External Calandria - optimal wort outlet temperature and typical boil times

[Greatale]

Hey Folks, we recently commissioned a new brewhouse with an external calandria. New system is 60BBL. Our old brew house was a 17BBL system with steam jackets. With the old system we were typically boiling for 65 minutes.

We have maintained boil times the same and are working with wort flow rates and steam input to calandria to try to optimize the system now. We are now seeing 5 to 6 percent evaporation per hour. Wort outlet temperature from the calandria is hovering between 101.5 and 102 celcius. everything i have read so far seems to indicate that we should be shooting for a higher outlet temperature, say 104 to 105...

Looking for feedback on this and also if anyone has some good suggested relevant reads, that would be great....

if we do increase the wort outlet temperature and I am thinking we would foreshorten the boil more?

Thanks for any inputs folks.

cheers,

Gary McMullen
Muskoka Brewery

[liammckenna]

Gary:

Good little (pdf) read here

You may want to consider that the formation of certain flavour compounds (Maillard rxn.) is heightened and accelerated at higher temperatures. This can be obvious and negative to most taste panels, especially with lighter beer styles. You may wish to approach this cautiously. But, then again, destruction of DMS precursors is also significantly higher.

I would guess that 104-105 oC you would be fine. I would also think could proportionally shorten your boil if you wanted to stay within your evaporation parameters by increased thermal loading via the calandria.

Brewing: Science and Practice has a good discussion and bibliography.

Best of luck,

Pax.

Liam

[nohandslance]

Mr. McMullen.

Contact Steve Bradt at Free State Brewing in Lawrence Kansas. They had to put an external calandria in their 30bbl system and went through all the trials and learning curves of wort flows, steam pressures and issues regarding beer flavors from a new system to match the working brewery and pub that they still operate.
Steve is very knowledgeable and I am sure would lend a few opinions and suggestions.

Good luck.

Lance
Rebel Malting Co.
Reno, Nevada USA