Pressure cooking wort with hops

[Nebraskan]

On a Youtube.com channel I was watching about myths, and one of them was doing a 60 minute boil. I like the idea of a shorter time boil, after collecting the wort from the mash tun and lautering. However, there is also the issue of getting hops into solution in your wort for bittering, and since they are stubborn at that because of the oils etc, boiling is one of the ways to get this done.

I have a Instant Pot Pressure cooker I've used countless times doing roasts, ribs, chicken, even some rice as well as hard boiled eggs in 7 minutes. It has a low and high pressure side and able to control how long it cooks once it gets to temp and pressure. Next batch, figuring around Wed the 27th, I'm going to be making some Dunkel (about 4 gallons) and I'm going to put about 8-12 cups of wort in the Pressure Cooker and set it for 10 minutes. High heat and pressure along with my initial input of Hops, in the wort should "marry" the hops alpha acids and resins into the wort. Once it is done with the pressure cooking I'll add it into the main boil and boil for about 30 minutes, add my final hops, boil for another 5 minutes and shut down the gas, and cool.

Has anyone ever cooked their wort in a pressure cooker before?

 

[Nebraskan]

In the title it is supposed to be "Wort" not woth. I do a spell check but didn't notice the title AND can't edit the title to be right... sigh

 

[passedpawn]

...AND can't edit the title to be right... sigh

... but I can. Next time, just report your post and in the report ask for help. Or PM me.

 

[Nebraskan]

Thank you Andrew I will remember. Merry Christmas

 

[mongoose33]

Interesting idea...predicated on the assumption that higher temperature and pressure will accelerate the isomerization of the hop oils into bittering compounds.

Any precedent for this? I'm surely not opposed to experimenting, and the crucial question for me is whether pressure and temp matters and can accelerate the process, or whether cooking the wort at higher temps will alter the flavor profile.

 

[CoreyD]

Interesting concept. I have a stove top pressure cooker, and am curious on how long it takes for the instant pot to get up to pressure. It take less time for me to get my wort up to a boil than it does to get pressure in the pressure cooker. Seems like it would take almost the same amount of time if you just went with a 60 min boil. Can't wait to see what you found with your experiment.

 

[ESBrewer]

It may work but as I understand, you would only save 20min and you need to set up and wash the pressure cooker, transfer some wort etc. And you definitely need to boil enough without lid at the end to get rid of the dms formed inside the pressure cooker. The higher than 100C temp could also enhance some chemical reactions in your wort but how that would affect the taste I have no idea.

 

[Nebraskan]

Well here's the plan. SOON.... I will make up my mash and shoot for a bit more gravity in the runoff from the mash tun, closer to what I want for going into the fermentor. After I collect the sweet wort I will start the main batch in the kettle, and while that is starting I am taking some of the wort, putting it in the SS interior kettle of the Instant Pot and putting "that" on the stove burner to heat up, since the stove can get it hotter faster than that heating element inside the Instant Pot. When it is near boiling, I'm adding my primary hops using a strainer hops bag into the SS Pot, and then putting the pot in the Instant pot that is ready. Turn on the setting for high 10 minutes, and close the lid.

After the 10 minutes I'll release the pressure and depressurize the Instant Pot, pull out the hops bag and and set aside in a dish. I'll transfer that to the main boil. When the main boil starts I'm setting the timer for 10 minutes. During that 10 minutes I'll gently squeeze out some of the wort from the first bittering hops bag and add it into the main. After the 10 minutes, adding the aroma hops, boil for about 1 minute longer and then shut off, take out the aroma hops bag, and throw in the SS chiller coil.

Cool to around 65 F, and put into buckets to aerate and strain, before adding to the MiniBrew conical fermenter, then add yeast.

I a shooting for a Munich Dunkel more like the 1st one I made. It is great tasting and not too bitter. The Dunkel II has a bitter aftertastes and if not the hops, I don't know what it is? The Dunkel III I made last is good, bot not as good as the first and still has some subtle bitter aftertaste that reminds me of holding a tylenol in you mouth too long before swallowing. Never been much for IPA as I don't like the bitterness of too much hops. But, this bitter flavor on my last 2 Dunkel brews seems a bit different than the bitter or normal hops. Odd part is I pretty much made it with the same amount of hops, but the Hallertau hops are a different batch from the first.

Can different hop batches really affect bitter in the finished beer that much? First hops I got from local brew store, but the ones I have now I got online from Amazon. Same variety, Hallertau, but in a larger package.

 

[Dcpcooks]

Yes hops vary from location to location and year to year.


I’m not sure what your shooting for with this process. You’ll have a few things to work out.
I’m not aware of any data on high temp alpha acid extraction.
I’m not aware of any data on extracting under pressure.
You’ll need to find a balance between wort composition/size and hop additions. Putting all your hops in a partial batch of wort will present some problems for you. Since your not a fan of hoppy bears you may be ok but I could see a loss of extraction in this case.

 

[BallisticGourd]

There was a front page article a few years ago: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/bittering-hops-in-15-minutes.html. I used the method once or twice successfully.

 

[Nebraskan]

STOP THE PRESSES !! I may have found an answer to this "bitter" problem. Doing a Google search it brought me back to this forum in 2009 where a guy had a very similar experience. This thread, https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/...leshoot-a-lingering-bitter-aftertaste.128525/ specifically post #6. He had high sodium levels.

Yesterday evening went to the winery to get water from my lab (same water we use in cooking and coffee, etc.. ALSO this is the same water that I have been using for home brewing. I tasted the water after 1 gallon jug was filled and spit it out. TOO much sodium taste. Tasted like the salt as not completely rinsed from the resins in the water softener. Yes. Our winery has a water softener to remove the calcium and tannin from the water (it uses additional citric acid with the salt) and for the washing of dishes so there is no water spots on the glass ware. They plumbed the lab to this same "soft water" a good while back and I have been using it, since our water at home (well water) has iron and sulfur in it, and at times has a slight smell and will plug up our coffee pots in no time. Sometimes I taste it to see and let it run for a long time at the winery to get a "good" cleaner water with not as much sodium taste to it. Last night I went away taking water from the other part of the winery that does not have it plumbed to the softener. That water tasted cleaner, fresh, but with no sodium taste.... better than our "home" water but not the softened water.

So, I am thinking that this might be the one variable that I never thought about. Ferment beer with one water with low amounts of residual salt, against beer fermented that has higher sodium levels.... could be?

 

[Dcpcooks]

Yes sodium, gypsum calcium and other minerals impact perceived hop bitterness. Most brewers avoid softened water for that reason. You’d be well served to run a small RO system or buy some bottled water.

 

[Nebraskan]

Interesting concept. I have a stove top pressure cooker, and am curious on how long it takes for the instant pot to get up to pressure. It take less time for me to get my wort up to a boil than it does to get pressure in the pressure cooker. Seems like it would take almost the same amount of time if you just went with a 60 min boil. Can't wait to see what you found with your experiment.

Done and done. The biggest challenge on brew day was the excessive small grind of my malts. I had it set at 0.025" from something I read in Brulicity about how much nicer the mouthfeel was with finder grit. Well, I thing it was a BIAB trial as I have my first experience with a Stuck Sparge. LONG time doing mash. For some reason, and it was probably lower mash temps (148F) I kept getting the slight purple mark in my white dish when I'd check the mash for conversion. Took about 2.5 hours to get it to mash. I had to take some of it and heat it back on the stove to add to the main batch to raise the temp. After I got the mash converted (too low temp... too small grain?) I got my wort from the mash tun but it was a PITA. Ran pretty good for a little bit and then stopped. No matter how much I added hot sparge water back in , it refused to go much more than a dribble. Finally put it in a small bucket and added hot water to the buckets, mixed it all around and put it through a strainer. When I finally got done I had a SG of 1.081 after mashing, so added back in water to get the mash down to 1.052 pre boil.

When I got it at that point, I took out 3 cups of wort and put in the SS container of the Instant Pot pressure cooker, and put it on the stovetop to heat until it was boiling. Got the remainder set up in the boil kettle and started it up. When the SS Instant Pot was boiling I added the hops, stirred well and removed form the stove an put into the Instant Pot. Set it for 15 min at HIGH pressure. After the 15 min. the main wort was still not up to heat, so I just turned off the Instant Pot to allow it to de-pressurize while the main got to a boil. When main was boiling I added the Instant Pot container of wort, sans the nylon hop bag that I gently squeezed out into the SS Pot.

Boiled for 15 minutes and added the last of the hops, and I reversed the hops, putting the most in the pot at the end, instead of at the beginning. BOIL for another 10 minutes and pulled out the 2nd hop bag and flame out, and started the coil water cooler. Chilled down to 68F.

Drained out the pot into bucket and I had started with 4 gallons but lost some. SG was 1.062 at post boil so I added water to bring down the SG to 1.050 final O.G. and have a little over 4 gallons of wort. Tasted the wort after I put into the conical fermenter and it has a nice bitterness, but not too much... just right. I let it set for a bit and drained out about 1/2 gallon of green/brown gunk out the bottom valve on the MiniBrew 6.5 gallon conical. Then pitched the yeast starter I had made up the day before.

NOTE: The new conical Mini Brew 6.5 gallon was WONDERFUL for getting out the trub after the boil, but more importantly, I had a lot of green "fines" after that issue with the sparging. I used the fermentor to let the green fines settle and remove the harsh small fines stuff before I started my boil as I would be getting rid of this later anyway. Really works well for this type of settling.

Friday around 3 it started to bubble very well out of the airlock and all is well!! BTW, I only use the airlock to tell I have activity at a glance, without taking off the lid. Many a batch of wine and beer have been made in open top or non close fermenters. CO2 is produced in abundance and drives out any O2 that may be present in the beer wort as the process goes. At the winery we never put on a lid or airlock on any of the big tanks, and rarely place the lid on the smaller 298 gallon tanks that are sometimes used for ferment, and if we do, it is a LOOSE lid.

 

[ESBrewer]

I am surprised that it took so long to mash, even at low temperature. It could be the fine, wet flour forming tiny clumps that remain dry inside. Did you fly sparge or did you grind so fine even batch sparge got stuck? Good to hear that pressure cooking worked.

 

[SanPancho]

Thread somewheres on the interwebs, maybe even this forum i think, of an old guy who did one hour brews. He used extract with steeping grains i believe, and put hops in pressure cooker with water. Then combined.

Its pretty old but its still around somewheres. He had graphs and charts and data on ibus vs temp in terms of extraction, utilization,etc.

Ive mentioned it about three times in recent months for some reason. Not sure if anybody dug it up. Im lazy. But its there.

 

[Nebraskan]

Since I am new to brewing and brew forums this concept of pressure cooking hops I never read about. Just eating supper recently and saw the Instant Pot setting on the counter and thought to myself... "HEY... maybe with high heat and pressure I can isomerize the hops quicker, and reduce boil time. Old minds must think alike.... well Don't know how old he is, but I was around when rocks were soft and dirt was new.
I think sometimes that old guys think... "why not?"

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

Thread somewheres on the interwebs, maybe even this forum i think, of an old guy who did one hour brews. He used extract with steeping grains i believe, and put hops in pressure cooker with water. Then combined.

Its pretty old but its still around somewheres. He had graphs and charts and data on ibus vs temp in terms of extraction, utilization,etc.

Ive mentioned it about three times in recent months for some reason. Not sure if anybody dug it up. Im lazy. But its there.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/bittering-hops-in-15-minutes.html ? (mentioned by BallisticGourd earlier in this topic)

 

[Nebraskan]

Thanks for the link. I, too, posted comments in the bottom. Not the first but I was using Instant Pot, which is an electric pressure cooker that has a lot of built in safety and control.

 

[dsdrake219]

what you want to do with the pressure cooker is make extract with steeping grains at most, i did apa's


using 3 qt water in 6qt pressure cooker
i used 15%AA hop for 15 min. i think it was like a half oz
at 15 min release pressure and now add late hop additions and /or grains for steeping.
add dme or lme, stir. put in fermenter, and spray cold water from kitchen sink sprayer (cleaned of coarse) or aerate. pitch yeast when its at temp and capacity. resume as normal. 5 gallons in 30 min. wasnt amazing, but it was all-right for as cheap and fast as i made it

had a few , hope it makes since.

 

[Nebraskan]

As I read and learn, the higher the temp, and higher the pH (above 5.5) the more release of tannins from husks you are going to get. I would believe that the high pressure of pressure cooking grains would give you a large amount of tannins from the husks, unless using something like Midnight Wheat or De-Husked Caraffa II for example.

I've used the pressure cooker method on ALL of my recent beers and has been a great success. For Isomerization high heat is needed and you don't get as high temp in just boiling, and especially at higher altitudes, as you get inside the pressure cooker.

Would not be good for aroma, but for bittering, like in Stouts, it appears to have a lot of merit, especially if you live in areas 2500' elevation or higher (like Denver).

With the Instant Pot and it's electronics and control it is super easy and accurate. I set on poultry, 25 minutes, and pre-heat the wort to about boiling, add hops in bag, stir, and then put into the Instant Pot pressure cooker. Gets to temp and pressure pretty fast and when done, hit the off button and I let it sit for a bit to depressurize some and then finish with the pressure release and dump the whole batch into the main kettle for the remainder of the boil.