3 Mar
2003
3 Mar
'03
10:30 a.m.
As homebrewers we sometimes do things that wouldn't happen in a
production environment. I am not aware of any commercial
system that skims the boil. Like Rick said skimming seems to
help control the boil-over which is more of an issue when you
push the size of the batch. I have heard people claim that the
floating crud combines with some of the alpha acids and reduces
the bittering effect of the hops - seems if that was really an
issue commercial breweries would skim to save on their hop
costs.
If I don't try to get too much wort into the kettle I can skip the
skimming and I find the scum gets trapped by the hops in the kettle - I
use whole hops and have a false bottom in the kettle so I have a good
filter-bed for removing hops, scum, and hot break. I haven't done side
by side comparisons but I don't think I get more haze in beers that
weren't skimmed.
Rick Larson writes:
Will asks:
--
Steve Piatz piatz(a)cray.com
Cray Inc. 651-605-9049
1340 Mendota Heights Road
Mendota Heights, MN 55120
When I was at Rick Oftel's house, I noticed
he was
skimming the boil of foam. He said something about
this stuff being responsible for causing haze. This is
something I have not really done in the past.
Any comments on the pros and cons of this method?
We always skim the crud off the top of the boil. I don't know
if it causes haze but we do it to remove the skin effect that
can cause boil overs and appears to trap a lot of hops (probably
not a problem).
If you have a big enough brew kettle with enough head space,
maybe it isn't needed. We try to maximize the brewery so
there isn't a lot of extra space.
When you fill a 23 gallon brew kettle to 22+ gallons, you don't
want it boiling all over the place.
rick