Author: Marshall Schott

We’ve all been there– the wort has been produced and added to the kettle, it’s time to commence boiling and add hops to the wort, back is turned to help a kid or grab a beer or watch TV, when suddenly molten hot stickiness erupts out of the kettle, plastering itself to anything it touches, singeing skin, and causing the significant other to question the merits of this obviously messy hobby.

Boilovers are the bane of many a homebrewer’s existence, one I’ve seen people attempt to deal with in some pretty creative, sometimes humorous, ways, many of which I’ve tried. While some brewers swear by spraying water over the wort at first sign of hot break, I’ve tried this and it didn’t work very well. One method that worked better was blowing the wort as it started to foam, but this always led to me being very lightheaded, which increased my risk of injury… plus, it just looked weird. What I hated about both of these options is they required me to be far more attentive than I’d prefer while brewing, meaning I had to sacrifice clean-up (drinking) time to monitor the boil. No thanks.

A few years back, I started poking around on the web, searching for ways commercial breweries deal with this problem. This led me to a thread on a pro brewer forum (I forget which one) where a dude was talking about how he hadn’t experienced a boilover since he started using an “anti-foam agent.” My interest was piqued so I went to and I searched MoreBeer.com for anti-foam. I landed on the page for FermCap-S, which claimed to eliminate the risk of boilovers. Interested and surprised that a vial of this stuff only cost $4, I threw it in my shopping cart with enough other stuff to qualify for free shipping.

While making a starter the following week for an upcoming brew day, I had the idea to add some of this milky substance to see if it really worked. Did it ever! I boiled 3L of wort in a 5L flask without a single drop escaping, barely any foam forming at all.

The following weekend, I made a 12 gallon batch with a pre-boil volume of 13.5 using my 14 gallon kettle. Per the instructions on the bottle, I added 26 drops of FermCap-S and crossed my fingers.

The boil started and the hot break just seemed to magically disappear. I was ecstatic, I was amazed… I was worried. As the boil proceeded, I started wondering what the hell I just put into my wort and how it might effect the finished beer. Would it have an impact on fermentation, flavor, head retention? Was it going to give me cancer?!

The finished beer fermented as usual and came out great, no noticeable degradation in foam or flavor. Still, I was curious, so I did some research and discovered a few interesting things. First, FermCap-S works by decreasing the surface tension of the boiling wort, meaning any bubbles created during the boil immediately burst. This sounded oddly familiar. As I kept digging, I found that this potion was nothing more than polydimethylsiloxane, a silicone based liquid remarkably similar to another anti-foaming agent commonly referred to as Gas-X. Yep, the stuff used to reduce bubbles in my gut is basically the same stuff used to do the same in my beer. There was some stuff about how the FDA recommended filtering beers that used FermCap-S, followed by a plethora of opinions contending it readily drops out of beer naturally and, even if it didn’t, would cause no physical harm given the amounts used. I also read some opinions suggesting use of FermCap-S actually improves head retention due to… well… something about proteins not breaking down.

It’s been 3 years since I started using FermCap-S, it goes into every starter and batch of beer I make as a matter of course. Was it worth the cost? Well, I make quite a bit of beer and I’m barely 3/4 the way through my first 1 oz bottle of the stuff. I realized the 2 drops per gallon recommendation is a tad overboard and now use 1 drop per starter, 3 drops per 5.5 gallon batch, and 5 drops per 11 gallon batch. Boilovers are a thing of the past in my brewery. Can I get a hallelujah?!

I know some folks who also like to use FermCap-S in their fermentor, claiming it helps keep blowoffs at bay. In my experience, it doesn’t work nearly as well as in the boil, though a couple drops at high krausen does seem to have a moderate impact. I’d imagine the results might be different for those who ferment in buckets, as dropping FermCap-S in multiple spots would potentially be more effective.

| THE VERDICT |

If you make beer at home, you should have FermCap-S in your tool bag, plain and simple. It’s cheap, effective as hell, and lasts a long time. Whenever I see someone spraying water or blowing on their boiling wort, my first thought is that they likely haven’t heard of this amazing product, so I tell them about it, touting it more than perhaps any other item in my brewery.

If you have thoughts about this Short & Shoddy brew, please feel free to share in the comments section below!

New Brülosophy Merch Available Now!

Follow Brülosophy on:

If you enjoy this stuff and feel compelled to support Brulosophy.com, please check out the Support page for details on how you can very easily do so. Thanks!

Advertisements

Share this: Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Tumblr

Email



Like this: Like Loading...