Adjusting Hop Additions For No Chill - How?

[benf]

As a result of being able to do 60 litre batches, having limited keg space and not wanting 60 litres of a single batch ready to drink all at the same time, I have decided on the following approach.

Mash and sparge as per normal. Split the pre-boiled wort into two kettles. Run one kettle as per normal hop additions for rapid chilling at flame out. Run the other kettle for hop additions for no chill, into cubes method for fermenting at a later date.

So the question is, if I have a standard recipe with hops additions based on rapid chill at flame-out, how do I adjust to give as close as possible the same result through no chill method?

If this is answered somewhere else that I haven't found, please feel free to link me through, otherwise any clues would be most appreciated.

Cheers

 

[Nick JD]

http://www.brewmate.net/downloads

Click the no chill button after you enter your recipe.

 

[iralosavic]

I find the brewmate modifier closer to target when not setting it up on NoChill, but still out by a bit. The only real way is to brew, taste, take notes and adjust. Everyone's system and bitterness perception is different. I personally reduce the bittering addition by no more than 5% (sometimes not at all) and the taste/aroma additions, which I feel are where No Chilling increases bitterness, I just put into the software as about 7 mins earlier in the boil to calculate quantity, then just set it back to the actual time in the boil and just write the predicted IBU in notes.

Again from personal exp, if its a low IBU beer, I increase my degree of compensation in order to err in favour of less bitterness. If its an APA/IPA I'm not to worried.

 

[seamad]

If you wanted to simplify further with one boil, just cube hop and calc that as a tenish min addition, good for apa and some types of hop. You could also use magnum or other neutral bitterer to increase ibu if you are a little nervous of just the cube addition
Cheers
sean

 

[benf]

I'm all for simpler and did intially consider just doing the one boil but didn't really put enough thought into how to stage the hop additions over the final minutes of the boil.

For example, some of my recipes have a 10 minute addition and a flameout addition. Could it be that if I do a single boil I remove the portion of the wort that I want to cube prior to adding the10 min addition and then add the 10 min addition to the cube followed by the flame out addition a bit later? Or should I just have a go at doing 10 min addition as per normal, then at flamout cube off some wort prior to adding the flame out addition to the kettle, then add the corresponding flameout addition to the cube once it has cooled down a bit?

Sean, i think you are subbesting I cube everything and then just cube hop my 10 minute addition. Makes sense but I still want to be able to crash chill a portion to get into fermenter and away quickly. Also, if you cube hop the 10 minute addition, when would you add a flameout addition?

Thanks for your thgouths so far....

 

[mxd]

IMHO just try it with the same recipe and compare, you might find both good or the no chill to bitter, then adjust accordingly, for the first 12 months of my brewing I only no chilled and adjusted recipes by tastes/malt back bone etc.. Then I tried to adjust my hoppy recipes for No chill and didn't make a good APA for the whole time, I've just gone back to stop thinking about no chill and an APA I did I was happy with again.

 

[seamad]

With the ten minute cube hopped beer the only hops are the cube ones. The best one of mine was a citra one, no need for flameout,dry etc with that one, 35 ibu in the cube gives flavour and aroma, can always keg hop if needed.

Having said that most of my beers with lots of late hop character are now chilled after running through a hop rocket filled with flowers. No chilling produces a different beer, not better or worse, just different.

You could always pull some wort for a cube before your late kettle additions, just a bit lower og and a bit more trub. A 60 min addition isnt going to make much difference to ibu in a cube anyway.
Cheers

 

[iralosavic]

With the volumes you're brewing you don't really want to produce a beer you can't enjoy, so I'd err on the side of caution that favours your taste buds, take notes and adjust next time. For me that means around 10% less IBU from late additions. You can more or less leave 60+ min additions unchanged. I like to do 50 or 45 min bittering for light beers though, which I scale by 5% usually. This is because ill enjoy most beers more if they are less rather than more bitter than balanced.

 

[Bats]

I just add 10 minutes to my hop additions when NC.

i.e 50 mins instead of 60
10 mins instead of 20.
cube hopped instead of flame out etc.

Works for me.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

All you do is:

1 - Put your recipe into your brew software as you normally do, write down the number of IBUs.

2 - Go to every hop addition entry and increase the time in the boil by 10-20 mins. The ibu figure will naturally go up.

3 - Now go to the entry for your main bittering addition, your start of boil hops. Reduce the amount of hops until the IBU figure matches the "old" figure from your recipe as it originally was.

4 - Brew the recipe as you originally would have. DONT actually change the time you boil the hops, leave them where they were! Just use the new amount for the bittering addition

Its just an estimate though - the no-chill process will increase the bitterness of your beer, but it will depend on what hops you use, when you add them, what % aa they are. This method of using software and notionally adjusting takes all that into account. The unsure part.... is where in that 10-20 minute spectrum you personally need to make your adjustment. It will vary from brewer to brewer and will change if you change your process. Just like everything else in brewing, so its not anything unusual. I personally would start by making the adjustment 15minutes, then you just have to tweak it as you go till the results from no-chill start to match the ones you got from chilling.

I assume that brewmate automatically does something similar, but this is how you'd do it in whatever generic brewing software, spreadsheet etc etc you might be using.

That is only about bitterness though - there are all sorts of things you can do to try and mess with how hop aroma and flavour work out.

Me - i only ever make 2 hop additions. One pure bittering addition at 60mins to go in the boil and all my other hops go into the cube, loose, only ever pellets, never store the cube for more than a day or two if there is greenery in there, calculate the bittering of the cube hops as though they had been boiled for 20-25min. Thats what works for me - other people do it differently with varying degrees of success.

No-chill is neither of better nor worse than chilling... what it absolutley will be though, is different. What the difference is to you, you'll have to work out for your self. Sorry.

TB

 

[punkin]

I do it very similarly to thirsty boy.

I take a normal recipe in brewmate, write down what each addition gives me in ibu and then do a new recipe with no chill box clicked, the same ingrediennts and add the hop additions till they equal the ibu's from the previous recipe.


I no longer do ten minute additions, all the aroma hops go in at whirlpool about 15 mins after flameout. Even though i enter the bittering hops at 60 mins, i add them at 50 mins. This gets me closest to what i used to get on recipes with chilling, but stilll not as good as a chilled beer to my tastes.

Disclaimer; I have only dry or keg hopped at this stage, i haven't tried mucking round with french pressing or mini boils yet.