Coagulation of protein and albumin -- how to ensure clean hot break

It's around somewhere. I'll take a look tomorrow if I get a chance.

Looking at Amazon, I'm more upset about not knowing where that book is. $149 these days!

 

I almost posted a similar message. Glad you have pictures. Some people equate the initial foaming with hot break. It's not. Even extract batches will have that, and extract doesn't have the proteins to form a substantial hot break, because it has been remove by the process of making the extract.

 

I know what hot break is and I obtain it as my wort comes to boil. You may refer to it as “egg drop soup” if you like; I simply call it hot break.

Cheers!

 

So are you saying that the foam that threatens to boil over is the true hot break or not? I believe @herrburgess is saying not, and I agree with him.

 

I will take a photograph next batch.

Cheers!

 

Below is some verbiage from the online book How to Brew. I am pretty sure that I have read this section before but that was a very, very long time ago. I took note that John Palmer also uses the description of “Egg Drop Soup”.



7.2 The "Hot Break"





A foam will start to rise and form a smooth surface. This is good. If the foam suddenly billows over the side, this is a boil-over (Bad). If it looks like it is going to boil over, either lower the heat or spray the surface with water from a spray bottle. The foam is caused by proteins in the wort that coagulate due to the rolling action of the boil. The wort will continue to foam until the protein clumps get heavy enough to sink back into the pot. You will see particles floating around in the wort. It may look like Egg Drop Soup. This is called the Hot break and may take 5-20 minutes to occur, depending on the amount of protein in your extract. Often the first hop addition triggers a great deal of foaming, especially if hop pellets are used. I recommend waiting until the Hot break occurs before doing your first Hop addition and timing the hour. The extra boiling time won't hurt.

 

Sure, but extract also foams up, and it doesn't contain significant amounts of the proteins that make hot break. When I boil DME for starters (usually Muntons, but other brands too), it foams like crazy, but then the foam subsides and there is no "egg drop soup," i.e. clumps/flakes/globs of coagulated proteins left. This is not surprising, because the hot break has already happened during the boil that processed the extract.

My point is that you can get significant foaming without getting significant hot break.

 

I obtain hot break when I bring my wort up to boil.

Maybe others don't; I really don't know.

Cheers!

 

He's saying that the cell wall polysaccharides need to be uniformly broken down, the main concern being beta glucan. In addition, if there is adequate FAN, you can skip the protein rest. As I indicated before, proteolysis is almost completely taken care of in malting. However, a lower temp rest will create more FAN.

If either one of those two is lacking, a lower rest is recommended. That being said, in my experience this isn't the case with modern malts. Keep in mind that article was written 20+ years ago. Malt has changed since then. A lot.

 

http://www.weyermann.de/usa/gelbe_Seiten_usa.asp?snr=1&idkat=1297&umenue=yes&idmenue=269&sprache=10

the ph is listed as 3.4-3.6 so I am assuming there is a calculator out there that will work with the % used. BrewCipher? : )

 

I'm not sure what point you are making with the link. Could you elaborate?

 

See ninja edit : )

 

Thanks. It could be useful, if it stated the conditions, i.e. how much malt in how much (presumably distilled) water. BrewCipher (and MpH, whose water models BrewCipher uses), assumes a 3% lactic acid strength by weight. People can (and I think have) debate(d) whether 3% is the right value, but if it's not, it's probably because of variation between acid malt batches, which is the main reason I tend to recommend that people use bottled lactic acid rather than acidulated malt.

 

All good advice. But as with everything in brewing there are tradeoffs. Fixing one problem often results in another. So you really need to look at the entire process to pinpoint what will work best.