TECHNICAL SUMMARY

The process of wort boiling

The reasons for wort boiling
were covered in Technical
Summary No 2 published in the
February edition of The Brewer
International. This feature
covers the methods used to
achieve wort boiling.
ort boiling has the highest energy
requirement of any of the brewing
processes. It can account for as much as 60%
of the total steam demand of the brewery
(depending on the type of packaging
operations). It is therefore hardly surprising
that a great deal of effort has gone in to
reducing energy consumption and recovering
energy from boiling.

Technical Summary 6
By Tim ORourke
The sixth in this series of
technical summaries for
the Institute & Guilds
AME candidates.

Wort Boiling Plant Fig. 1

Traditional direct fired kettles Fig 1
Traditionally, wort was boiled in direct-fired
kettles, often made of copper, since this metal
has particularly good heat transfer properties.
Because the heat source was localised at
the bottom of the kettle, it restricts the volume
of wort which could be boiled at any one time
to a maximum of 200 barrels (330 hectolitres)
which probably explains why traditional
breweries with larger brew-lengths used
number of separate smaller size kettles.
The principal disadvantage of traditional
direct peat or coal fired kettles are that they
are relatively inefficient in heat transfer and
tend to be labour-intensive. The heating
surface of the copper becomes very hot and
tends to promote caramelisation and burning
of the wort, requiring frequent cleaning usually
every 2 to 5 brews to ensure effective heat
transfer is maintained. High evaporation rates
were required to produce sufficient vigour or
turbulence in the boil and typical boils would
take over 90 minutes with an evaporation rate
over 10% per hour.
Kettles with Internal Heating Systems Fig. 2
The advent of steam coils and internal heating
systems allowed the production of larger
kettles, as it enabled the designers to provide
Figure 1:
Direct fired
copper

a larger heating area and, because it was

surrounded by the wort, the heat transfer was
more efficient.
In many designs the heaters were upright
and located in the centre of the kettle to give a
turbulent boil. Some of the kettles also include
base steam coils for preheating the incoming
wort, and to avoid the creation of dead spots
within the kettles.
The disadvantage of internally heated
kettles is that the heaters tend to be difficult to
clean with conventional CIP, and were often
manufactured from copper, which is dissolved
by caustic cleaning.
The internal coils in particular are prone to
corrosion, which can result in steam leaks in to
the boiling wort which are difficult to detect
and repair. Because wort circulation relies on
thermal currents within the kettle the
turbulence over the heating surfaces is
sometimes limited, resulting in wort
caramelisation, which requires more frequent
cleaning to ensure effective heat transfer is
maintained.
Kettles with external heating jackets Fig. 3
To overcome the difficulties with cleaning
internal heaters, kettles with external heating
jackets were designed. One of the most
prolific designs was the Steinecker
Asymmetric Kettle. They are generally made of
stainless steel and achieve a rolling boil
through the location of the heating jackets on
one surface.
They suffer from similar problems to the
direct fired kettles in achieving effective heat
transfer, with the higher volume kettles being
rather long and thin. They require mechanical
paddles to achieve the necessary agitation for
Figure 2: Steam heated kettle

a satisfactory boil. This design overcomes the

cleaning problems of the kettles with internal
heaters, and has a lower tendency to foul, but
it still requires cleaning every 6 to 12 brews to
ensure effective heat transfer is maintained.
These kettles are also prone to fob
formation during boiling and often use a cold
air draught over the wort surface and an
extractor fan to keep fob under control.
Kettles with External Wort Boilers Fig. 4
A more modern design uses an external heater
(external wort boiler) which takes the wort out
of the kettle and passes it through a shell and
tube or plate heat exchanger for heating.
These wort boilers achieve high heat
transfer through two phase flow and nucleate
boiling, and operate at low steam pressure (at
3.0 to 3.5 bar) to heat the boiler.
In these kettles vigour can be introduced
mechanically, by wort circulation, and the
classical 10% evaporation/hour with a 90minute boil, can be reduced to 5% to 6%
evaporation/hour with a 60-minute boil without
loss of wort/beer quality. This represents a
considerable saving in energy.
These kettles have other advantages over
internal heaters since pre-heating can start
once 15% of the total kettle contents have
been collected, allowing the kettle to boil
immediately it is full, thus improving vessel
utilization.
Since low pressure steam is used, the rate
of fouling is decreased, allowing more brews
to be processed between cleans. Typical
installations can process 16 brews between
cleans and this number can increase up to 32
brews. This decreases brew house downtime
thus improving throughput.
There are some hybrid kettles which use an
internal heater but also recirculate the wort
through an external pumped loop to improve
mixing and increase the vigour of the boil.
One of the negative aspects of external wort
boiling involves having to pump the wort,
where shear forces may damage the floc
formation (trub or hot break particles). In
appropriately designed installations this
problem can be resolved by using the natural
circulation of the thermosyphon effect. The
boiler has to be primed during the pre-boil
stage using a small circulation pump.
Once boiling is achieved the circulation
pump can be by-passed and the wort will
circulate due to the energy and change of
state resulting from the density change
between incoming wort to the boiler at 98C
and the outlet wort and vapour from the boiler
at around 105C.

Overpressure Wort Boiling

Both the internal and external boilers can be
operated with an increased over pressure
during the boil usually up to 1 bar.
This elevates the boiling temperature to

26

June 2002 The BREWER International www.igb.org.uk

streams, and a number of brewers still

reservations over quality.

TABLE 1: COMBINED WORT BOILING & STRIPPING

TYPICAL OPERATING CONDITIONS
Wort boiling
Heating up
Boiling
Whirlpool rest
Stripping

Time (mins)

Flow rate (hl/h)

Steam Pressure (bar)

Evaporation rate (%)

650
500
120

1.5
1.1
1.2

1
2
1

40
40
15
50

around 106 to 110C, which has the effect of

accelerating the various wort reactions, and
allows the boiling time to be reduced. At the
end of boil the excess pressure is released
allowing the escape of the volatile
compounds.
Over pressure kettles are often operated
with some form of vapour recovery energy
systems. The advantage claimed from this
system is that it allows a shorter boiling time
and lower evaporation rates than might be
considered necessary in a conventional
boiling system.
Combined wort boiling and stripping
(Merlin) Fig.5
Merlin is a more recent development which
uses a form of external wort boiling to boil the
wort and then to strip out the volatiles after the
whirlpool stand.
Wort is pumped from the collection vessel
across a conical heating surface, which is fed
with live steam at 0.6 to 1.5 bar, thus giving a
steam temperatures of the order of 110C. The
boiler is supplied with a large heating surface
area about 7.5 sq.m per 100 hl of wort.
The heater operates by providing a large
heating surface covered by a thin film of wort
allowing gentle boiling and rapid elimination of
aroma compounds. The system is able to
produce good quality worts with 4%
evaporation in 40 minutes.
To strip any addition unwanted aroma
compounds formed during the whirlpool stand
the clarified wort from the whirlpool is passed
over the heating cone on the way to wort
cooling. This provides approximately an
additional 1% evaporation. See Table 1.
Continuous high temperature boiling Fig. 6
An efficient way of reducing energy demands is
to use continuous wort boiling, where the
energy used for boiling is used for heating up
the incoming wort in a multistage process. The
process operates as follows:
The wort from the lauter tun, feeds into a
holding vessel where hop additions can be
Figure 3: Jacketed Asymmetric Kettle

made.
The wort runs through a specially developed
three stage, reverse flow heat exchanger and
is heated to approximately 135C
The temperature is held for approximately 1.5
to 2.0 minutes in holding tubes.
The wort is held constant at 135C by
regulating the flow rate at the inlet to the first
of two adjoining separators.
As the wort flows into the separator, the
pressure is lowered to a set level. This
enables the wort to boil and evaporate.
The latent heat (enthalpy) in the vapour is
given up in the separators and is reused in
heat exchangers I and II. Only heat exchanger
III is heated with fresh steam (or hot water).
The wort from separator II runs through a
booster pump to one of three whirlpoolcasting vessels. The effective volume of the
whirlpools should be approximately
equivalent to the capacity of one hour
throughput from the boiler.
Each pair of whirlpool vessels are filled
alternately. As one is emptied and cleaned
the other is available to receive the wort.
The higher boiling temperature of 135C
accelerates the chemical processes of:
Isomerisation of the hop alpha acids
Coagulation of the high molecular weight
nitrogen compounds which are temperature
dependent and are completed in 1.5 to 2
minutes.

An effective evaporation of around 7% is

required to remove the undesired aroma
components. Continuous wort boiling allows
the steam demand of the brewhouse to be
maintained at a constant level, thus avoiding
the peaks resulting from batch heating or
boiling of the wort.
Heat recovery is very efficient, requiring only
prime energy input to compensate for the
difference between the wort inlet and outlet
temperatures and minor heat losses from the
heat exchangers.
However, continuous wort boiling is difficult
to manage with a number of different wort
Figure 4: External
wort boiling with
Thermosyphon

Wort stripping
One of the principle functions of wort boiling is
to remove unwanted volatiles such as hop oils
and DMS (dimethyl sulphide) which come from
the raw materials. Stripping of volatiles can
often be the rate determining step for wort
boiling and any reduction in boiling time or
evaporation rate will have an adverse effect on
the level of volatiles remaining in the beer.
Similarly some volatiles, DMS in particular,
continue to be formed in the hot wort after
boiling is completed and the levels build up in
the wort prior to cooling.
The removal of unwanted volatiles after
boiling can be split into two stages:
The first stage takes place in a conventional
wort kettle, where the wort is boiled or heated
to boiling point and the volatiles are removed
with the water vapour evaporated,
The second stage occurs after wort
clarification and before wort cooling, when
the volatiles are stripped from the wort in a
stripping column. The wort leaving the
stripping column has the same or even a
lower level of undesired wort aroma
compounds compared to a conventionally
boiled wort.
Wort stripping should take place after (hot)
wort clarification (e.g. whirlpool) and wort
cooling. In the normal process wort volatiles
continue to be formed after the end of wort
boiling during the hot wort stand (clarification
and cooling). However, in the absence of
evaporation, they are no longer eliminated.
Wort stripping is an effective method of
removing some of these volatile substances.
The Merlin wort boiling system offers a way
of stripping the volatiles after the whirlpool
stand.

Factors affecting boiling efficiency

Wort boiling relies on the efficient transfer of
energy from the heating source in to the wort.
The efficiency is influenced by a variety of
design characteristics such as:
heating area
material of construction
steam pressure (which directly relates to
temperature).
Traditional kettles were made from copper
(hence their name) and copper has a much
better heat conductivity than stainless steel
(the current preferred material of construction)
see Table 2.
However as each brew is boiled small
deposits of caramelised wort along with
precipitated mineral from the hardness in the
water are deposited on the heating surface
building up a fouling layer, which acts as a
barrier to heat transfer. This fouling layer has a
much greater effect on heat transfer than any
material of construction and is the principal
resistance to heat flow. The formation of
fouling on the wort side of the heater results in
a steady fall off in heat transfer with each brew
which can be followed by a decrease in
evaporation. See Figure 7.

The BREWER International www.igb.org.uk June 2002

27

TECHNICAL SUMMARY

TABLE 2: THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY k FOR DIFFERENT

MATERIALS OF CONSTRUCTION (W/mC)

Copper (pure)
Ferritic Stainless Steel
Austenitic Stainless Steel

20C

100C

200C

300C

396
25
16.3

379
25.5
17

374
17

369
27.5
19

The key factor in reducing fouling include:

Soft water (ie; low hardness/ carbonates)
Whole hops (rather than pellets or extract)
Lower wort original gravity
Low differential heating temperature (hence
moderate heat flux)
Avoiding excessive energy input, especially
short term peaks
Thorough mixing of liquid adjuncts prior to
entering the heater
Turbulent nucleate boiling (rather than film
boiling).
It follows for any kettle processing more than
one brew between cleaning, and boiling to a
constant time, there will be a difference in
evaporation rate between the first and the final
brews.
To ensure a constant evaporation is
achieved, some systems control wort boiling
by the mass of steam delivered. This can be
integrated so that it is evenly supplied through
the allotted boiling span by means of
proportional steam control value, thus
ensuring that the evaporation rate is constant
regardless of copper volume.
Other systems control evaporation rate by
the increase in original gravity or decrease in
wort volume, or a combination of both
systems.

Reducing the energy consumption

during wort boiling
All the sensible heat supplied to heat the
incoming wort from lauter transfer (around
78C) to boiling (at just over 100C) will be
Figure 5: Wort boiling combined
with wort stripping ( Merlin system)

FIGURE 7: FALL OFF IN EVAPORATION WITH SUCCESSIVE BREWS

BETWEEN A CLEAN

recovered from
wort cooling
through the heat
exchanger or
paraflow.
It is generally the
energy supplied to
evaporate the
% evaporation from a standard boil for each brew as measured from the
water (plus
weight of steam supplied. Source: ORourke The Brewer 1984.
volatiles) from the
wort which is not
process using either mechanical vapour
so easily recovered. The best way to reduce
recompression (MVR) or thermal vapour
this energy demand is not to use it in the first
recompression (TVR).
place, and there has been a gradual reduction
in evaporation rates from 10 to 12% per hour
Summary
for a 90 minute boil (amounting to a total of 15
Wort boiling has the highest energy demand of
to 16% evaporation per hour) to 5 to 6%
all brewing operations, and hence has been
evaporation for 60 minutes. This has been
subject to considerable research into ways of
brought about by designs and process control
reducing its energy consumption. The prime
changes detailed above.
energy used to heat the wort to boiling point is
There are a number of ways in which the
recovered through the wort coolers for re-use
brewer can recover or re-use the energy used
in brewing.
during evaporation.
It is the energy used to evaporate the water
A number of heat recovery systems produce
which is more difficult to conserve. Over the
hot water and the effectiveness of the system
last three decades evaporation rates have
depends on the brewery being able efficiently
fallen by a factor of three, through better
to utilise the low grade hot water recovered.
process operations and improved kettle
The typical schemes used recover the latent
design. The opportunity for further decreases
heat of evaporation from the wort boiling
no longer exists and brewers are looking at
process may be grouped into three types:
ways of recovering the energy used in
1. Recovery of energy for use outside the
evaporation and either recycling it in the
brewhouse, e.g., either by a simple condenser
boiling process or using it as a source of
system exporting hot water or using
energy for other processes in the brewery.
absorption refrigeration;
2. Recovery of
energy for use in the
brewhouse, e.g.,
Further Reading
using hot water from
1. Moll Beers and Coolers
a vapour
2. Hough, Briggs and Stephen Malting and
condenser/energy
Brewing Science
store system for wort
3. O`Rourke The Brewer 1994
preheating prior to
4. Wilkinson R. Ferment p 397 Vol 4 No6 Dec 1991
wort kettle;
5. European Brewery Convention Manual of Good
3. Recycling energy
Practice Wort Boiling and Clarification.
within the wort boiling

Figure 6: Continuous wort boiling system.

28

June 2002 The BREWER International www.igb.org.uk