Foam skim off during boil??

[Lanky94]

Hello all.

Is there any benefit/disadvantage to skimming the foam off as the boil is approached? Does it help with clarity later on, or does it remove good stuff?

Thanks

Nathan

 

[HebridesRob]

Not sure it makes much difference. The stuff you would otherwise skim off sticks to the side of the kettle if you don't do it.

 

[Bigcol49]

Hi!
I think the jury's still out - reading through posts on this subject, there seems to be no clear conclusion. Some believe that skimming creates a clearer beer, others use a spoon to "flatten" the foam to prevent boil over, and some use a water spray to keep the foam in check. Most opinions that I've seen suggest that the foam contains nothing good, and most of it will end up as hot break material in the wort.

 

[Hoppyland]

I'm pretty sure it makes no difference at all - but I brew all-grain and I don't get much in the way of foam. Never had a boil-over. Is this an extract-related thing??

 

[Lanky94]

I'm pretty sure it makes no difference at all - but I brew all-grain and I don't get much in the way of foam. Never had a boil-over. Is this an extract-related thing??

No, its an all grain brew. The foam is very minimal too.

Think i'll just leave it be next brew

 

[keat64]

I've done 3 AG's now and each one has had a foam appear just before the boil starts.
The first brew I tried to skim it off, but didn't particularly have any equipment to do so, so skimming with a rubberised spatula was pretty in effective.
On the 2nd and 3rd brew, i knocked it back, just to stop it bubbling over.

What i did find with 2 & 3 is that once the boil starts it breaks up within 30 seconds.
On brew 4, i'm going to attempt to skim using a fine seive.

 

[cheshirehomebrew]

I used to do it on my first few brews, now I dont bother, but i do now use irish moss at 15 minutes so that might help

 

[GHW]

I started doing this on the brews I made at the weekend but frankly it was tedious so I stopped. It does disappear after a bit, presumably as noted above in the hot break.

Interestingly (or maybe not), I split a batch of wort into two boils and the second, which has far more debris from the mash (which had sunk to the bottom of the FV I had the wort in) had far more of the grey brown foam. So I'm assuming it's caused by grain debris.

If I'm right then recirculating wort through the mash should help minimise it.

If indeed minimising is needed, I've no idea if the foam impacts on final beer quality.

Which makes me wonder why I've just written all that.

 

[geetee]

Adding the first hops usually kills the foam, even in recipes where you would not want bittering you can add hops to keep the foam down. Once added the foam/scum should die back.

 

[Wardy]

The foam you get is protein from the grain. The creamy foam is caused because wort right against the heating surface causes the hot break there before it spreads when the rolling boil kicks in. During the boil the foam clumps together to make clumps of protein which then just roll about in the boil then drop to the bottom when the boil ends. Skimming foam off during the hot break will reduce the amount of protein that drops to the bottom but it isn't significant so not really worth bothering to do.

 

[Wardy]

Using a paddle to keep the hot break foam under control.

The rolling boil with hot break protein rolling about in a brew I did at the weekend.