Unkle-Sam
Member
Hey guys-
I had a lot of brewing firsts today, so it's been pretty exciting 'round these parts...first starter, first liquid yeast, first mini-mash, first full boil. It was, as I suspected all along fairly easy and a lot of fun to take all the extra steps. Just, obviously, a lot more of a time commitment, but one that I'm happy to make.
But I digress. The end product, from what I can tell, turned out extremely well. The finished wort was delicious, the color was beautiful, nailed the OG from the recipe, fermenter is bubbling furiously after just a couple of hours, and my kitchen smells lovely still.
Apart from taking too long to toss the aroma hops in (recipe called for half an ounce and I'd forgotten to split the one ounce pack ahead of time), the only real issue I encountered was that I never witnessed anything like what I expect a hot break to look like.
My last batch nearly exploded when I added the bittering hops, with crud from the 1.5 gallon boil nearly reaching the top of my 30-qt kettle, but this one never had more than a little foam on just part of the surface. It was a bit breezy, so it took a little while to get the boil rolling consistently and there were a not excessive amount of little protein flecks floating around in it.
So after all that I guess what I have boils down to a two part question:
1) After all the research I've done, coupled with my admittedly small personal experience, I understand Hot Break to consist of both a substantial amount of those protein globs I was seeing as well as a well defined, massive, foamy, liable to boil over reaction. Is this a correct deduction or did I get the wrong end of a stick somewhere?
2) Assuming my initial assumption is correct (that's a lot of assuming going on), can anyone provide insight on how that would affect the finished product, i.e. more/less body, subtle flavour differences, and perhaps tips to foster the reaction (more aggressive boil, more/less stirring, partial mashing pointers, etc) in my next batch?
As aforesaid, I'm pretty stoked with how things are looking so far, so this isn't a panicked noob question or anything (just a normal noob question, haha) but in the interest of continually improving my process and expanding my brewing knowledge I'd love to hear anyone's two cents on the issue.
I had a lot of brewing firsts today, so it's been pretty exciting 'round these parts...first starter, first liquid yeast, first mini-mash, first full boil. It was, as I suspected all along fairly easy and a lot of fun to take all the extra steps. Just, obviously, a lot more of a time commitment, but one that I'm happy to make.
But I digress. The end product, from what I can tell, turned out extremely well. The finished wort was delicious, the color was beautiful, nailed the OG from the recipe, fermenter is bubbling furiously after just a couple of hours, and my kitchen smells lovely still.
Apart from taking too long to toss the aroma hops in (recipe called for half an ounce and I'd forgotten to split the one ounce pack ahead of time), the only real issue I encountered was that I never witnessed anything like what I expect a hot break to look like.
My last batch nearly exploded when I added the bittering hops, with crud from the 1.5 gallon boil nearly reaching the top of my 30-qt kettle, but this one never had more than a little foam on just part of the surface. It was a bit breezy, so it took a little while to get the boil rolling consistently and there were a not excessive amount of little protein flecks floating around in it.
So after all that I guess what I have boils down to a two part question:
1) After all the research I've done, coupled with my admittedly small personal experience, I understand Hot Break to consist of both a substantial amount of those protein globs I was seeing as well as a well defined, massive, foamy, liable to boil over reaction. Is this a correct deduction or did I get the wrong end of a stick somewhere?
2) Assuming my initial assumption is correct (that's a lot of assuming going on), can anyone provide insight on how that would affect the finished product, i.e. more/less body, subtle flavour differences, and perhaps tips to foster the reaction (more aggressive boil, more/less stirring, partial mashing pointers, etc) in my next batch?
As aforesaid, I'm pretty stoked with how things are looking so far, so this isn't a panicked noob question or anything (just a normal noob question, haha) but in the interest of continually improving my process and expanding my brewing knowledge I'd love to hear anyone's two cents on the issue.
