What Temperature Should Boil Wort In Brew House
- Dec 03, 2021
- 87
- tiantai
In beer brewing systems, what temperature should I boil my wort in brew house?
We all know that water boils at 212 °F (100 °C). Chemists would clarify that this refers to pure water at standard pressure (100 kPa). Many brewers assume, given that wort is mostly water, that it also boils at 212 °F (100 °C). This isn’t the case, however. Wort boils above 212 °F (100 °C) — the exact temperature depends on the gravity of the wort in brewery equipment.
Boiling Point Elevation
If you dissolve any non-volatile solute into any solvent, the boiling point of the solution is increased. (A solute is a material dissolved into a liquid. A solvent is a liquid capable of having the solute dissolve into it. The solution is the mixture of the solute in the solvent. In wort, malt sugars, proteins, minerals from the brewing liquor and other compounds are solutes and water is the solvent.) This phenomena, called boiling point elevation, works with any solute and any solvent. For example, let’s say you had a flask of boiling mercury, and you added table salt (NaCl) to it. The melting point of salt (801 °C) is much greater than the boiling point of mercury (357 °C), so salt wouldn’t be volatile in boiling mercury. Therefore adding salt to the boiling mercury would raise the boiling temperature of the solution (mercury plus salt) above the boiling temperature of the pure solvent (just mercury).
One way to understand why this works is to consider the vapor pressure of the solution. When a pure solvent is boiling, the vapor pressure of the liquid matches the atmospheric pressure pressing down on it. Some molecules on the surface of the solvent gain enough energy to escape the liquid and enter the gas above it. When a (non-volatile) solute is added to the solvent, it lowers the vapor pressure above of the solution. It does this simply by taking up space on the surface of the solution. Some percentage of the molecules with enough energy to escape the liquid will collide with molecules of solute. lose energy in the collision, and not enter the gas. Thus, more energy needs to be added to the solution to increase its vapor pressure and the boiling point of the solution is raised.
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