I bought a recipe book that has 2-5 hour boil times?

[linusstick]

Home Brew Recipe Bible by Chris Colby. Love the book. Very well written and informative. I went to pick out a recipe and what? Grizzly American Barleywine has a five hour boil time? Even the smaller recipes are two hour boils. Does anyone actually do 5 hour boils? The recipes all seem to focus on sparging to x amount of gallons to boil down to x amount. If I'm doing small batch BIAB, I'm wondering if these recipes can be scaled down easily and shorten the boil time considerably.

 

[doomy86]

Probably the long boil time is used to concentrate the wort. Just target the higher OG and do a normal boil.

 

[JonM]

I did that once with a barleywine and it turned out great. It was just Maris Otter, but it came out beautifully amber and the caramelization of the wort produced some wonderfully complex flavors. Rumor has it that's how they do North Coast Old Stock Ale.

I'll see if I can find a pic of mine.

 

[IslandLizard]

+1^ and ^^

Wort concentration and flavor development (through Maillard reactions) are characteristic for Barleywines, some old ales, (and Scotch ales). For all other ales, an hour boil is usually plenty. Beer using larger amounts of Pilsner malt should be boiled 90 minutes to drive off DMS (cooked cabbage flavors and aromas).

When you reduce the given boiling time, you may need to tweak the recipe a bit to remain close to the intention. Use Beersmith or an online recipe calculator.

 

[JonM]

Found it. 100% Maris Otter boiled for 3.5 or so hours.

View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1499166416.141228.jpg

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

I would say that if this is consistent among all recipes, I would say it's not considered standard practice. I.e. I wouldn't see any reason to do a 2 hr boil for an American Pale Ale, or a Kolsch.

If it's only for recipes that actually are designed to get kettle caramelization, like the above-mentioned barleywine, then it makes sense.

 

[Weezy]

An alternate approach is to pull off a couple quarts of the first running and boil them separately drown to a syrup on the stove. The rest of the wort treat normally.

 

[Norselord]

I thought for sure this was going to be about boiling books...

 

[kh54s10]

If you boil books for your barley-wine does it matter the genre of the books?

 

[Singletrack]

Beer using larger amounts of Pilsner malt should be boiled 90 minutes to drive off DMS (cooked cabbage flavors and aromas).

I have heard "90 minutes for Pilsner," but I don't want to do it unless it is really necessary. Is it? How about if I boil 60 min at 7000 ft above sea level instead. (Hate cooked cabbage and canned corn.)

 

[dmtaylor]

You will get a substantially different beer boiling for 3-5 hours compared to a similar recipe boiled for only 1 hour. The long boil time makes a significant and noticeable difference in flavor. I know this because I know a guy who does this a lot and you can just taste the slightly burnt caramel flavors that are totally unique and unlike anything you would normally buy commercially. It matters.

 

[eastoak]

I have heard "90 minutes for Pilsner," but I don't want to do it unless it is really necessary. Is it? How about if I boil 60 min at 7000 ft above sea level instead. (Hate cooked cabbage and canned corn.)

I don't boil pilsner malt for 90 min and I've never had even a hint of DMS. I'm a sample size of 1 but if you look around you'll find lots of brewers boiling pils for 60 min and even less time than that.

 

[IslandLizard]

I have heard "90 minutes for Pilsner," but I don't want to do it unless it is really necessary. Is it? How about if I boil 60 min at 7000 ft above sea level instead. (Hate cooked cabbage and canned corn.)

I don't boil pilsner malt for 90 min and I've never had even a hint of DMS. I'm a sample size of 1 but if you look around you'll find lots of brewers boiling pils for 60 min and even less time than that.

I based the 90' boil for Pilsner malt derived worts on this BeerSmith article. I know it's from 2012, and some modern day blogs and forums have tried to debunk that theory.

If you never experience DMS problems with a shorter boil, that's great, it saves energy and time! Perhaps your malt doesn't contain as much SMM in the first place, your boil is more vigorous, you're at a higher elevation, speeding up evaporation, or a combination of these and other factors. It's easily masked in darker, more complex beers, but can stand out in light Lagers, Pilsners, Kölsch, etc.

 

[thehaze]

I do 90 minutes boil for everything, except Belgian Dark Strong ales, Baltic Porters, Barleywines, RIS which get a 120 minutes boil.

For my own taste, I get a much better, intense flavour which I love in my beers.

 

[Dcpcooks]

Home Brew Recipe Bible by Chris Colby. Love the book. Very well written and informative. I went to pick out a recipe and what? Grizzly American Barleywine has a five hour boil time? Even the smaller recipes are two hour boils. Does anyone actually do 5 hour boils? The recipes all seem to focus on sparging to x amount of gallons to boil down to x amount. If I'm doing small batch BIAB, I'm wondering if these recipes can be scaled down easily and shorten the boil time considerably.

My buddy and I have played with extended boils for stouts and barely wines. It will concentrate the wort to a much greater extent. If you've had a really big stout you have noticed the thick viscosity that sticks to the side of the glass. In our experience that's how it's achieved.

Goose island boils bourbon county stout for four hours, well at least before InBev bought them they did. I have a friend who worked there back in the day.

You may be able scale them down effectively, the challenge you'll face will be balancing the reduced efficiency inherent with high gravity beers and extracting all the sugars with a biab process. It's pretty tough to extract all the sugars in a thick mash. That's why you'll see extended mash and boil times for the big beers. It takes time to convert and time to extract and more time to concentrate the sugars.

 

[dyqik]

I based the 90' boil for Pilsner malt derived worts on this BeerSmith article. I know it's from 2012, and some modern day blogs and forums have tried to debunk that theory.

If you never experience DMS problems with a shorter boil, that's great, it saves energy and time! Perhaps your malt doesn't contain as much SMM in the first place, your boil is more vigorous, you're at a higher elevation, speeding up evaporation, or a combination of these and other factors. It's easily masked in darker, more complex beers, but can stand out in light Lagers, Pilsners, Kölsch, etc.

I suspect that many homebrewers are now boiling much harder than was commonly achieved when the 90 minute boil for DMS advice was originally committed to homebrewing lore. If you are working on a stove top, or with a UK/European style Brupak boiler (2kW electric element in a plastic bin) or a Grainfather type system, you may well boil off less than half a gallon in 90 minutes. About 7% boil off seems to be all that's necessary to eliminate DMS (see some other discussions here) and you can even do that with the kettle lid partially on.

I control my element down to about 2200-2400W, boiling off half a gallon in an hour, and I still get a rolling boil (and no hint of DMS). A rolling boil means that the surface of the wort is disturbed somewhat by the steam boiling off the element. It doesn't mean that you have a completely turbulent surface across the whole kettle, like many people show in photos on here. Likewise, a simmer should have essentially no disturbance of the surface of the liquid in the kettle.

 

[balrog]

While it was not done with pilsner, Brulosophy did this experiment with an amber ale and found no discernible taste/feel difference between full on boil and simmer, both for an hour, other than boil off amount.

I'm with @dyqik, make the surface move with some bubbles, "rolling boil" means boil enough to roll the volume of wort around a bit.

 

[dyqik]

While it was not done with pilsner, Brulosophy did this experiment with an amber ale and found no discernible taste/feel difference between full on boil and simmer, both for an hour, other than boil off amount.
.

The 7% number I quoted comes from the LoDO people, who are doing pale lagers with German pilsner malt, so probably the worst case scenario for tasting DMS. You can probably go a bit lower with something like an amber.

 

[secondbase]

I brew a lot of saisons, british and belgian style beers with Pilsner malt and Maris Otter so I boil 90 minutes most of the time. I've found the color changes a bit with a longer boil and creates a little kettle caramelization which is really nice in beers with simple grain bills. I have boiled for 60 minutes with these malts and it's been fine, but I really prefer the character of the overall beer. The breweries producing classic examples of these styles also opt for longer boil times.

I also boil my barleywine for 4 hours. I'm going to do 5 hours this year.

 

[beernutz]

If you boil books for your barley-wine does it matter the genre of the books?

I boiled my Kindle and it came out great!

 

[Norselord]

I boiled my Kindle and it came out great!

Was it an extract brew?

 

[Lefou]

No ... but seriously, the info on extended boil times for wort in order to get a peculiar taste is excellent information. There's an application for that, especially in pale or dark beers.
One drink in particular I love is Founder's Brewing's robust porter. It seems heavy enough to be a stout and from my perspective, if you didn't read the label you'd never know it was a porter. A heavy drinkable ale low on ABV complements a dry, light style and if you're capable of doing both, that's an achievement in my opinion.