To scoop out hot break or leave it?

[sibelman]

skimming the foam

conditioned beer wouldn’t raise a head

that whipped cream head

I've wondered about this for years. Can anyone confirm or deny that skimming hot break lessens head formation/retention? Or that it helps/harms clarity or flavor?

 

[Miraculix]

I used to be plagued with boil-overs. I used my stainless steel spoon to stir the foam back into the beginning-to-boil wort and that seemed to work. Sometimes I couldn’t keep up with the foam and I’d have a boil-over anyway. Then I got the bright idea of simply skimming the foam from the kettle to solve my dilemma. I immediately noticed that my finished and conditioned beer wouldn’t raise a head when poured. After a few batches, it dawned on me that whatever was in that foam was the same material that I had relied upon to raise that whipped cream head on my beers that I had taken so much pride in before.

I started to use a mesh strainer to scoop the foam from the top to break it up while trying to push it back into the wort. It works okay but constant attention is required. At least breaking up the foam abates the vicious and messy boil-over problems.

Another technique that works for a number of beers is First Wort Hopping (FWH). I think it lowers the pH of the boil enough to discourage foam from becoming unmanageable.

One good indicator that you’ve had a good hot break is checking the boiling wort after the foam collapses. Spoon out a bit of the wort from the kettle. In a good hot break, you’ll see lots of little flakes in the wort – think egg drop soup. That’s the clumping of albumins (globular proteins), free amino acids, unconverted starch, and fatty acids. All of these contribute to chill haze and beer instability.

I've made similar observations and since then didn't remove the foam anymore. Head is much better now.

However, I have a slightly different theory regarding what's happening, but the end result is the same. Don't scoop it out if you like big head on your beer.

I think what happens is that, as soon as the foam collapses and creates the egg nog soup like wort, it starts to bind fatty acids. There are millions of little protein flakes swirling around in the wort after the collapse. They are sticky on a molecular level. Once they touch any fatty acid or other foam reducing molecule, they likely bind it to themselves. So at the end of the day, the more little flakes you have floating around during the boil, the more foam decreasing stuff can get bound to it and is therefore removed from the solution.

I think the same happens with tannins btw. It makes sense that they are removed as tannins usually form some bonds with proteins anyway.

Big question for me is, how much of this bound stuff gets remobilised during fermentation, if the trub isn't removed after chilling the wort?

The yeast might break down some of these loose bonds or time maybe does... Don't know. I cannot reliably remove hot break after chilling and my foam is decent. But decent is not great. I wonder if it could be further improved by transferring clear cold wort into the fermenter instead of dumping all in, including the trub.

 

[worlddivides]

I've never scooped before and I've never had any reason to. I've also almost always poured 100% of the contents of my kettle into the fermenter. "Almost always," however, has a few exceptions. I usually add hops in hop bags or in a hop tube, but when I do add the hops directly to the fermenter (rare for me personally, though I know most people just throw the hops in the kettle), I typically try not to get the spent hops in the fermenting vessel, so I'll leave at least some of the trub behind. 95% of the time I just add the full contents of the kettle to the fermenter, though.

 

[Brewer Mike]

Neither of these articles are peer reviewed. The first does not provide any references to support the claim that hot break is tannin rich, nor does it say anything about what causes excessive tannin extraction into the wort. There is also nothing saying that any tannins in the hot break redissolve into the beer during fermentation vs. settling out with the rest of the trub The second article does not even contain the word "tannin." Nothing authoritative in the references provided.

Brew on

When I read that second quote, I was thinking to myself "Doesn't "might" pretty much mean the same thing as "might not""?

 

[MaxStout]

"Doesn't "might" pretty much mean the same thing as "might not""?

Therefore, inconclusive.

 

[AdjunctBrewer]

To share my experience as a low oxygen brewer, the goal is to not have any foop to scoop. As my low oxygen process improves there is a less and less of the stuff to scoop out at the beginning of the boil.

What is the mechanism by which low dissolved oxygen enables less hot break?

It is definitely a negative material but does it do any harm only during the boil?

What makes hot break "definitely negative"?

 

[JohnDBrewer]

I don't scoop. I tried it and it seemed like I was going to remove a bunch of hop material, so I stopped. I don't use a hop spider or bag and frequently first wort hop.