Hop bags in wort during a lengthy cooling

Ingredients
1

I had planned on brewing an all-grain five gallon batch of Fixed Gear, but the wind, the snow and the cold thwarted that. I opted to try a 3 gallon BIAB batch of Black IPA indoors. All went very well until we realized that we had a tax appointment and had to leave the house for about an hour - right at the chill phase of the operation. It was 26 degrees outside, so I lidded the pot and set it outside. An hour later, I returned and ran the wort through the Therminator - no problems.

Then this AM, as I was checking the carboy (chugging nicely, thank you), I recalled that the hop bags sat in the wort for an hour. Now before the Therminator came along, my chills would sometimes take 45 minutes, so perhaps it’s much ado about nothing. Since this is an IPA, I began to wonder if that show cooldown would have an affect of those late addition hops. Any thoughts or information? Thanks!

2

No problem at all with just an hour. When I do a full no-chill brew (which is all of my brews these days) I don’t use a bag so the hops make it into the cooling container. Some people argue increased hop bitterness, but I honestly haven’t noticed a difference compared to my chilled beers. There’s a no-chill hop adjustment schedule floating around on the forums here somewhere, I used to use this but I think the IBU difference for no-chill (or great-than-an-hour-chill, in your case) is over rated .

3

Likely will be a little more bitter than the original recipe but that’s usually a good thing! When I do whirlpool hop additions, I’ll calculate as a 5-15 minute addition depending on the length of the whirlpool and the temp of the wort.