Hey ya'll,
I recently converted one of my most requested Partial-Mash recipes to all-grain in celebration of building a new mash-tun. The converted recipe calls for something like 15 lb of German Pilsner and 2 lbs of wheat, and I was told by my LHBS guy that when using Pilsner, I always need a 90 minute boil to eliminate any DMS-precursors, and this is what I've always done... Now I have absolutely no clue what DMS is, why it has precursors, or why its something I might want to avoid in my beer, and my research has been less than fruitful.
So that said, I'm lautering the mash for this Pilsner-based pale ale and overshoot my pre-boil volume by like 2 gallons (my BK will hold ~4.7 gallons at the upper limit, and my batch size is ~5 gallons). So I start my boil and go grab the ol' bottle for a hot-scotchie, which I'm sipping as I have a lightbulb moment:
- Nowadays, we homebrewers brew beer using All-Grain methods as opposed to extract in order to impart fresh-bread, fresh grain flavors and smells.
- I assume that a large portion of the compounds responsible for such "fresh-beer" flavors and smells, like aromatic hop oils, are lost during the boil, and escape with the steam. This would make sense since liquid wort-extract is made by doing a super hardcore boil, and concentrating the wort, and thus has lost the majority of these volatile compounds.
So at this point, I'm planning on boiling my 4.7 gal of grain-wort down, topping off with spring water and sprinkling some extra light DME if i have to.
But what if I..... wait, what if I boiled the extra 2 gallons for like 10 minutes, did all my aroma-steep additions in this mini-boil while my main boil finishes, and use it to top-off to proper pitching volume!?
That would incredibly time-efficient (saves the 45 min. of aroma-steep time), increase my hop oil extraction efficiency (since the wort is less concentrated), would lighten the color of the beer (which is desirable for this beer), and most importantly would allow the wort to retain all those fresh-grain / fresh bread smells and flavors.
Now a buddy of mine came over and said "Your gunna get mad DMS," but when I pushed him, he admitted that he didn't really know what DMS was either and I'm wondering what sort of flavors my experiment will add to my beer. It's low in Bitterness (37 IBU) but has two big 5 minute citra and cascade additions as well as a big citra dry-hop.
Have my powers of deduction done me a disservice? I haven't had a chance to try it yet but I'm racking to secondary this evening (provided the gravity is right).
What's the lowdown on this DMS stuff?
I recently converted one of my most requested Partial-Mash recipes to all-grain in celebration of building a new mash-tun. The converted recipe calls for something like 15 lb of German Pilsner and 2 lbs of wheat, and I was told by my LHBS guy that when using Pilsner, I always need a 90 minute boil to eliminate any DMS-precursors, and this is what I've always done... Now I have absolutely no clue what DMS is, why it has precursors, or why its something I might want to avoid in my beer, and my research has been less than fruitful.
So that said, I'm lautering the mash for this Pilsner-based pale ale and overshoot my pre-boil volume by like 2 gallons (my BK will hold ~4.7 gallons at the upper limit, and my batch size is ~5 gallons). So I start my boil and go grab the ol' bottle for a hot-scotchie, which I'm sipping as I have a lightbulb moment:
- Nowadays, we homebrewers brew beer using All-Grain methods as opposed to extract in order to impart fresh-bread, fresh grain flavors and smells.
- I assume that a large portion of the compounds responsible for such "fresh-beer" flavors and smells, like aromatic hop oils, are lost during the boil, and escape with the steam. This would make sense since liquid wort-extract is made by doing a super hardcore boil, and concentrating the wort, and thus has lost the majority of these volatile compounds.
So at this point, I'm planning on boiling my 4.7 gal of grain-wort down, topping off with spring water and sprinkling some extra light DME if i have to.
But what if I..... wait, what if I boiled the extra 2 gallons for like 10 minutes, did all my aroma-steep additions in this mini-boil while my main boil finishes, and use it to top-off to proper pitching volume!?
That would incredibly time-efficient (saves the 45 min. of aroma-steep time), increase my hop oil extraction efficiency (since the wort is less concentrated), would lighten the color of the beer (which is desirable for this beer), and most importantly would allow the wort to retain all those fresh-grain / fresh bread smells and flavors.
Now a buddy of mine came over and said "Your gunna get mad DMS," but when I pushed him, he admitted that he didn't really know what DMS was either and I'm wondering what sort of flavors my experiment will add to my beer. It's low in Bitterness (37 IBU) but has two big 5 minute citra and cascade additions as well as a big citra dry-hop.
Have my powers of deduction done me a disservice? I haven't had a chance to try it yet but I'm racking to secondary this evening (provided the gravity is right).
What's the lowdown on this DMS stuff?
