How do I prevent a boil-over?
Boil overs can be a real problem when brewing some beers, especially the high protein ones like wheat beers. To prevent boil-overs and the sticky aftermath, here are some simple suggestions.
Of course, the most obvious solution is to buy a bigger brew pot. When you are brewing all-grain beers, this can be pretty expensive; 5+ gal pots are not cheap.
Add the wort in stages. If I collect more wort than I can boil at once, just add the extra wort after the hot break has formed but before you add your first round of hops. After the hot break, a lot of those foamy proteins ( I suspect ) will have had their big display and will not cause you any more trouble. The newly added wort may foam up a bit but it should be managable. The downside is that by adding cold wort to your boil, you will very likely cool it off and have to pause the boil timer while waiting for the wort to come back up to temperature.
Stir. Stir. Stir.
A trick that I can across that works well: use a spray bottle filled with cold water. When the foamy suds keep on rising, break out your spray bottle and spritz them down like you are trying to put out a fire. You need to keep on stirring of course. This has saved me a couple of times recently. I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me earlier!
“Skim the Scum”
When you come to a boil, you can skim the foamy, scummy stuff off the top of the boil. Use a ladle and collect this stuff into a pot and add it back within the first ten minutes of the boil.
Use a straw.
Ok. This method doesn’t make the slightest bit of sence for the full-boil. If you are having trouble with boilovers when preparing wort for a yeast starter and you are using a vessle that doesn’t let you get a spoon through the neck ( like a flask ), then use a long straw a blow into the vessle to keep the foam under control.
If you have any other tried an true methods, feel free to post them in a comment.
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any suggestions for the boil over on the starter? I have been getting crazy boilovers everytime I make a starter.
I normally make my starters over the stove top and only boil for 5 or 6 minutes. I haven’t had a problem with boil overs because I just lift the pot off the heat until things settle back down. Are you making high-gravity starters? I generally shoot for 1.040.
It’s been happening with both, I used a high gravity one (wort from a previous batch) and I used extra light DME (1 1/2 cup per qt), I would get the same thing every time. I have been doing mine over the grill, but I just put a new stove in and my wife is not going to be happy if I have a boil over this fall or winter.
Well, all I can suggest to try to the squirt bottle method. As long as you boil for a least a few minutes after your last squirt, sanitation should not be an issue. I may have to hit the forums and ask around.
You might be able to avoid a starter all together if you pitch your wort on top of the previous batch’s yeast cake. I have been doing this lately and have had great success. My last one started active fermentation in less than 2 hours. Of course, your brewing schedule has to be pretty agressive to do this for more than a batch or two.. I have only been able to do this because I recently bought a number of kegs and could brew about every two weeks.
If the squirt bottle doesn’t work, let me know and I will put some more time into researching this for you.
Travis, I added a couple of extra methods to the post. I opened this topic up for discussion on this forum: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=32678
You can follow the conversation if you are still interested.