So I am wondering now, what exactly is the reason for chilling wort as quickly as possible down to below 100 degrees? Is it for reasons of taste, or is it for reasons of keeping bad things from growing in the wort. I’m asking because I am about to make a 10 gallon batch and it will be a challenge due to the gear I have. I may need to use 2 kettles and I think I may have a problem just managing to take the time to ice bath the both. If rapid chill is done for reasons of flavor and beer quality then I need to find a way to do it. But if it’s to avoid unwanted contamination I think that’s unlikely since as long as the lid is on cant we say that we have a sterile environment. If I shut off the boil and cap the pot I would think the residual heat would kill off any living thing that may contaminate the wort, am I correct?
It is mostly for fear of contamination but also for certain hop flavors/aromas. What you are proposing to do is called the “no chill”. Many advocates of it and it works. That said, I think the price of copper has come down and would just as soon advise you to pick up a coil and be done with it. It’s one of those “why did I put off so long” things…
I had a small emergency come up one brew day and had to leave an ESB wort in the kettle for almost 12 hours outside in 40 degree weather. I just put the lid on and left it. I racked it to the fermenter next day…warmed it up a bit to upper 50s and pitched. Turned out fine.
Here is a link to an interesting write-up on No Chill brewing:
Great link! I dig that guy. No BS…
Very good link. Points out the two items that I had always assumed were the problems with no-chill, but didn’t have any real evidence how real. Higher bitterness due to prolonged contact between the hot wort and the hops, and lack of clarity. My experience was that the clarity of my beers improved when I stopped chilling my kettle in a sink and instead bought a plate chiller, and assumed that was the cause, but wasn’t 100% certain. Rapid chilling should promote better cold break as it shocks the proteins into coagulating, but there are a lot of things that “make sense” and don’t end up working quite that way in practice. Glad to hear some more corroborating evidence.
That was a good link. I used to chill my lagers as far down as I could go with tap, then let sit over night before pitching. It works and doesn’t cause haze issues, but nowadays, I really like chilling down right away so I can aerate and pitch the yeast. Don’t like waiting around for that most important step.
Hi,
Living in Central California the drought is a real problem plus my water comes from a well and during the summer is 95+ degrees from the forcet. For these reasons my brewing buddy and I tried no wort chilling last summer having read an article about it in BYO magazine. We have since brewed over 12 10 gallon batches with this method all of which have turned out great. We took several examples to our last monthly brewing club meeting for evaluation. We did not tell anyone about the no cooling before tasting. All of the beers were as crystal clear as can be and tasted great - we received numerous compliments. Afterwards we ‘revealed’ our secret much to everyone’s surprise.
As for excessive bitterness we did experience this on our very first batch. I did some reading, especially on the Australian forums (Australia also has a water shortage problem and no wort chilling is common practice over there) and next time delayed the first hop addition by 20 minutes. Additionally we extended the keg conditioning to 4 weeks. Excessive bitterness gone!!!
We see no reason to go back to chilling the wort. Saves time on brew day and lots of water with, in our experience, absolutely no ill effects on the beer.
[quote=“ianjwebster”]As for excessive bitterness we did experience this on our very first batch. I did some reading, especially on the Australian forums (Australia also has a water shortage problem and no wort chilling is common practice over there) and next time delayed the first hop addition by 20 minutes. Additionally we extended the keg conditioning to 4 weeks. Excessive bitterness gone!!!
We see no reason to go back to chilling the wort. Saves time on brew day and lots of water with, in our experience, absolutely no ill effects on the beer.[/quote]
Excellent!
I always put my hops in hop bags. So I could easily remove the hops at flame out.
Me too. And I did remove the bag on the one mentioned above.
No chill can work but I think you’d be hard pressed to replicate the late hop IPA magic as well as late additions in other beers without getting under isomerization temps quickly. Huge difference between getting the wort down to a reasonable degree (half chill) and no chill. Even with warm tap water you should be able to get under isomerization temps fast and get some decent cold break. It’s dropping it to fermentation temps that uses all the water. Let’s not forget boiling temp wort is rather dangerous to handle too. The ingenious homebrewer could easily find a way to get the wort down to a reasonable degree via rainwater/pump, frozen water in milk jugs, iced prechiller, etc.
