# Cold Break Amount In No Chill Cube



## Charst (26/8/11)

Hi im pretty new to No-chilling beers and am surprised to see the amount in the Saison I cubed on the weekend. (See pic)

the grist was 90% Dingemans Pils
10% german Wheat.
bittering addition only.

1/4 tablet Whirlfloc added at 10 minutes, beer was whirlpooled about 5 mins after flameout and left to settle for another 15.

Is this a usual amount of break to expect? I can only assume i'll end up with about 16 litres of beer if I dont syphon any of it into the fermentor. 

thoughts?

cheers


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## hsb (26/8/11)

That looks like about 2-3 times as much as I get. did you drain your kettle to the bottom? any kind of screen on the pickup?

I aim to overshoot my volume by 3-4 litres to leave a little in the kettle (reduce trub) and some for a couple of PETS for starters (note to self: stop forgetting to let the wort cool before adding to PET bottles, 85C wort into a PET bottle doesn't end well!)

I just throw it all in the fermenter, but then I don't have enough to (generally) interfere with the fermenter tap. I also don't use a tap on my cube, less risk of damaging it/infection and tipping out the wort from cube, glug glug glug, is an easy way to oxygenate it all.


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## stux (26/8/11)

I've had that much before. Happens when I don't leave enough behind in the kettle


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## argon (26/8/11)

If it's all cold break... then you've nothing to worry about. Just chuck it all in. If it's hot break then try and exclude as much as you can.


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## pimpsqueak (26/8/11)

Now that I'm no-chilling I get about that much break material. How do I get less?
Do you guys just wait until the thermal currents completely stop, then whirlpool? I thought no-chilling was all about getting hot wort into the cube, not really warm wort.

When I brewed the other night, I turned off the burner, put the pot on a bench, waited and waited for the currents to subside, but it just kept moving. After 15 minutes or so, I whirlpooled but the currents seemed to stop any sort of cone forming, so I ran it into the cube more out of paranoia than anything else.


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## argon (26/8/11)

pimpsqueak said:


> Now that I'm no-chilling I get about that much break material. How do I get less?
> Do you guys just wait until the thermal currents completely stop, then whirlpool? I thought no-chilling was all about getting hot wort into the cube, not really warm wort.
> 
> When I brewed the other night, I turned off the burner, put the pot on a bench, waited and waited for the currents to subside, but it just kept moving. After 15 minutes or so, I whirlpooled but the currents seemed to stop any sort of cone forming, so I ran it into the cube more out of paranoia than anything else.



Again if it's cold break... there's nothing you can do to minimize it in the cube if no-chilling. It will just happen as the wort cools, fact of life. As for Hot break though,I's pretty easy to exclude it. I use a decent kettle fining (koppafloc) to encourage coagulation of break material prior to draining. Also, I tend to wait about 15mins after flame-out, then whirlpool for a couple of minutes, then wait another 15mins, then drain off into the cubes. I also have a stainless steel hop blocker that stops alot of the hop material and hot break exiting the kettle. A blocker is not strictly necessary, a well placed pick-up tube can be just as good. I just chose it as it suits my requirements and i never have to worry about a stuck kettle when using flowers. Actually with a hop blocker and flowers you'll exclude heaps of hot break, as the flowers themselves act as a filter.

You need the wort above 75-80C or so if i remember correctly to pasteurize the cube. It doesn't need to be absolutely boiling. So waiting a little while after flame-out won't hurt


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## pimpsqueak (26/8/11)

argon said:


> Again if it's cold break... there's nothing you can do to minimize it in the cube if no-chilling. It will just happen as the wort cools, fact of life. As for Hot break though,I's pretty easy to exclude it. I use a decent kettle fining (koppafloc) to encourage coagulation of break material prior to draining. Also, I tend to wait about 15mins after flame-out, then whirlpool for a couple of minutes, then wait another 15mins, then drain off into the cubes. I also have a stainless steel hop blocker that stops alot of the hop material and hot break exiting the kettle. A blocker is not strictly necessary, a well placed pick-up tube can be just as good. I just chose it as it suits my requirements and i never have to worry about a stuck kettle when using flowers. Actually with a hop blocker and flowers you'll exclude heaps of hot break, as the flowers themselves act as a filter.
> 
> You need the wort above 75-80C or so if i remember correctly to pasteurize the cube. It doesn't need to be absolutely boiling. So waiting a little while after flame-out won't hurt



Cheers for that. I'll wait a little longer next time and will hang a thermometer over the side to keep track of the falling temp.


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## pk.sax (26/8/11)

Someone here explained to me the same thing about it not needing to be boiling and no need to adjust the hopping if I can bring it all down to 75C or so, I do that and its all very manageable and haven't noticed any extra bitterness either.

One thing I haven't managed to do in stovetop boils is to make a proper trub cone. I always get a very spreadout flocculated trub cake and generally manage to siphon less than say.. 5% of that with the wort.


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## Fourstar (26/8/11)

pimpsqueak said:


> Now that I'm no-chilling I get about that much break material. How do I get less?
> Do you guys just wait until the thermal currents completely stop, then whirlpool? I thought no-chilling was all about getting hot wort into the cube, not really warm wort.
> When I brewed the other night, I turned off the burner, put the pot on a bench, waited and waited for the currents to subside, but it just kept moving. After 15 minutes or so, I whirlpooled but the currents seemed to stop any sort of cone forming, so I ran it into the cube more out of paranoia than anything else.




My process,

Cover with lid, kill the flame and spray the kettle with water to get the temperature of the steel down. 
Leave undisturbed for 5 mins~
whirlpool and leave for another 10-15 mins.
Cube once the wort appears bright. (break has flocculated out.)

I'm usually filling to the cube at 75-80 deg at this point.


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## Charst (26/8/11)

Fourstar said:


> My process,
> 
> Cover with lid, kill the flame and spray the kettle with water to get the temperature of the steel down.
> Leave undisturbed for 5 mins~
> ...




I didn't check the temp but my process is pretty similar. I think i'll just have to leave it a bit longer to settle out. knocking out a second batch of the same on the weekend so i'll see if there is much difference.


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## Malted (26/8/11)

How long did you boil for? With that much Pils you would need to boil for 90 minutes. Aside from DMS etc, would there be more hot break and/or less cold break after a 90 min boil than compared to a 60 min boil?


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## donburke (26/8/11)

was this wort made via biab or 3v ?

i found that the amount of trub i was getting reduced significantly when i moved to 3v

might have been a result of my crush, but a lot of flour was making it through the bag and into the boil

in my current 3v, i recirculate and leave this fine grist in the mash tun

like others have suggested, allow for your volumes and leave more wort (and trub) in the kettle

or try recirculate some of your mash liquor before you pull the bag



Charst said:


> Hi im pretty new to No-chilling beers and am surprised to see the amount in the Saison I cubed on the weekend. (See pic)
> 
> the grist was 90% Dingemans Pils
> 10% german Wheat.
> ...


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## kjparker (26/8/11)

argon said:


> If it's all cold break... then you've nothing to worry about. Just chuck it all in. If it's hot break then try and exclude as much as you can.


how do you tell if it's cold or hot break?


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## argon (26/8/11)

Hard to see it in Charst's cube, but it does look like cold break... when you see it in a glass flask or something much more transparent it's easy to tell.

In my experience (wish i had a photo... i can see it when i think of it) Cold break looks a little like a jelly fish... white and translucent, all swirly and light, easily disturbed if you move the vessel about and doesn't drop and compact quickly. Hot break is like brains or snotty pale beige fleshy looking stuff, that tends to sink to the bottom pretty easily.

Next time you brew, just draw off the last litre or so, after you've drained to your cube, into a glass bottle and let it sit over night. next day you'll know what i mean. You should see both breaks in there amongst hop debris and wort.


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## Charst (26/8/11)

Malted said:


> How long did you boil for? With that much Pils you would need to boil for 90 minutes. Aside from DMS etc, would there be more hot break and/or less cold break after a 90 min boil than compared to a 60 min boil?




I BIAB, 90 minute boil to remove DMS, Grain was double crushed. it's a lot of pils but I've been reading Farmhouse ales and Dupont Grist is 100% dingemans Pils so it's in the ballpark, Not sure about the trub levels depending on boil times but i'd take 16 litres of good beer over 19 litres of corny DMS beer so I'm not about to find out.


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## Charst (26/8/11)

argon said:


> Hard to see it in Charst's cube, but it does look like cold break... when you see it in a glass flask or something much more transparent it's easy to tell.
> 
> In my experience (wish i had a photo... i can see it when i think of it) Cold break looks a little like a jelly fish... white and translucent, all swirly and light, easily disturbed if you move the vessel about and doesn't drop and compact quickly. Hot break is like brains or snotty pale beige fleshy looking stuff, that tends to sink to the bottom pretty easily.
> 
> Next time you brew, just draw off the last litre or so, after you've drained to your cube, into a glass bottle and let it sit over night. next day you'll know what i mean. You should see both breaks in there amongst hop debris and wort.




might have to give that a crack tomorrow. not about to swirl up the settled one to find out!

Thanks for all the goss boys


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## chrisherberte (26/8/11)

Looks about the same amount of break / trub as I get in the cube (from BIAB). I'm with argon, it all goes into the fermenter, hop matter too, no finings neither. I can't see the reason for the clear wort fuss.


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## Ross (26/8/11)

Malted said:


> How long did you boil for? With that much Pils you would need to boil for 90 minutes. Aside from DMS etc, would there be more hot break and/or less cold break after a 90 min boil than compared to a 60 min boil?




If using good quality Australian or German Pils malt a 60 minute boil is quite adequate, you do not need 90 mins. As to your break question I do not know for sure, but would think it would make liitle to no difference.

Ross


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## Nick JD (26/8/11)

Ross said:


> If using good quality Australian or German Pils malt a 60 minute boil is quite adequate, you do not need 90 mins. As to your break question I do not know for sure, but would think it would make liitle to no difference.
> 
> Ross



With BB Ale Malt a 40 minute boil (vigorous) is adequate, Ross. I taste zero DMS. 

Am about to do a small batch with a 30 minute boil to see where the DMS arises. I'm now beginning to think the whole "60 min manditory" boil thing is a hangover of maximising hop utilisation.


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## Charst (26/8/11)

Nick JD said:


> With BB Ale Malt a 40 minute boil (vigorous) is adequate, Ross. I taste zero DMS.
> 
> Am about to do a small batch with a 30 minute boil to see where the DMS arises. I'm now beginning to think the whole "60 min manditory" boil thing is a hangover of maximising hop utilisation.





Best of luck with the trials, its my first crack at making really light beers so I'm sticking with the status quo, and extra half hour in a brewing day isn't the end of the world to me, but please report on your results


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## Bribie G (26/8/11)

Reviving old experiment, With cold break it starts off like a jellyfish but during fermentation it gets "curdled" and drops out to a fairly solid layer. About 18 months ago I did a double batch, no chilled in 2 cubes. I poured the clear top halves of the 2 cubes into one fermenter, the rest including all the break into the other and fermented them side by side. 
As you can see all that CB did settle out and you can see the difference in this picture.








I took the resulting beers to a club meeting and there was little difference, although the cold break brew seemed a little more "rich" in flavour to some of the tasters. 






Apart from that, pretty identical in all respects.


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## Aleosaurus cervisiae (26/8/11)

I am still confused regarding hot break and cold break. I do BIAB (only 5 so far, so not very experienced) and I do not have much trub at all. My last batch looked all floculated, but no sediment at all, so I just poured it all into the fermenter. BTW, I took some out to check the OG, and within an hour or so, all floculated stuff settled at the bottom of the measuring vessel. I used Irish moss and I chilled it in the icy bath, and temp dropped to 18C quickly, within 10 minutes or so. Are there bad things that will happen to the beer?


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## chrisherberte (26/8/11)

Bribie G said:


> Reviving old experiment, With cold break it starts off like a jellyfish but during fermentation it gets "curdled" and drops out to a fairly solid layer. About 18 months ago I did a double batch, no chilled in 2 cubes. I poured the clear top halves of the 2 cubes into one fermenter, the rest including all the break into the other and fermented them side by side.
> As you can see all that CB did settle out and you can see the difference in this picture.
> 
> I took the resulting beers to a club meeting and there was little difference, although the cold break brew seemed a little more "rich" in flavour to some of the tasters.
> ...



When you say rich, would you say more flavoursome, maltier?

I am currently listening to a podcast about staling and oxidising. Interestingly they say some break material is beneficial to yeast health but all of it may attribute to shortening of shelf life. I prefer to drink my beer than store it, for me that's not a problem.


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## Bribie G (26/8/11)

plonklab said:


> When you say rich, would you say more flavoursome, maltier?
> 
> I am currently listening to a podcast about staling and oxidising. Interestingly they say some break material is beneficial to yeast health but all of it may attribute to shortening of shelf life. I prefer to drink my beer than store it, for me that's not a problem.



Some reported a bit more hop character. I'm wondering if the cold break maybe takes some of the hop oils with it, acting as some sort of Hop Sponge, so the fermenter with all that cold break ended up with some extra hoppy compounds compared to the other one, which got released during fermentation? Pure speculation of course but fascinating. 

Early on in the life of the 2 kegs, Pollux visited on holiday and we sampled the #1 and #2 after only a week in the keg and the two brews were like chalk and cheese, almost like the difference between Coopers Red and Coopers Green. However by the time they got to the club after about a month, the differences had largely ironed out. 

I came up with a Bribie law of brewing that says that "cold break steals beer" - if you look at those two photos you'll see that if there was no cold break in #2 then you would get probably an extra litre of beer off there. Translate that to ten thousand litre conical fermenter at a commercial brewery and you can understand why they like to filter out cold break and sell it as chook feed whatever and get more beer into their valuable fermenter real estate as well - for home brew purposes nowadays I don't mind a bit of CB at all.


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## Thirsty Boy (27/8/11)

Cold break and hot break are easy.

Hot break is stuff that forms in your kettle, mostly protiens, that is created in the boil and is insoluable even at boiling temperatures. It forms chunks and falls to the bottom of your kettle. You do a whirlpool or let the wort settle - and you leave that stuff behind.

Cold break is stuff that is composed of compounds formed in the boil - but which remain soluble at high temperatures. When your wort cools down, whether you do it with a chiller or let it happen slowly with no chill. Those compunds come out of solution and begin to settle. They form very very fine particles, quickly, to start with - and depending on a few things those particle might stick together and fall to the bottom in a few different ways.

Whirlfloc/irish moss etc... Makes your hot break stick into clumps a little better and maybe settle on the bottom more solidly. But Mainly whirlfloc is about cold break. It does the same thing to cold break, but instead of a little bit... A lot!! No whirlfloc and cold break takes hours to form and ages to settle - chillers, you aren't leaving it in the kettle no matter how much you think you are. Too much whirlfloc and it forms weird gel like structures, delicate, but they dont settle. Just the right amount of whirlfloc and it forms nice sized particles that and it settles well.

OP - your cold break formed in your cube as the wort cooled down.. Its not about leaving your kettle to settle longer, the stuff you see simply was not there when the wort was hot, it appeared later. Cold break has few flavour implications (unlike hot break, its made of slightly different stuff) so the majority of brewers dont worry about putting it into their fermenter. Just tip it all in and all will be well. If its filling half yur cube and freaking you out - you're probably using too much whirlfoc, just cut back a little and see how it goes.

TB


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## MHB (27/8/11)

TB in the OP he stated he used of a Whirlfloc tablet; perhaps its a case of too little rather than too much.
A Whirlfloc tablet only weighs about 2.4 g, its dispersant (the Whirl bit) and Irish Moss so the dose was only about 0.3 g
Well under the recommended dose.
M


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## Tony (27/8/11)

When i no chill, I have a false bottom in my kettle. I let the hops settle out on this and it filters the hot break and hops with a slow drain the the cube.

I use half an irish moss tablet in a 27 liter cube, and one whole tablet in a 54 liter batch and it works well.

I just pout the entire cube, break and all into the fermenter and let it rip..... i used to try and seperate the break but noticed no difference in the beer. The yeast seems to stick the the break and it settles out with hte yeast at the end of fermentation.

cheers


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## Thirsty Boy (27/8/11)

MHB said:


> TB in the OP he stated he used of a Whirlfloc tablet; perhaps its a case of too little rather than too much.
> A Whirlfloc tablet only weighs about 2.4 g, its dispersant (the Whirl bit) and Irish Moss so the dose was only about 0.3 g
> Well under the recommended dose.
> M



ahh, missed that. Yeah, thats only about 13ppm and that's probably too little to be doing very much. In which case its not a matter of it forming what is charmingly referred to as "fluffy bottoms" which is what you get when you use too much kettle finings, but more likely to simply be that the break is in very fine particles that take a long while to settle and stir up very easily.

Thanks for picking that up - I was giving directions but pointing entirely the wrong way.


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## mjp (4/9/11)

Tony said:


> When i no chill, I have a false bottom in my kettle. I let the hops settle out on this and it filters the hot break and hops with a slow drain the the cube.
> 
> I use half an irish moss tablet in a 27 liter cube, and one whole tablet in a 54 liter batch and it works well.
> 
> ...


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