Beer Forum

So I have been scraping all the foam that comes off of the wort when I am heating it, or during the boil. Some of it is hot break, but the very first round of foam as the wort is heating up just looks like sediment.
Am I killing my future head rentention by doing this? Or am I simply helping the beer by getting rid of potential long chain proteins, etc.?
I didn't scrape on one of my sweet stouts, and after almost a week, there is still a good amount of krausen, but that could just be from the residual proteins that I left in the wort since I didn't scrape any of it off.

Thoughts on this?
What do you guys do?

Thanks!

you know what i would do, RDWHAHB.
If im bored and nothing to do (doesnt happen very often) I might scrape some of it off, but for the most part, i just let it go. It wont hurt anything, but if you wanna scrape, by all means go for it.

I don't see any reason to remove the foam from the boil. Why risk removing some part of the flavor? I just strain out most of the sedimentafter cooling the wort and transferring into fermentor. I agree, RDWHAHB

I don't think I have ever skimmed the foam off my beer and have never had any flavor problems related to that. In addition, I FWH most of my brews so I can't skim without losing my hops.

Wayne
Bugeater Brewing Company

No foam scraping. I always scrape all the hops off the walls of my pot and put them back into the wort to get the max bittering, just did a Scottish 60 that only had a half ounce of hops, so every bit counts. I bet a quarter ounce was on the walls after the first foam up.

The foam seams to easily pick up pellet hops so I would not recommend it.

Also, I have never read any brewing book that recommends scraping foam off unless it is a Mead, and the mead experts in my club say that takes away flavor, so they do not bother.

Cool deal. Thanks for your input guys. I just remember (JP I think) talking about scraping off gunk like I was talking about. I'll just let it be from now on.
Thanks!

i almost always skim off the hot break. not so much the foam, although i do get some foam in there. it's mostly the slimy, pudding-skin junk. and i never hop until that phase of the boil is over, so that's when my boil "officially" starts. and i almsot never first wort hop or anything (i tried it once and the bitterness came out too pronounced) so that's not an issue with me.

my thing is I feel lazy if i'm not babysitting the wort the whole time. i know, obsessive compulsive... anyway, i have nothing better to do at that point so i have a beer and skim. i doubt it actually does anything but it makes me feel better, so whatever.

I'm just the opposite. I don't have the energy to mess with skimming. But, after tasting your beer in Cincy, I might have to start.