Cube chilling- possible alternative to hop additions

[Danscraftbeer]

With regards to the Argon Method I have an 'outside the square' question, feel free to shut it down immediately, or discuss heatedly!

What if you fermented out a beer (lets say an IPA) and you've dry hopped it but want some extra aroma/flavour prior to bottling. Could you draw off 3L of that cold crashed finished beer, whack it on the stove, add your priming sugar and then add what was the dry hops back in as flameout additions (via hop spider) to grab any last remaining oils from the hop mass, then pitch it back into the brew before bottling? Is that just going too far? Reuse Recycle? Discuss..

Also when you heat steep hops over 70-80c? it will extract extra bitterness from the hops. I tried it once not with finished beer but with just enough water, priming sugar and new hop pellets. Because dry hop additions can be large it turned out far too bitter rather than getting hop aroma that I wanted. Pretty much spoiled what probably would have been a good beer if I didn't do the experiment. I've been frustrated with dry hopping not performing as good as I want especially using flowers there is a great percentage of the yummy oils stay trapped in the cones. Best efficiency for flavor and aroma I've found is Hop Stands. After flame out chill to ~70c add a load of hops and spin whirl with a drill and stainless steal T bar. Let sit for ~30 minutes at ~70c then chill down to pitch temp. Thats the best way I have found to get the most out of flowers especially because the whirl breaks the flowers apart releasing the yummy oils etc. Pellets don't need as much whilrling.

 

[Rocker1986]

Yeah for squeezing cubes I just put it up against a wall, then use a folded towel between my knee and the cube, leaving hands free to put the lid on. Easy peasy.

 

[TheSumOfAllBeers]

Hey y'all, I didn't want to start another cube thread so just tacking on here with a couple quick questions;

1. How important is it to squeeze and minimise the amount of air in the cube after dumping to it and getting that lid on?

Very important. Headspace is a safe place for bugs to hide. Full contact between hot wort & cube is essential for pasteurising. Also reducing head space also reduces oxidation risk. But the risk of contamination is more critical than the oxidation risk.

I find it easiest, to match my final liquour to whatever my cube capacity is, so I plan my liquour ratios to result in 55L of finished beer, which fills my 2 25L cubes to capacity .

2. I read something the other day on here and cannot find it - it was a method for taking a 1-3 litres of wort from the kettle, chilling it and then next day running the clear wort off for boiling and doing late addition hops before dumping straight into the FV

I'd like to try #2 but it kinda depends if leaving my cube short as mentioned in #1 is going to come at the price of off flavours..

Its a bit like making a hop tea ? You dont need wort for that, unless you want to add IBU. Get 2-3L of water to the boil, let it cool to ~80C, and add your hops.Leave them steep for 5-10 minutes and pour into the FV at pitch time, or whenever you would normally dry hop.

 

[Stouter]

I seem to be able to tilt my cube while filling so that the handle space gets filled, and i slowly tilt it back while still filling until complete. There's a little spillage, but nothing compared to when I tried the squeeze method. 60% of the time it works every time!

 

[Rocker1986]

Very important. Headspace is a safe place for bugs to hide. Full contact between hot wort & cube is essential for pasteurising. Also reducing head space also reduces oxidation risk. But the risk of contamination is more critical than the oxidation risk.

I find it easiest, to match my final liquour to whatever my cube capacity is, so I plan my liquour ratios to result in 55L of finished beer, which fills my 2 25L cubes to capacity .



Its a bit like making a hop tea ? You dont need wort for that, unless you want to add IBU. Get 2-3L of water to the boil, let it cool to ~80C, and add your hops.Leave them steep for 5-10 minutes and pour into the FV at pitch time, or whenever you would normally dry hop.

I agree in terms of infection risk but unless I'm missing something, oxidation isn't an issue because it's pre fermentation.

 

[Danscraftbeer]

I agree in terms of infection risk but unless I'm missing something, oxidation isn't an issue because it's pre fermentation.

Not 100% sure on that. Oxygen can. or does degrade any consumable so I'd think it could degrade your wort pre ferment if left for long enough. Short term probably no problem. What I find with the cubing is if I get a small airbubble in the cube while hot it seems to get absorbed into the wort when it cools leaving no airbubble.
Maybe too small to have any negative result but larger headspace would be something to worry about.

 

[manticle]

I agree in terms of infection risk but unless I'm missing something, oxidation isn't an issue because it's pre fermentation.

Oxidation is a risk pre, during and post. There is only one point during the process when oxygen is beneficial and that's during the aerobic cycle of the yeast, pretty much immediately upon inoculation.

 

[Rocker1986]

I always minimise the air in the cube too but good to know it's beneficial for more than just infection risk. Thanks for setting it straight. I've also noticed the small air bubbles seem to disappear when the wort cools.

 

[TheSumOfAllBeers]

I agree in terms of infection risk but unless I'm missing something, oxidation isn't an issue because it's pre fermentation.

The oxygen can react with the wort and spoil it in a variation of hot side aeration processes in s way that the yeast cannot clean it up

In practice o have never detected it. And I think you would need to do crazy thing to make it detectable, like have 10-20% of your cube headspace unpurged, and left that way for months