Re-Boiling Wort

[BrewHouse]

Hi All,

I have a bit of a problem. I had a major brew day yesterday. Almost 100 litres of various session ales that are now sitting in four different FVs.

The starters were all doing well but dangerously left in a corner of the kitchen floor benefiting from the underfloor heating.That is until the cats had a scrap and knocked them over.
Not good but not necessarily a disaster as the local home brew shop is only 20 minutes away for emergency supplies.At least it was but has closed down since my last visit.

So I have just ordered more online but having missed today's despatch cut off it may not be here until Friday.

That will be 3 days that the wort will be in the FVs before adding yeast.

I really don't want to risk losing all 100 litres to infection and so was planning to put it all back through the boiler once the yeast is here. This seems like the only option I have unless anyone has any other suggestions. Is there anything I should know about boiling for a second time?
Any help greatly appreciated.

Brewhouse

[Kev888]

Oops.. unfortunate!

It may be okay if your fermenters etc were clean and not much time elapses. But as time goes by, the risk increases that competitors to the yeast could gain a foothold and start changing the sugars, even if you kill them afterwards. If you have doubts about the wait, you could perhaps consider boiling sooner as well as later and/or (if you have one) boiling and hot-filling a no-chill container like the Aussies do.

To reduce the effects of a second boil, you needn't do it for the normal duration, just long enough to kill any nasties. Its possible that you could get away with pasteurising it instead at lower temperatures, which would help too, but I'm no expert on microbiological warfare so I wouldn't like to say for sure if that would be sufficient.

If/when you do re-boil, you'll probably need to add some water to compensate for the additional evaporation. It will likely also darken the beer slightly, due to further heating of the sugars. Depending on the recipe, you may want to add some late hops again, since re-boiling will drive off aroma from the previous ones (it may also turn some of the previous hop's flavour to increased bitterness but not sure if you can do much about that).

Just my thoughts anyway, I've only needed to do it once or twice so these aren't based on any great wisdom, if anyone knows better.
Cheers
Kev

[BrewHouse]

Thanks very much for the response Kev,

I took your advice and brought it all back to just boiling before adding some additional late hops as a precaution and it is all safely bubbling away now. It may end up being as hoppy as hell but will hopefully be infection free. Who knows, this may be a cock up with a very happy (and hoppy) ending.

Thanks again

BrewHouse

[dcq1974]

Was going to suggest freezing however, that's a lot of wort!