60 Vs 90 Minute Boil

[leigh1919]

Most of my recipes call for 90 minutes boil - but i have seen some on here advocating a 60 minute boil. What difference does he time of boil make to the end result ?

[Bru4u]

I think you get a smoother pint after 90 min boil, somthing to do with the protein braking down, the hops also seem less harsh, could be in me head, but I always do a 90 min, I'm sure someone will pop along for the scientific explaination.
At the end of the day it's probably a personal thing, try both on the same recipe and see which you prefer.
Bru

[DarloDave]

i only ever do 60 minute boils, due to it getting too steamy, but im moving in a couple of months, so that'll change then, and ill see what difference it makes.

[Aleman]

I would guess that if you had a very vigorous boil then you can 'get away' with a 60 minute boil, as I try and keep my evaporation rate (my only measure of thermal loading) down to around 10% per hour . . . I find that I do not get a good hot break, at that point and need to boil for an extra 30 minutes, otherwise the beers can suffer from a chill/protein haze

At the moment I'm trying to work out how to construct a calandria for my smaller boiler . . . so I can reduce the thermal load even more . . . but still get good wort movement

[leigh1919]

Thanks guys, some interesting opinions here - cheers

[tomU]

I always boil for 75 mins. Don't know why. It works though, so I'll keep doing it...

[sdcspeak]

60 min boils give you reduced hop utilisation but they are sufficient to sanitise the wort and secure the hot break (which is part of removing unwanted protein matter) so as far as i'm concerned a 60 mins boil costs you a little extra in hops, a little less in elecy and knock 30 mins off your brew day. Any other differences would be very subtle, certainly not worth worrying about early on in an AG career.

Hops run out of bittering at about 50/60 minutes and the potential exists to add unwanted flavours so although I boil for 90 mins my hops are only in the boil for 45 mins.

[sdcspeak]

Hops run out of bittering at about 50/60 minutes and the potential exists to add unwanted flavours so although I boil for 90 mins my hops are only in the boil for 45 mins.

Tinseth would disagree with that, i'd imagine Garetz and Rager would too. Certainly Tinseths utiisation figures increase all the way up to 120mins where the chart I have ends.

Forgive me, I chose my words poorly, I am looking at a chart which shows the bitterness curve escalate from 15% at about 15 minutes in to the boil, then at 50-60 mins the bitterness is at about 90%. The curve then tails off big time taking another 50 minutes to reach 100%.

The potential for unwanted flavours came verbally from a multi award winning, professional head brewer, so I am not in a position to doubt the words of wisdom that I have recieved. It is fair to say that I had never noticed off flavours when I boiled for the full 90 mins, however I have shortened the time to 45 mins in the boil, which is the maximum time that he boils his hops for. I would rather have 90% of the bitterness and the knowledge that there are no off flavours, than 100% of the bitterness and have off flavours on occasions, which I then have to spend time tracking down.

In the quest for the perfect pint, I don't see the point of quizing the pro's and then ignoring the advice that they give, although I am sure that different pro brewers will have different views and procedures.

[Aleman]

In the quest for the perfect pint, I don't see the point of quizing the pro's and then ignoring the advice that they give, although I am sure that different pro brewers will have different views and procedures.

Although it is important to realise that commercial brewery practices do not necessarily scale down to home brew batch volumes either. . . . Looking at the David Porter installations he says that 4BBL is the maximum you can get away with using single phase supply . . . which I am 'interpreting as having 1 or 2 3Kw elements in the kettle . . . so that is 6Wk in (163*4) 652L or 108L per KW . . . consider that we normally have around 2.75 KW in 25 L which is around 4 times the potential for thermal loading.

Also most commercial breweries boil for 90 minutes anyway (and in the days of old when huge qtys of hops were used they were boiling for 3 hours), if it was going to cause any problems it would be reported/noticed . . . Shorter, less vigorous boils also have the potential for not evaporating off the hop volatiles . . . and are less likely to convert the harsher hop compounds from higher alpha hops into less harsh tasting compounds.

Also in order to assist with the hot break the presence of Tannins/proto tannins are required . . . some of these come from the grain, but a lot come from the hops . . . if you are adding you hops after 45 minutes you might have a problem with protein flocculation and beer stability in the packaging.

The proof is in the beer however, and if yours is good then it works in your setup . . . Incidentally Louis Bonham and George Fix (Quiet in the back there Mr Wheeler ) had reported increased harshness in their beers when using hops added to the boil from about 45 minutes to go . . . so much so that he stopped using late additions at all . . . waiting to add flavour hops at 70C while the wort was cooling and aroma hops in the keg.

Personally I use a proportion of my hops as First Wort Hops, then choose to make the bittering addition at 60 minutes . . . The FW Hops help control foam formation, and give a less harsh flavour . . . I tend to use high alpha hops for this purpose and derive the bittering from more 'traditional' varieties

[Graham]

Although it is important to realise that commercial brewery practices do not necessarily scale down to home brew batch volumes either. . . .

You have to be careful with commercial literature because the research is done by, or funded by, the big boys - or was in the days when we had some big boys. The big breweries often have a temperature-stepped mash, protein scrubbers, a pressurised copper, and use hop pellets. Such methods are not directly equivalent to the more traditional methods, and the distinction is usually not made in the literature.

Pressurised coppers do enable short boil times, and pellet hops isomerise faster (but not necessarily more). Commercial brewers that use pressurised coppers have to perform a sudden pressure release at the end of the boil. The sudden pressure drop causes the wort to super-boil, and erupt into a foaming mass, which purges the unwanted nasty volatiles out of the wort.

Also most commercial breweries boil for 90 minutes anyway (and in the days of old when huge qtys of hops were used they were boiling for 3 hours), if it was going to cause any problems it would be reported/noticed . . . Shorter, less vigorous boils also have the potential for not evaporating off the hop volatiles . . . and are less likely to convert the harsher hop compounds from higher alpha hops into less harsh tasting compounds.

I'll second that.

Incidentally Louis Bonham and George Fix (Quiet in the back there Mr Wheeler ) had reported increased harshness in their beers when using hops added to the boil from about 45 minutes to go . . . so much so that he stopped using late additions at all . . . waiting to add flavour hops at 70C while the wort was cooling and aroma hops in the keg.

I do not disagree with absolutely everything Mr Fix said.
It is well documented that short boil times increase harshness and undesirables from the hop. The longer the boil time the more mellow the hop flavour becomes. Indeed, British brewers traditionally did not late hop for that reason and preferred to dry hop for aroma. Late hopping was something that nasty foreigners with no taste did. Even when the practice began in Britain, probably late twentieth century, it was far more common to put the aroma hops on the hop-back plates rather than subject them to any sort of boil.

In my view, the most convincing reason for a 90 minute boil is clarity. Someone on here removed three samples of wort from the boil, one at 60 mins, one at 75 mins, and one at 90 mins and posted the pictures. The difference in clarity between 60 minutes and 75 minutes was striking, and the clarity at 90 minutes better still. If you are going to boil for 90 minutes, then it is probably a good idea to boil the bittering hops for 90 minutes too.

[mysterio]

Interesting comments about late hopping in this thread. You probably wouldn't catch the Germans late hopping either. Where did the trend for a hop addition at 10/15 minutes come from, USA? Does it achieve anything that an end of boil addition can't?

I tend to do a 75 minute boil myself, 15 minutes of boiling before the hops go in.

[HantsGaz]

Just reading through the thread - I was also going to comment on my observations. GW mentions the thread about taking samples at 60, 75 & 90 mins - that was possibly me (I'm sure there are other threads). Here is the link:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=18477

The proof is in the pictures for the wort clarity, the pictures are about half way down the first page.

Gaz.

[Graham]

GW mentions the thread about taking samples at 60, 75 & 90 mins - that was possibly me
Here is the link:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=18477

The proof is in the pictures for the wort clarity, the pictures are about half way down the first page.

That's the one

[Parva]

I started with 60 minute boils for my first half dozen or so brews but I'm an advocate of the 90 minute boils now, all brews done with 90 minutes have invariably been many times better than the 60 minute boils, both in taste and clarity.

[Carpking]

I've done about ten AG brews now and always done 60 mins with Irish Moss in the last 15 mins. My beers have always been clear.