I am trying to brew a beer on a weekday, and it is getting later and later,
and I am nowhere near ready. So I start to wonder... Modern computers get
things done faster by doing several things at the same time, especially
when one job needs to wait for something, the processor does something else.
Most beer receipies tell you to mash first, then sparge, then boil, and
finally cool it down and pitch the yeast. I bet most of us already start
the boil before the last sparging water has run through. I think it ought
to be possible to push this much further.
The first thing I already do is to heat up my mashing water in steps, so
that I get the first water into the malts as early as possible. Yes, it is
horribly thick porridge, but it seems to extract quite some sugars that way.
As soon as more water warms up, in it goes, up to the point when my bucket
is full... But this is trivial, and won't save me much time. I am thinking
of something more drastic:
Why not do the boiling at the same time as the mashing? Impossible, you say?
Perhaps, but still, why not?
What actually happens when the wort boils. The thing that takes time is
extracting the bitter stuff from the hops. Other things like sterilizing
the wort, solidifying some proteins etc seem all to happen pretty fast.
So, why not boil those hops in a small amount of plain water, while mashing?
And once the mashing is more or less done, pour the wort into the same pot,
so it has time to heat up to boil while you sparge.
So, my question to all ye gurus is twofold:
a) Do the bittering hops really need to boil in wort, or will water do?
b) Ignoring the bittering hops, how long do I really need to boil the
wort?
I will make small experiments (starting tonight, as it is getting late and
I haven't even started boiling yet), and post results if/when I get some.
Any and all comments would be welcome.
- Heikki
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Heikki Levanto LSD - Levanto Software Development <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
