Shortest amount of time you have to boil LME for?

[phatboytall]

Whats the shortest amount of time you have to boil Liquid Malt extract for?

I'm talking about the brewery grade stuff sold by Worscester hop shop.

Will a simple 10mins to sterilise suffice? Or do you need longer to break down anything? Or is it like the kits that you can just pour boiling water over it?

[Aleman]

Ideally you would need to secure the hot break . . .. but you can get away with a minimum of about 15 minutes

[phatboytall]

Fantastic, thanks for the response!

[Brewmeister]

15 mins? I know nothing of extract brewing, but in all-grain this would not be enough time to properly coagulate unwanted proteins. Of course, maybe extract manufacturers remove them?

[Kev888]

The coagulation of proteins is part of the Hot Break that Aleman mentioned and yes, as he says, ideally you'd want to boil for long enough for that to largely complete but you can get away with less (any remaining proteins will make the beer a bit cloudy but it will still be beer).

I don't know exactly how LME is prepared, but I suspect they do something; in my extract days I found that brewing-grade LME was better/quicker to break than the cheaper healthfood-shop type stuff you could get back then, which took more like the 60mins+ that I see these days in AG boils.

Cheers
kev