BeerBorg

Brewing the first batch of Hopsperiment today. I'm using Ahtanum, which should produce a nice Pale Ale, and, most important, give me a sense of what this hops brings, so I can make better decisions when formulating future recipes.

But anyway.... I was waiting for the boil to begin, and I knew the temp was over 200, but I got distracted thinking about Thanksgiving. I'm doing the turkey again this year; my third year smoking it, and I got to thinking about the seasonings I'll be using. So I started pulling out the herbs I figured I'd be using, and began sniffing and tasting, just to get a sense of how they'd work together (by the way, I'm going to be using a rub of 1/2 stick of butter, blended with salt, pepper, onion, garlic, rosemary, thyme, and basil. Apple wood for the smoke, if you're keeping score at home).

So I got distracted. And when I was done, I look over to the brewpot, and what do I see? Hot break creeping dangerously close to the edge (I doubt it would have boiled over; I had a pre-boil volume just under 4 gallons, and I'm using a pot that holds about six gallons). Still, I had a bit of a shock. I grabbed the spray bottle containing cold water and sprayed the heck out of it until the break subsided (thanks for the tip, Gymrat; I've always kept a bottle of cold water handy every brew day).

No harm, no foul. Got the first hop addition added, set the timer, and now I'm chillin'.

But I really would have felt like a dope if I'd allowed that to happen.

Haven't had that happen in a while, but it sucks when it does. One thing I miss is I used to have a combo digital thermometer/timmer I used on brew day. It had a corded probe that I would drop in the pot and set the alarm for about 208* so that I could be riminded hot break was comming and have a minute to watch it over. I think I will be picking up another next time I come across it. It was the probe that eventually went bad but for $20 I got a lot of use out of it.

Geeezz... I remember when first brewing on my eBIAB system I looked away for less than a minute and the hotbreak poured out of the 15 gallon kettle like a volcano. That cleanup added at least a full hour of cleaning up time to my brewday. Of course it also took me two other lesser spills before I learned my lesson. I'm happy to report that I haven't had a spill like those during any of my more recent brewdays.

I never seem to get much of a hot break BIAB american brewers malt. I get a nice malty smell, and the usual frothy top til it starts to boil ... but never unmanageable. I only had hot break issues when I extract brewed.

I use fermcap. Foaming is never a problem with a drop or two in the pot.

bpgreen wrote:I use fermcap. Foaming is never a problem with a drop or two in the pot.

Huge +1. Great stuff.

I did that all DME beer recently and it tried to jump out of the pot when I added it to boiling water. No way was I expecting that much hot break and later that much hot break material from DME.

My boil-over early warning system is three copper pennies in the kettle.
When the boil draws nigh ... they start jumping around and making noise.

HerbMeowing wrote:My boil-over early warning system is three copper pennies in the kettle.
When the boil draws nigh ... they start jumping around and making noise.

That doesn't make cents.
Thank you, Thank you, all be here till they ban me. Be sure to pour one for the wait staff.