Hello everyone, newer brewer here. After reading how to brew and also brewing with some friends I'm a little confused. I've done two batches, one a belgian wit and the other a two hearted clone. I'm doing full 5 gallon boils in a keggle using extract first dry and then liquid. In both cases I had a good rolling boil going for a full hour but in both instances I never saw the hot break. I don't even get a little foam. Is there something I'm doing wrong or is this common with extract? Should I try boiling even more violently next time? Thanks!
No hot break
- Thread starter arondee
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HItransplant
Well-Known Member
you may have missed it in the keggle. Thats the nice thing about having all that head space... no need to watch every second while the boil starts.
Is the beer good... maybe it doesnt matter.
sorry, no amazing theories here.
Is the beer good... maybe it doesnt matter.
sorry, no amazing theories here.
Ziggybrew
Well-Known Member
Hot break will vary from recipe to recipe with both extracts and all grain. I've seen some wild hot breaks and other times just a small & quick eruption of foam. I have no clue why. Maybe (guessing here) it has to do with the water profile, or how the extract was mashed, or you looked away, or.... Heck, I'm stumped. A Belgian Wit should of plenty of proteins for a regular hot break.
Bottom line. If the beer tastes great then just relax and have a few. The beer gods can be pranksters.
Bottom line. If the beer tastes great then just relax and have a few. The beer gods can be pranksters.
If you want to see hot break to know what it looks like, boil a bit of DME in a bit of water (say...1.040 gravity) by itself. Let it boil hard for a good 30 minutes. When it is done, turn it off and let it settle. The wort should have cleared significantly, and you'll see these little bloby floaty things in the pot. Looks like the egg bits in egg drop soup. I actually never really knew what to look for with hot break until I made a few starters. The hot break is pretty subtle, especially if you've got a vigorous boil and some hops in there. And like ziggybrew said, sometimes it is barely even there.
Thank you all for the info. The first beer turned out ok, its got a lot of banana flavor I dont much care but thats the style and I made it for my wife so I think it's probably fine. What would extra protein that never boiled off taste like? There was a tiny bit of foam in the corner of the pot for the entire boil, could that have been it? Im not too worried about it to be honest but I wanted to see if other people had seen the same thing with extracts.
There is actually ittle break in extracts, the break happens at the maltser when they are mashing the grain to make the extract you are using. Actually, when they are boiling it down to the consistancy you know and love.
You may see some when you are adding hos at 60, but really don't sweat it if you do or don't see it. Relax.
You may see some when you are adding hos at 60, but really don't sweat it if you do or don't see it. Relax.
You're thinking about this too much
Wheat and barley has protein in it, and when you boil it the protein can sometimes coagulate. This is usually more visible in AG than in extract, but you can often see it in either case. During boil, the proteins drop out of suspension and end up composing a big part of the trub at the bottom of your kettle after boil. Some people like to leave this behind, some people dump it in the fermentor. It's a point of preference, but the general consensus is that it doesn't really make a dramatic difference.The protein doesn't boil off, in any case. If you bring your wort up to boiling, you're getting a hot break whether you see it or not. It might be in big clumps, or it might be in tiny little floaters. Foam is definitely a product of protein structures, which include break material. I don't tend to talk about break when teaching new brewers, because its presence or absence shouldn't really inform your process (especially not when you are first starting out). It is nice to know about if you're wondering where all the gunk in your kettle came from, but it's nothing to be concerned about.
There is a basic brewing radio (www.basicbrewingradio.com) podcast back from 2005--either the 8/18 or 8/25 episode (though I think it's the latter), which is an interview with Bob Hansen from Briess Malting. He talks at lentgth about how malt extract (lme and dme) are manufactured, and that the hot break bascially occurs when the extract is made. Malt extract is basically concentrated wort, less the hops of course. I thought you might find these 2 episodes interesting and related to what you asked.
That's probably where I heard the info that I said above.
juslod
Well-Known Member
I did an extract IPA that had a massive hot break- about 6 gallons of wort in a keggle and it foamed out of the top of the keggle! I am glad I was outside, because that was still a huge mess :cross:
cobbler
Active Member
Thanks for the info. I thought the hot break was just referring to getting the wort boiling again after adding the extract. I need to keep on reading "How to Brew."
