why is wort boiled after mashing and straining?

[robint]

After mashing your raise the temp to 180F to kill of the enzyme (denatured). You have then filtered off the grains and stuff and left with liquid wort. It seems to me counter intuitive to go to a rolling boil for another hour? Surely doesnt this start to boil off those delicate flavours etc?
Couldnt you just , cover to cool and pitch yeast etc?

What am I missing?

 

[bailey mountain brewer]

The boil does numerous things, hop isomerization, water evaporation, remove dms, and obviously adding hops at different times changes how they come through in the final beer. All that said, there are some "no boil" recipes out there, so it can be done, but you still need hops.

 

[worlddivides]

Are you suggesting making beer without hops, then? Now, hops aren't the only thing brewers add during the boil, but they are by far the most important. And, as Bailey mentioned, the boil helps remove DMS. You also can't get hot break without a boil, for one thing. I suppose if you were going to make whiskey, you probably wouldn't need to boil the wort (I'm not sure if whiskey makers do or not), but for beer, it's a pretty important step. No-boil beers do exist, but they're definitely not the norm and they take other steps too (plus, some of them are called "no-boil" but actually boil for 15 minutes or so instead of 60 to 90 minutes). I think there are some versions that don't boil for even a minute, but they use hop oils or extracts or something?

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

why is wort boiled after mashing and straining?

With "all grain" brewing, boiling wort removes things (wild yeast, bacteria, proteins, DMS) and creates things (malt flavors, darker color, bitterness from hops).

You have then filtered off the grains and stuff and left with liquid wort. It seems to me counter intuitive to go to a rolling boil for another hour? Surely doesnt this start to boil off those delicate flavours etc?

a web search on "raw ales" and/or "no boil brewing" should get you to a number of resources that will help answer those questions.

The "Brewing Nordic" and "Larsblog" web sites look solid.

I read enough of Lars Marius Garshol's book to conclude that traditional Nordic farmhouse brewing techniques are "not my thing".

What am I missing?

While one can make beer without boiling and without hops, it remains to be seen if one can make a west coast IPA using these techniques that scores well in competitions.

 

[jschein]

What am I missing?

Ketchup packs, spruce tips and the devils lettuce

 

[mac_1103]

After mashing your raise the temp to 180F to kill of the enzyme (denatured). ... It seems to me counter intuitive to go to a rolling boil for another hour?

Seems a lot more intuitive to me to skip the mashout than to skip the boil.

 

[kevin58]

After mashing your raise the temp to 180F to kill of the enzyme (denatured). You have then filtered off the grains and stuff and left with liquid wort. It seems to me counter intuitive to go to a rolling boil for another hour? Surely doesnt this start to boil off those delicate flavours etc?
Couldnt you just , cover to cool and pitch yeast etc?

What am I missing?

I would suggest skipping the mash-out step rather than question the boil. That mash-out step is one of those things that commercial breweries do that doesn't have any (or very little) benefit to homebrewers. In order to produce the exact same product every single time commercial breweries must control enzyme activity to ensure their desired gravity so stopping conversion at a specific point is desirable. Homebrewers however are going to begin ramping up the temp to begin the boil almost immediately after our mash is complete. Making just 5 and 10 gallon batches we reach that denaturing point rather quickly.

 

[day_trippr]

If one fly-sparges the pre-boil volume for a 10 gallon batch (in my case I need 13.5 to 14 gallons) at a quart per minute that's nearly an hour post-mash time for enzymes to keep chewing away at the entire volume. Denaturing the enzymes via mash-out takes much less time on my system - closer to 15 minutes - allowing the run-off to begin and take as long as needed with "stable" wort...

Cheers!

 

[robint]

The boil does numerous things, hop isomerization, water evaporation, remove dms, and obviously adding hops at different times changes how they come through in the final beer. All that said, there are some "no boil" recipes out there, so it can be done, but you still need hops.

Making a Farmhouse Ale, not as beer or a lager so no hops, use other bittering agents. wort will have a medium flavour so DMS not like to be noticed much. Other wild yeast, bacteria all killed off at 180F. I will be using some black tea and ginger juice and some bay leaves. Also prepare some white sugar syrup to give the desired OG 1060 (cheating I know but white sugar wasnt available in 19C days so extra effort was needed to extract sugars from grain. My Ale will be a bit hazy but then so is Weiss bier.

 

[Broken Crow]

Without getting into a flame-war on the fact that ales (including gruit ales) fall under the title: "Beer", Have you done any searches on gruit ales? Even with archaic gruit ales, the wort is boiled. While I understand and sympathize with the desire to eschew 'modern' mainstream crap, I've seen a number of new members with similar views and unfortunately innacurate preconceptions about historical brewing techniques that innocently result in reinventing the wheel.
DMS is very likely to be noticed and I am certain that if a Roundhead were served a gruit ale from unboiled wort he would complain of the taste like that new western yellow-grained import that grows on a phallus.
Boil it. Just my 2-pence.

 

[robint]

Seems a lot more intuitive to me to skip the mashout than to skip the boil.

I wondered whether it can be done by doing a BIAB mash to get enzyme temps times then sparge hot water to get 170F 77C stop enzymes then leave the wort to cool naturally down to pitch temp say ca 30C and throw your starter into the bag and leave it all to ferment away spent grain and all for a week.
The lift and squeeze the bag, maybe some extra sparge work (dont know?). You can then add some white sugar syrup to bring it all up to a reputed OG (amount found by some previous experience). Then leave in a cool place for second fermentation till desired FG reached?
Hope I explained it properly - Farmhouse Ale (other flavouring bit also added as above)

Trick - if you put your ale in a pottery opaque tankard, you wont notice it is cloudy heh heh

I did this test once when I was an Inn keeper. we would get some of the annoying CAMRA anoraks in on local pub tour to sample my prize winning Fullers London Pride. Right PITA they were, all on half pints, sniffing and sneering (in reality these aerosols knew SFA about brewing or managing a cellar). I had some German Stein mugs 1/2L and suggested a blind tasting. Sometimes real ale will start a bit cloudy as not quite settled but I always maintained that it didnt affect the flavour. So some Steins had clear draught from a settled cask and some were from a newer cloudy cask.

You got it - the Anoraks preferred the newer cask - a fresher taste rather than the older cask nearly 4 days old. Big splat when they found it was a bit cloudy - I had a result, cos they never came back - thats CAMRA aerosols for you.

 

[Miraculix]

DMS is first created with the boil and then boiled of with the boil. If you don't heat the wort past 70c, there's only the precursor of dms and that one does not give you an off flavour.

Unboiled wort has a higher protein content and results in a beer that cannot be kept as long as boiled wort beer. It also tastes different, a bit more grainy, can be a bit harsh.

I've brewed several no boil beers with a hop tea on the side. It works, it just tastes different.

 

[robint]

Without getting into a flame-war on the fact that ales (including gruit ales) fall under the title: "Beer", Have you done any searches on gruit ales? Even with archaic gruit ales, the wort is boiled. While I understand and sympathize with the desire to eschew 'modern' mainstream crap, I've seen a number of new members with similar views and unfortunately innacurate preconceptions about historical brewing techniques that innocently result in reinventing the wheel.
DMS is very likely to be noticed and I am certain that if a Roundhead were served a gruit ale from unboiled wort he would complain of the taste like that new western yellow-grained import that grows on a phallus.
Boil it. Just my 2-pence.

OK BC point well made Sir. I have been reading up on Gruit - its on my todo list this long winter ahead - Quite right "modern mainstream crap"
btw Ale came first (called Oil by the Scandics). We had 400 years colonisation by the Vikings in Northern England down as far as York. Its why Northerners are distinctly different "mardy" than we heterogenetics down South. Farmhouse brewing is a 1000 year old tradition from our Viking cousins
Then we had 200 years of the French down south (actually they were Normans who in fact were "Norseman settlers given Britany so they could guard the River Seine. It was only by luck that we didnt all end up speaking Norman French - Merdais.

Its curious that the French never had a tradition of brewing grain (nor the Spanish/Italian).

 

[robint]

DMS is first created with the boil and then boiled of with the boil. If you don't heat the wort past 70c, there's only the precursor of dms and that one does not give you an off flavour.

Unboiled wort has a higher protein content and results in a beer that cannot be kept as long as boiled wort beer. It also tastes different, a bit more grainy, can be a bit harsh.

I've brewed several no boil beers with a hop tea on the side. It works, it just tastes different.

Well thanx for that, reinforces my suspicions that you can make a viable Ale drink without boiling over 70C
It similar to brewing a cup of Black Tea. You can make a cold brew, steeping the leaves in water overnight, a noticeably different flavour and favoured by the Cousins for making Ice Tea (great favourite across the pond). You dont leach out the bitter tannins

Its not the bitterness of brewing that bothers me - its the bigotry

 

[Miraculix]

Well thanx for that, reinforces my suspicions that you can make a viable Ale drink without boiling over 70C
It similar to brewing a cup of Black Tea. You can make a cold brew, steeping the leaves in water overnight, a noticeably different flavour and favoured by the Cousins for making Ice Tea (great favourite across the pond). You dont leach out the bitter tannins

Its not the bitterness of brewing that bothers me - its the bigotry

You won´t be able to extract hop bitterness this way. I have done a small size hop tea in plain water on the side, which I boiled. I later added that to the wort. This works remarkably well. Other herbs have the problem that they do not preserve beer as much as hops do. After only a short period of time, the beer will sour without hops.

 

[robint]

You won´t be able to extract hp bitterness this way. I have done a small size hop tea in plain water on the side, which I boiled. I later added that to the wort. This works remarkably well. Other herbs have the problem that they do not preserve beer as mucha s hops do. After only a short period of time, the beer will slour without hops.

indeed hops was added as a preservative. Try adding some root ginger juice for a change, it has similar preservative qualities. Its something I am working on. You have to make your own fresh ginger juice. Ginger powder not nice - bitter only for cooking.

Root ginger is easy, wash dont peel, cut into small pieces and put in kitchen liquidiser . Sieve the juice into bottles (use old PET lemonade plastic bottles). Leave it aside at room temp for a few days. Tip squeeze the bottle then close cap and you will notice the CO2 developing as it ferments from wild. You can make a Ginger Bug google it. throw some cold black tea in your wort say 2 tbsp leaves per gallon. Try and use loose leaf tea - they throw any old rubbish in tea bags (aka sweepings off the floor)

 

[Miraculix]

Won't work as a preservative.

 

[z-bob]

I've brewed several no boil beers with a hop tea on the side. It works, it just tastes different.

I've done that once. It was good, I just haven't gotten back around to doing it again. My friends *really* liked it. It was pretty murky looking, and probably would not have stored well with all that excess protein but it didn't have to store well because we quickly drank it all

It was a good way to brew in the house during summer, and with a short brew day.

 

[robint]

Won't work as a preservative.

Agreed, not long term, ok for a few weeks in cool climate. you can always put a camden tablet in 1L bottle

 

[robint]

Re preserving bottle brew. In the far east, its customary to see crates of lager stood out in a dealers yard for weeks in the blazing sun. Ambient temp 35C but can go down to 10C at night. In direct sun bottles of lager can get too hot to hold. I wonder how they manage to keep the contents drinkable under those extremes. The ABV is usually 6-7% btw

 

[Miraculix]

Re preserving bottle brew. In the far east, its customary to see crates of lager stood out in a dealers yard for weeks in the blazing sun. Ambient temp 35C but can go down to 10C at night. In direct sun bottles of lager can get too hot to hold. I wonder how they manage to keep the contents drinkable under those extremes. The ABV is usually 6-7% btw

They are usually pasteurised through heat treatment or very fine filter. There is nohing in those bottles that can multiply.

 

[robint]

They are usually pasteurised through heat treatment or very fine filter. There is nohing in those bottles that can multiply.

Of course, Big Brewers push their stuff through a continuous pasteurizer - obvious - why didnt I think of it? Big Brew Corps dont want you to know this - pushing your pint up to 65C before its bottled.
Thats not very homebrew is it.?

Here is me striving for natural flavours and advocating for non-boiled worts that dont lose those delicate aromatics that evaporate rapidly above 70C

It explains why savoury sense (nose) is mostly lacking in commercial products (but may be added with artificial chemicals just before bottling.

I never forget the amazing blast of fresh blossom scent I experienced from my pals elderflower wine

Joe Public is serious cheated these days IMHO just sold expensive dish water (compared with Belgian Beers OMG)