I no chill & have been doing so for a few years. The benefits of no chill are, no water wastage trying to get your wort to pitching temp & being able to ferment when you are ready. I often have a spare fermenter but no time for brewing or time for brewing & no spare fermenter. Doing no chill allows me to brew at will, store my cubed worts & ferment when ready. I have fermented a no chill Pale Ale that was just over 12 months old & the resulting beer was fantastic. Identical to a Pale Ale chilled immediately & fermented straight away. There is so much unfounded information being thrown around on these forums, usually by those with little to no experience with this technique. Biab is another method that hard core 3V brewers like to try & make you believe that it’s a beginners technique, suitable for those with little funds & a full volume mash will produce turbid wort with poor efficiency. It’s simply rubbish & I have been brewing this way for several years & I too was a 3V Rims brewer.
I crush my grain as I did with 3V, around 0.9mm-1mm on the grain mill. This works out to be about the thickness of a credit card. I mash for 90mins, do a 78degC mash out, no sparge & hoist the bag. I get 80%+ efficiency & do a standard 60min boil. The only alteration needed for no chill is to be aware that your hops will be in contact with extremely hot wort for much longer than when you chill your beer. There are quite a lot of charts on the net that compare the two methods of hop additions. I use BrewMate software which is free & has a no chill option when formulating recipes. I also have BeerSmith 2 & BeerTools Pro but neither have the no chill option so I use BrewMate exclusively. For the sceptics out there, give no chill a go & I think you’ll find it to be a time saver & an awesome way to brew & ferment at will.
The results of this little endeavor are in, folks. To recap, I brewed a Southern English brown, used no-chill and let it sit a few days before pitchign yeast. I fermented in a bucket and went to secondary before it was completely fermented out. Kind of procrastinated on bottling, but its been two weeks and I wanted to give the beer a taste so chilled a bottle.
All I can say is, this brew has some of the best malt flavor I’ve ever gotten! I don’t know if its a matter of the no-chill and/or secondary reducing oxidation, but this is one fine beer. I will certainly be using this technique again for my malty beers.
[quote=“Crusty”] I use BrewMate software which is free & has a no chill option when formulating recipes.[/quote]Just played with BrewMate a little and they’re using the equivalent of a 15-min addition for no-chill, which matches what I use for whirlpool additions. If your software doesn’t accomodate no-chill, just add 15 minutes to each hop addition for a reasonable estimate.[quote=“tom sawyer”]I will certainly be using this technique again for my malty beers.[/quote]Thanks for the update!
Yeah I’m tempted to try a hoppy beer with no-chill, just to get a feel for what additions will be like. I use no brewing software so that isn’t a problem. I think I’m going to make a dubbel first though.
With my wort chiller erupting during my last batch…and me not catching it for 5 minutes or so and having 5.5 gallons of wort turn into 8 gallons of diluted IIPA, I am strongly considering no-chilling a 10-12 gallon batch coming up.
I’m thinking of brewing the Dry Dock SS Minnow which calls for a single addition of hops at 45 minutes. If i were to remove these hops once the boil is complete by bagging them, should I still account for an extra 15-20 minutes of bittering / utilization?
Being such a low gravity brew, I’m sure it could be knocked out of balance rather easily.
http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/dry- ... n-kit.htmlI’m also curious if bagging the late addition / flameout hops and removing prior to transferring to the no-chill container would be away to make up for the perceived loss of flavor / aroma from no chilling ipas???
I think there will still be conversion of alpha acids in the hot wort, whether you remove the hop bag or not. The suggestion above was to add the hops at 15min.
As far as loss of hop flavor/aroma I really don’t know about that since I haven’t done this with a hoppy beer. The container is sealed so volatile oils can’t really escape. I suppose they might break down though. If a beer only had a 45min hop addition, I’d say it won’t be counting on much hop flavor/aroma anyway and you should be golden.
Well I went ahead a brewed up a 10 gallon batch of the SS Minnow. It was nice to transfer hot and be able to scrub the BK while still hot, and not having to mess around with chilling wort with hot ground water while worrying about things form the air dropping into the kettle.
Both no chill containers were 64 the next am, so i promptly dumped / aerated into two carboys and pitched some wy 1968. I might add the wort to my fermenters has been the clearest i’ve had so far, with barely any break material at the bottom of the carboy.
Once I get ballsy enough, I’ll try a hoppier brew with this method. For the moment I may stick to more malt forward session brews.
While having to transfer and pitch the next day, possibly not much time was saved. I can say that the brew day seemed simpler…although carrying two molten hot containers is a pain in the @ss all its own!!
Sounds like things went well for you. I agree that handling the hot containers can be a little dicey.
[quote=“tom sawyer”]I think there will still be conversion of alpha acids in the hot wort, whether you remove the hop bag or not. The suggestion above was to add the hops at 15min.
As far as loss of hop flavor/aroma I really don’t know about that since I haven’t done this with a hoppy beer. The container is sealed so volatile oils can’t really escape. I suppose they might break down though. If a beer only had a 45min hop addition, I’d say it won’t be counting on much hop flavor/aroma anyway and you should be golden.[/quote]
I had a beer that all I used to bitter was FWH. I had a boil over which caused basically all the hops to leave the pot. That said, it still had the same bitterness as when I had done the recipe before so I would say it’s the oils rather than the hop matter that affects aroma vs bitterness (so the hop-bag removal wouldn’t make a difference).
I’ve had that happen too. I hate boilovers! But the beer hasn’t seemed to suffer.
I should mention that I have a no-chilled Scottish 80/- and a Belgian dubbel in process. So I will have additional data soon.
[quote=“tom sawyer”]The results of this little endeavor are in, folks. To recap, I brewed a Southern English brown, used no-chill and let it sit a few days before pitchign yeast. I fermented in a bucket and went to secondary before it was completely fermented out. Kind of procrastinated on bottling, but its been two weeks and I wanted to give the beer a taste so chilled a bottle.
All I can say is, this brew has some of the best malt flavor I’ve ever gotten! I don’t know if its a matter of the no-chill and/or secondary reducing oxidation, but this is one fine beer. I will certainly be using this technique again for my malty beers.[/quote]
Glad to hear it worked for you! I’ve been no-chilling now for a couple years, and I love it (still working on perfecting hoppy beers though).
Yep, the nay-sayers are funny, but it gets tiring. I’m still trying to figure out how getting near-boiling hot wort into a sanitized fermentor, and sealing it up while it is still hot is going to lead to infection? Compared to that BK sitting exposed while you are chilling it? Seems like no-contest to me.
I’m teaching a friend to brew on Sunday, decided to go with the old partial boil extract, 2 gallons of cold top-off water, and I think I’m going to re-learn to hate trying to get 3 gallons of wort down to ~ 80F in a kitchen sink. No-chill will be next up I think.
-kenc
I would assume that using the no-chill method wouldn’t be an option for beers with much pilsner malt, since the slow cool down would lead to a build up of DMS. Also, do you guys who use this method find that these beers take longer to clear?
[quote=“Taffin”]I would assume that using the no-chill method wouldn’t be an option for beers with much pilsner malt, since the slow cool down would lead to a build up of DMS. Also, do you guys who use this method find that these beers take longer to clear?[/quote]I just tasted an all Pilsner SMASH no-chill. It has been in the keg for 1 week; it already tastes great, no DMS. Just make sure you have a vigorous 90 min boil. Gelatin clears the beer perfectly.
You have piqued my interest. The scientist in me wants to make a 10 gallon batch and drain off 5 gallons for no chill prior to chilling with an IC as normal.
What do you “no chillers” feel would be a nice middle of the road style to try this with? Perhaps something low hopped and malty?
[quote=“roffenburger”]You have piqued my interest. The scientist in me wants to make a 10 gallon batch and drain off 5 gallons for no chill prior to chilling with an IC as normal.
What do you “no chillers” feel would be a nice middle of the road style to try this with? Perhaps something low hopped and malty?[/quote]Cream Ale.
[quote=“djt17”][quote=“roffenburger”]You have piqued my interest. The scientist in me wants to make a 10 gallon batch and drain off 5 gallons for no chill prior to chilling with an IC as normal.
What do you “no chillers” feel would be a nice middle of the road style to try this with? Perhaps something low hopped and malty?[/quote]Cream Ale.[/quote]
I was actually thinking of that one. I make a cream ale often and it just so happens I’m out.
I think this would be a great option for winter brewing. I’d like to avoid the HDPE and stick with stainless though, so I might give this a shot in a keg. The only thing is, I like to ferment at least 5.5 gallons so I can be sure to get a full keg. How could you get around this?
I bet I could fill a keg to nearly brimming, and then chill the remaining half gallon or so in the sink and use that extra wort as a little wake-up step for a yeast starter. I like to chill and decant my starters, and this way I could really crash that starter well, and then wake it up with some actual wort and pitch the whole 2L at high krausen the next morning when the wort is chilled.
Hmmmm… sounds like a winner to me. I’m going to give this a shot soon with a nice session beer
http://forum.northernbrewer.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=77535&start=15
. I really focus my efforts of food production in the garden this time of year, so it could be a while before I get there. In the meantime, thanks to the rest of you who are experimenting here and sharing your info.
:cheers:
A keg plus a 1gal glass jug? I suppose a corny keg would work although I would watch how much negative pressure might occur. Might be good to relieve the pressure every so often. Alhough maybe the lid seal wouldn’t be airtight in this circumstance.
Cream ale would be a candidate. Lots of malt-forward styles to choose from. Or even hoppy styles with a low flavor/aroma presence. Seems that its only the styles heavy on late additions, that present a challenge.
I agree that a proper boil reduces/eliminates the need for a fast chill. I have a dubbel that had a fair amount of pils malt in it, when it gets done I’ll evaluate and look specifically for DMS.
Maybe hitting with CO2 after sealing would cancel some of the negative pressure as it cools.
You could also attach a filter to a gas post and pop it on there.
I have no-chilled my past 8 batches in cornies. I seal up the keg, hit with a little CO2 & then place a Star San soaked towel over the poppets & lid. Just in case a little suck back occurs; as cooling will create a little vacuum. This method works well, I usually rack into my carboy & pitch yeast the next day.
