have to do with your grain bill. Remember, certain grains will have a higher protein content than others. For now, relax...

Thanks for the reply. I have plenty of heat, the boil can go crazy if I let it, but I usually have a soft rolling boil. I just figured that with a Porter, it would have a crazy hot break...I don't know......

 

[motobrewer]

my breaks from all-grain seem to be smaller than my extract breaks

both were full boils.