[HoosierBrew]

Very, very interesting.  Nice job!!

60 minute boils from here on out, starting with the German pils that's coming up soon.

Jon, if you're using Avangard pils for this, please report back!

I will. It'll likely be Avangard.

[dmtaylor]

I wonder how much DMS is in unboiled wort.

You definitely still need to boil hard, with no lid.  On my last cream ale, I purposely boiled weakly with the lid on, and yes I got DME.  It wasn't strong, but it's there.

[denny]

Marshall - this is EXCELLENT.

For the upcoming Pils with Best Pils malt I will cut back the boil time. Good work Marshal.

Same here.

No change for me....I haven't done a 90 min. boil in years.

[AmandaK]

Marshall - this is EXCELLENT.

For the upcoming Pils with Best Pils malt I will cut back the boil time. Good work Marshal.

Same here.

No change for me....I haven't done a 90 min. boil in years.

I was doing a 75' boil on Pilsner malt "just to be safe". Haha. Now I know that I can whittle that down even more.

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk

[pete b]

I wonder how much DMS is in unboiled wort.

You definitely still need to boil hard, with no lid.  On my last cream ale, I purposely boiled weakly with the lid on, and yes I got DME.  It wasn't strong, but it's there.

EDIT: I'm not just talking about pils here, brewing in general
But maybe for a very short time. I'm just wondering how far we can go with short boil times. There are certainly work arounds for hops utilization. Hot break happens pretty fast. What else am I missing as far as boil length? Using less volume of water to sparge takes care of gravity. Many of us (Dave here is the first that comes to mind) have found that 60 minute mashes are not necessary. We have shared a lot of methods for quickly cooling the wort, and many of us (myself included) allow the wort to finish cooling the last 10 or more degrees on its own before pitching yeast.
For those of us who could brew more often if we could do it faster this is an important question: how quickly can we brew a high quality batch of beer?
There are also some snowball effects here: If we cut boil time in half for instance, our pre-boil volume will be less and it will come to a boil faster. This is very interesting to me.

[dmtaylor]

For years I've been boiling for just over 60 minutes.  For some unknown reason, I've always waited to add my boil hops until the protein foam settles in, which usually takes about 5 minutes.  Lately I've come to the conclusion that perhaps I only need to boil for 45 minutes, or maybe now, maybe only 30 minutes.  For the past couple of batches I boiled just 45 minutes, which is good enough for hop utilization, and now, apparently for DMS as well.  Depending on desire for hop utilization specific to each batch, I might cut all batches back to 30 minutes now.  Or maybe 40 or 45.  Somewhere in there.  Because, why not.

[blatz]

For years I've been boiling for just over 60 minutes.  For some unknown reason, I've always waited to add my boil hops until the protein foam settles in, which usually takes about 5 minutes. 

i think i may shift to 70 min boils now - at least for me, with the surging hot break, its a PITA to try and get the hops that get stuck on the edges of my kettle back into the boil.  much easier to wait until the HB is over.

I don't really see much need to go lower than that - i need time to get everything together anyways...

[Biran]

Well, I eat crow. 

[toby]

All you guys are getting googly-eyed over the data, and I have one question to ask about the equipment used in this experiment: "Does that thing come turbo-charged?"

[69franx]

Just ask the 2 yutes

[a10t2]

I was doing a 75' boil on Pilsner malt "just to be safe". Haha. Now I know that I can whittle that down even more.

I do want to point out again that boil length is only going to be correlated to DMS volatilization for a given kettle setup. Marshall's kettle is able to reach 9% boil off in 30 min; if you're boiling off significantly less than that you may need to boil longer.

[AmandaK]

I was doing a 75' boil on Pilsner malt "just to be safe". Haha. Now I know that I can whittle that down even more.

I do want to point out again that boil length is only going to be correlated to DMS volatilization for a given kettle setup. Marshall's kettle is able to reach 9% boil off in 30 min; if you're boiling off significantly less than that you may need to boil longer.

Of course. I can get a turbo boil going and have a 15% boil off/hour if need be. I'm switching down to 60', still want all the hot break out of the beer that I can get out of it.

[denny]

I was doing a 75' boil on Pilsner malt "just to be safe". Haha. Now I know that I can whittle that down even more.

I do want to point out again that boil length is only going to be correlated to DMS volatilization for a given kettle setup. Marshall's kettle is able to reach 9% boil off in 30 min; if you're boiling off significantly less than that you may need to boil longer.

This is, as frank Zappa said, the crux of the biscuit.

[Stevie]

DMS does certainly exist. A few years back a buddy got a bag of malt that he used on two consecutive brews. Both rotten with DMS. He bought a new bag of the same malt and maltster, but from a different shop, and there was no DMS. Maybe he just had terrible luck.

[erockrph]

One of the things I always enjoyed about Mythbusters is that if a myth was busted, they often took the extra step to produce the desired results. A lot of the xBmt's target brewing myths and many seem to be showing no significant difference between the beers. A cool followup would be to see what it does take to actually make a discernible difference.

It seems counter-intuitive to try to make bad beer intentionally, but I think that may help those that are having a hard time letting go of the old myths. For example, if a short boil doesn't cause DMS, then what does? A covered boil? Only certain types of grain? Slow chilling? Covered chilling? I think that is the next step if you really want to drill down further.

As always, the hallmark of good science is that it prompts more question than it answers. You're doing great work, Marshall. Thanks for putting it out there for everyone!