Fermenting In A Cube

[loikar]

Reading through contemplating the use of a cube, but I wonder:

Can't you just feed from your boil vessle directly into your round plastic fermenter, seal her up and pop her in the fridge until it reaches pitching temp?

You can, if you're lucky.

The problem is that there's a lot of funky shit floating in the air that would bust both it's nuts just to spend a few hours in your sweet unfermented beer.
Cooling from say 95c to 20c 'naturally' takes a shitload of time. Even you chuck it in a cold fridge there's going to be enough time for some fucked out bacteria to start humping the shit out of your wort and impart flavour\take over\infect your wort.

dumping it in a cube hot, pushing all the air out and sealing it means it can cool 'naturally' and still remain sterile, or at least pasteurised.
not tipping that into a fermenter after it's cooled means less exposure to air and infection etc.

It's all about minimising risk and stacking the odds in your favour.

BF

 

[Bribie G]

I'm having a bet both ways and fermenting in Willow Jerries but no chilling in CB type cubes.
BF's method obviously works for him, but I'm a keen oxygenator and can't see that I'm going to get a decent aeration fermenting in the same cube I no chilled in. There's also the small amount of hot break (not worried about cold break, love the stuff) that sinks to the bottom of the NC cube if you got a bit carrying over from the kettle.

This NC cube takes almost bang on 20L and I fill it to the top then seal.




The Willow Cube on the other hand claims 20 but actually holds 24, and the 20L mark is as you see here, so I can do just a keg sized brew and sacrifice a litre to sediment etc (most of which I'll keep anyway). Kegs will actually hold around 19 without fouling the gas in post - just B)




Which is pretty amazing, gives ample space for krausen. I don't know how they can claim their product to be actually 20L - not that I care, it's to my advantage. Heaps of room for headspace and I can aerate the wort with one of these as it comes out of the tap on the NC cube



Just stuck onto the end of a bottling wand and inserted down into the Willow, virtually no chance of stray nasties and it's progressively lifted as the willow fills.

Best of both worlds - NC cube is full, aeration happens, fermenting cube has ample headspace.
I was going to use an intermediate "aerating vessel" but too much faffing for the same result.

 

[edschache]

Guessing the 10L Willows are also OK for no chilling. Was going to pick up 2 today but thought I better check on here first. Mainly want them for flexibility - if I'm doing a weak beer for the mates I can top up the boil and make a 30L batch, if I want to play with ingredients I can do a 10L batch, if I want to hop in the cube I can do 2 varieties on the same wort to see which I prefer.

I've got stacks of 20L Willows, will have to see if 2 will fit in my smaller fridge to fast track fermentation for Christmas.

Ed

 

[iralosavic]

You can, if you're lucky.

The problem is that there's a lot of funky shit floating in the air that would bust both it's nuts just to spend a few hours in your sweet unfermented beer.
Cooling from say 95c to 20c 'naturally' takes a shitload of time. Even you chuck it in a cold fridge there's going to be enough time for some fucked out bacteria to start humping the shit out of your wort and impart flavour\take over\infect your wort.

dumping it in a cube hot, pushing all the air out and sealing it means it can cool 'naturally' and still remain sterile, or at least pasteurised.
not tipping that into a fermenter after it's cooled means less exposure to air and infection etc.

It's all about minimising risk and stacking the odds in your favour.

BF

I like you're style.

So basically, the biggest difference is the ability to purge oxygen from the headspace of the cube vs simply sealing it in with the pail style fermenter?

 

[Bribie G]

:icon_offtopic: I've got a 10L which I just use as a RO water collector when I'm doing a batch of RO for a special brew - I can't even remember why I bought the bloody thing, it was really cheap from Bunnings. However it has often occurred to me that two 10L cubes would have a far bigger surface to volume ratio than one 20L cube, and if used to nochill a standard batch, then they would cool down a lot quicker, as well as being easier to handle: could be floated in the bath etc etc. and I bet you could brew in the morning and pitch in the afternoon by splitting the nochill into two smaller cubes.