[Robert]

My own personal pet peeve is when I hear mention of the flash point of hop oils as if it has any relevance to brewing, or the thought that hop oils instantly "flash off" in boiling liquid. Flash point is a measure of flammability and vapor pressure of a pure liquid at a given temperature. It has no bearing whatsoever on oils that are dissolved at a low concentration in boiling water.

I've never seen a spontaneous flame appear above my boil kettle, and I am pretty sure I have had higher concentrations of hop oils in my brew kettle than most other brewers.

There was an NHC presentation years back by a hop guy who talked about the low flash points of the oils.
Sounds like someone is confusing flash point with boiling point/vaporization point.  Obviously some hop oils are volatile at room temperature, or else we wouldn't smell them.  They also can get driven off in the boil.  So I think that may be what the person is thinking, but you are correct that wouldn't have anything to do with water solubility.

An accidental combination of two unrelated phenomena.

There was an NHC presentation years back by a hop guy who talked about the low flash points of the oils. That got it going.

Myrcene doesn’t get into beer unless you dry hop. It’s boiling point is ~330F, so it isn’t boiling off.

I have frequently repeated the idea that low boiling point hop oils get boiled off if added to the wort at or above hop-stand temperatures of (my target) 170*f.

But in doing some research into distillation I came across a thread similar to this one where the author was trying to dispel a myth that one could get the temperature of the wash up to just the boiling point of ethanol (173.1*f), and below 212* and by so doing, one could just have pure ethanol being boiled off.  Apparently this is incorrect.  The WHOLE thing boils or none of it does.

Which now has me wondering about hop oils 'boiling off' at any point when the wort is not actually boiling.  In other words why not add them at flame out rather than chilling to 170* or whatever?  Someone with more science education than me may need to step in here...

This reminds me of the debunked but still ubiquitous cooking myth that alcohol is boiled off from cooking liquid containing wine, brandy etc.  The liquid boils off, and reduces in volume, but the remaining liquid retains a large portion of the alcohol because the water and alcohol are intimately bound together. Counterintuitively, flambés retain the largest portion of alcohol.  Perhaps there is something in the research on this that could be applied to hop oils.

[denny]

In the interest of harmony, this will be my only post to this thread.

[el_capitan]

In the interest of harmony, this will be my only post to this thread.

Mee mee mee mee! Moo moo moo moo. You can't tell, but I'm harmonizing with you,  D-man.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-J727AZ using Tapatalk

[bayareabrewer]

theres plenty of things homebrewers dont need to bother with that pros have to because of scale.

[denny]

theres plenty of things homebrewers dont need to bother with that pros have to because of scale.

scale and customers and profits....

[Stevie]

theres plenty of things homebrewers dont need to bother with that pros have to because of scale.

Absolutely true, but many processes we adopt in some fashion. Like hop stands/whirlpool.

[Wilbur]

My business plan goes something like:

• Brew beer
• Drink beer
• ....
• Profit!

[bayareabrewer]

theres plenty of things homebrewers dont need to bother with that pros have to because of scale.

Absolutely true, but many processes we adopt in some fashion. Like hop stands/whirlpool.

I dont know many homebrewers stressing out about mash bed impaction because of the 2000 pounds of barley they just loaded in their tun or sheer stress on wort due to industrial pumps.

[Big Monk]

theres plenty of things homebrewers dont need to bother with that pros have to because of scale.

Absolutely true, but many processes we adopt in some fashion. Like hop stands/whirlpool.

I dont know many homebrewers stressing out about mash bed impaction because of the 2000 pounds of barley they just loaded in their tun or sheer stress on wort due to industrial pumps.

Before we willfully obfuscate my point away:

The myth I’m talking about is the one that states that commercial practices in general don’t apply to homebrewing. I disagree with that myth, not the fact that we don’t care about some commercial practices and processes like mash impaction.

For the record, and to my earlier point, mash impaction is RELEVANT, like all brewing processes at any scale are, yet it doesn’t APPLY at our level. Which is fine and a perfectly reasonable observation for anyone to make. My beef is more with the dismissal of commercial brewing knowledge as not applicable.

Of course this is just my opinion though. Take anything I say with a grain of salt...

[Robert]

My business plan goes something like:

• Brew beer
• Drink beer
• ....
• Profit!

Everything I need to know about business I learned from the underpants gnomes. I hope that was a South Park reference.   If not I feel really embarrassed having typed the words "underpants gnomes."

[Stevie]

theres plenty of things homebrewers dont need to bother with that pros have to because of scale.

Absolutely true, but many processes we adopt in some fashion. Like hop stands/whirlpool.

I dont know many homebrewers stressing out about mash bed impaction because of the 2000 pounds of barley they just loaded in their tun or sheer stress on wort due to industrial pumps.

I said many processes and listed one example.  I didn’t say all.

[klickitat jim]

theres plenty of things homebrewers dont need to bother with that pros have to because of scale.

Absolutely true, but many processes we adopt in some fashion. Like hop stands/whirlpool.

I dont know many homebrewers stressing out about mash bed impaction because of the 2000 pounds of barley they just loaded in their tun or sheer stress on wort due to industrial pumps.

Before we willfully obfuscate my point away:

The myth I’m talking about is the one that states that commercial practices in general don’t apply to homebrewing. I disagree with that myth, not the fact that we don’t care about some commercial practices and processes like mash impaction.

For the record, and to my earlier point, mash impaction is RELEVANT, like all brewing processes at any scale are, yet it doesn’t APPLY at our level. Which is fine and a perfectly reasonable observation for anyone to make. My beef is more with the dismissal of commercial brewing knowledge as not applicable.

Of course this is just my opinion though. Take anything I say with a grain of salt...

Mash impaction absolutely is a thing in my brewery. If I run my pump flow wide open it takes about 5 seconds to stick. But I don't have or need rakes, and my lauter time is about 10min rather than 60-90

[BrewingRover]

By the progression of this thread, maybe a bunch of the urban legends have died, like they put peat in Scottish beer, bock means bottom of the tank, German beer is thick, etc etc

Bert Grant said Scottish ales have peat, because he used it and he was Scottish

[klickitat jim]

By the progression of this thread, maybe a bunch of the urban legends have died, like they put peat in Scottish beer, bock means bottom of the tank, German beer is thick, etc etc

Bert Grant said Scottish ales have peat, because he used it and he was Scottish

Good enough for me.

[Big Monk]

theres plenty of things homebrewers dont need to bother with that pros have to because of scale.

Absolutely true, but many processes we adopt in some fashion. Like hop stands/whirlpool.

I dont know many homebrewers stressing out about mash bed impaction because of the 2000 pounds of barley they just loaded in their tun or sheer stress on wort due to industrial pumps.

Before we willfully obfuscate my point away:

The myth I’m talking about is the one that states that commercial practices in general don’t apply to homebrewing. I disagree with that myth, not the fact that we don’t care about some commercial practices and processes like mash impaction.

For the record, and to my earlier point, mash impaction is RELEVANT, like all brewing processes at any scale are, yet it doesn’t APPLY at our level. Which is fine and a perfectly reasonable observation for anyone to make. My beef is more with the dismissal of commercial brewing knowledge as not applicable.

Of course this is just my opinion though. Take anything I say with a grain of salt...

Mash impaction absolutely is a thing in my brewery. If I run my pump flow wide open it takes about 5 seconds to stick. But I don't have or need rakes, and my lauter time is about 10min rather than 60-90

Interesting Jim. I personally think shear stresses from pumping are possible at our level too. To the point: a lot to be learned from commercial brewing.