After all the sugars have been extracted, the wort is boiled, usually between 60 and 90 minutes. This process sterilises your wort, and it’s during this stage that the hops are added, giving your kitchen a delicious beer smell!
At the beginning of the boil, the bittering/boiling hops are added. These hops, as per their name, determine how bitter the beer is. It takes a while to extract the bittering acids, hence the longer brew time.
Towards the end of the boil the aroma/finishing hops are added. The oils in these hops give each beer its own unique aroma. As these are the most volatile, they evaporate more easily and so are left until the end to be added.
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Reduce beer haze and improve the clarity of your final beer by adding a fining agent, such as protafloc tablets. This will lead to more proteins and tannins clumping together which will subsequently get filtered out or sink to the bottom of the fermenter. Boil finings are usually added in the last 10-15 minutes of the boil.
