Lesson 2 - Wort Boiling Theory
This lesson explores changes that occur during wort boiling. It details how these changes occur and their effects on quality. We also describe how wort boiling can be monitored.
Point of reflection – reconvene
Point of reflection – reconvene: Welcome back. So, what were your thoughts?
The wort flowing to the kettle varies in temperature so will also vary in volume as wort collection continues. This means that unless we have excellent temperature compensation on our volumetric flow meter, the volume we record at the start of the boil will not be accurate. Level transmitters fitted to kettles are also not particularly accurate and are normally only fitted to prevent overfilling. When we boil wort, we usually add things to it (hops, hop products, flavourings, finings, adjuncts) these increase the wort volume. After boiling we take things out of the wort (spent hops and flavourings and trub) and the temperature of the wort usually drops, which all reduce the post-boil wort volume. Accurately measuring the volume of wort just after boiling is also very difficult. For these reasons most breweries don’t use volume change to calculate evaporation.
We cover the most common method next.