Late Hopping And No Chilling Guide

[Steve@PMF82]

Thanks for the thread Argon and yes pictures are always good.

Anyway this has got me thinking about my process and how i could use this if i was so inclined.
Thats what i like about things like this, get thinking outside the square and give people options.

I am very happy with my sanitation and the area i brew in, i have done a few wort stability tests on last couple of brews
from kettle pre chill and post chilling (13L in pot , ice/sink). 3 weeks later the samples are still good, very clear as any break has settled to the bottom smell malty and hoppy.

I usually, not always - if i am feeling lazy- recover 2L or so of wort from my trub post boil and give a quick reboil in small SS saucepan then chill which is a piece of piss, and add to fermenter.

So this has got me thinking i could just do a 60min bittering addition, leave the pot covered and wrapped in cling film, which i do anyway while chilling, let it sit overnight to slow or no chill, then transfer to fermenter next day, still pitch my yeast, then recover my 2L from the trub , reboil for 5 or 10mins depending hop additions, calculate it all using beersmith and the arithmetic provided in this thread. Chill it down to same temp as fermenter and add.

Anyone see why this would not work? I have the chilling of the whole pot of wort in ice/water down to a fine art, but it really is tiresome, i think it would be nicer just to set and forget.

 

[Jace89]

Just thought I'd say a big thanks for posting this method!
I've been making English ales and have found that I cant quite get that hop aroma that some of them have. Having no way of cooling my beer ive always just "no-chilled" without knowing really that it wasn't normal

So last night I brewed batch of what I'm hoping to be a very hop driven Aussie PA, using large amounts of Galaxy for bittering. I decided I wanted 30mins addition and decided to do this with 15mins left in my main boil. Having tasted it just now im very happy with the outcome

Am about to start the mini boil for the late hop additions now and cant wait to report back with how it turned out after fermentation, and pouring out of may taps!

-Jace

 

[ekul]

very soon i will be trying a recipe where the wort is barely hopped (maybe 3 ibus) and then cubed. I will then chill the cube (as per argons method) and then do a post cube boil. I've been playing around with a stone and wood inspired beer of late. Its tasting pretty good but i reckon adding all the hops in the last 10mins and then rapidly chilling is the go, something i can't achieve with nochill.

 

[Lecterfan]

very soon i will be trying a recipe where the wort is barely hopped (maybe 3 ibus) and then cubed. I will then chill the cube (as per argons method) and then do a post cube boil. I've been playing around with a stone and wood inspired beer of late. Its tasting pretty good but i reckon adding all the hops in the last 10mins and then rapidly chilling is the go, something i can't achieve with nochill.

How did this go ekul?

I'm interested in moving to no-chill eventually, and the idea of taking 5-10L of wort the next day, getting to the boil and then doing any 15, 10, 5 and 0min hop additions - including for major bittering additions and using beersmith to work out the overall result between the two worts (given that with my current methods I can chill 5-10L of wort down to 15c in about 20mins with an ice bath and changing the water - assuming that I haven't fridged my cube like Argon does in this original thread and that it settles out an ambient 15c or something in the backporch).

This idea gets sexier the more I think about it, I assume this method (and variations) is now becoming standard practice for no chill?


edit: it was the 10 min IPA no chill that got me excited by this idea instead of experimenting with changing times and calculations on software to correspond to cube hopping etc. :icon_cheers:

 

[argon]

Bit of an update on this. The beer I was doing in the photos in the article has turned out really great, with a big aroma and very hoppy flavour. Simcoe/Chinook/Cascade is very mice. It's an AIPA and has been selected as one of the finalists in the BABBs Archive IPA comp... so must be ok.unfortunately didn't enter it in the BABBs annual comp, so won't be getting formal feedback. Must remember to put it in QABC though.

Certainly the effort of applying this method has paid off.

 

[Jace89]

Update: I kegged the beer I was talking about in my older post and its turned out great! In fact it was smelling so good I didn't even bother dry hopping,
Thanks again for this method I'll be doing this every batch from here onwards

 

[Deebo]

Assuming I am really lazy.. would putting a litre of wort in a kettle to bring to the boil then french pressing with hops be noticeably different that just french pressing with boiling water? (I have read some people add some dme when french pressing to help extract.. hop stuff)

 

[Guysmiley54]

Update: I kegged the beer I was talking about in my older post and its turned out great! In fact it was smelling so good I didn't even bother dry hopping,
Thanks again for this method I'll be doing this every batch from here onwards

I have been doing this for a while too but with from time to time trying a twist...

Towards the end of my main boil, I take 3L of wort from my main kettle and put it in a small SS pot. I then continue to boil and add my late additions in the smaller pot. I NC the main portion of my wort and chill the smaller one in the sink, pour it into a 3L pet bottle and add my rehydrated yeast (or starter depending on what I'm using)

The next morning I pour the starter and cube into my fermenter and walk away. Then swmbo yells at me and I come back and clean up the mess

Main advantages:
- Active healthy starter made of the same wort as the rest of the beer.
- One boil only
- No messing around with trying to mix to temps together

I have mentioned this idea on the forum before and some criticised that the starter would strip alot of flavour out of the hops. I really don't find this to be true. In any case, the volatile hop oils and aroma will be sitting through an entire primary fermentation session anyway!

ymmv

 

[big78sam]

Assuming I am really lazy.. would putting a litre of wort in a kettle to bring to the boil then french pressing with hops be noticeably different that just french pressing with boiling water? (I have read some people add some dme when french pressing to help extract.. hop stuff)

I did this last night as I had overshot my volumes and had too much wort. I didn't want to add another 1.5 litres of water so just used wort straight from the cube. I boiled it up in a pot on the stove top and did my late additions, then into the coffee plunger and into the fermentor.

It seemed to go OK but only time will tell...

 

[Bada Bing Brewery]

Guysmiley - I might give that a crack. Seems simple and logical to me - I like simple...
Cheers
BBB

 

[Guysmiley54]

Simple is the name of the game with no chill I reckon! If you do give it a crack, let me know how it goes for you. I'm keen to get some more opinions on this one.

Guysmiley - I might give that a crack. Seems simple and logical to me - I like simple...
Cheers
BBB

 

[tipsy]

I have been doing this for a while too but with from time to time trying a twist...

Towards the end of my main boil, I take 3L of wort from my main kettle and put it in a small SS pot. I then continue to boil and add my late additions in the smaller pot. I NC the main portion of my wort and chill the smaller one in the sink, pour it into a 3L pet bottle and add my rehydrated yeast (or starter depending on what I'm using)

The next morning I pour the starter and cube into my fermenter and walk away. Then swmbo yells at me and I come back and clean up the mess

Main advantages:
- Active healthy starter made of the same wort as the rest of the beer.
- One boil only
- No messing around with trying to mix to temps together

I have mentioned this idea on the forum before and some criticised that the starter would strip alot of flavour out of the hops. I really don't find this to be true. In any case, the volatile hop oils and aroma will be sitting through an entire primary fermentation session anyway!

ymmv

I've been thinking of doing this for some time as well.
Good to see someone has done it with good results.

 

[ekul]

After tasting some chilled beers the other day at craftbrewer i decided i would bust out the immersion chiller for a batch. However i couldn't find it so i decided to do the argon method. I made Ross's Nelson summer ale but ommitted all the hop additions bar the bittering. Once the fermenting fridge is empty i will be doing the 20 min and onward additions.
Has anyone tried just using malt extract for the hop boil? If only a litre or two of 1040 wort was used do you think it would make much difference to the malt profile? I spose the cube has to be chilled anyway so its neither here nor there what wort is used, except when it comes to flavour.

 

[argon]

I did it the first time i did this. Although it was with a 7.5% Black IPA, so the extract was probably masked by alot of other flavours. I probably wouldn't do it for a paler less bold beer. Second time i did it, was with a mini-mash including a bunch of specialty grain, what worked pretty well too. If i didn't want to open the cube and do it that way, i'd go the mini-mash/steeping route.

 

[MarkBastard]

It's an interesting question.

I've been thinking if you had say a mate with a 200L brewery and he let you borrow it from time to time, you could punch out 10 cubes of wort that were just a basic American Pale Ale base with a neutral bittering hop and NO late hops.

Now that you have these 10 cubes you could use the argon method to very easily make some different pale ales by varying the hop types and hop amounts, and you could even go as far as steeping a small amount of additional spec grain and adding that too.

I guess this could be handy for people that are very time poor and like to have some variation in the same overall broad style.

Or I guess you could take it even further and make heaps of cubes of the most generic wort possible, say all base mount and with the cleanest bittering hop possible at 20 IBU and about a gravity of 1.045, then make almost any recipe you want to by only steeping or doing small partial mashes plus late hop boils.

I personally wouldn't bother with this but I do find it interesting.

 

[Dazza88]

I was wondering if you did a 2 litre boil for late hops etc and cooled and added late in fermentation it that would conserve more hops aroma etc?

Also thinking if i could french press with water and gelantine at the same time as well.

 

[stux]

It's an interesting question.

I've been thinking if you had say a mate with a 200L brewery and he let you borrow it from time to time, you could punch out 10 cubes of wort that were just a basic American Pale Ale base with a neutral bittering hop and NO late hops.

Now that you have these 10 cubes you could use the argon method to very easily make some different pale ales by varying the hop types and hop amounts, and you could even go as far as steeping a small amount of additional spec grain and adding that too.

I guess this could be handy for people that are very time poor and like to have some variation in the same overall broad style.

Or I guess you could take it even further and make heaps of cubes of the most generic wort possible, say all base mount and with the cleanest bittering hop possible at 20 IBU and about a gravity of 1.045, then make almost any recipe you want to by only steeping or doing small partial mashes plus late hop boils.

I personally wouldn't bother with this but I do find it interesting.

You mean like these?

http://www.grainandgrape.com.au/advanced_s...amp;x=0&y=0

 

[Logman]

I did the LFPA yesterday, smelt fantastic, going in today. Putting the cube in the fridge is out for me, there's usually a fermenter in there already. Filled a 15 litre cube and put the rest in a pot and did the late hopping in there as described above. That went into a 5 litre cube, cooled in an cold tub, then in the fridge for a while. That's a really easy way to go for sure while you've got all of your gear set up and cooling a 5 litre cube quickly is a snack. Will do this for most brews for sure.

:icon_cheers:

 

[OneEye]

After tasting some chilled beers the other day at craftbrewer i decided i would bust out the immersion chiller for a batch. However i couldn't find it so i decided to do the argon method. I made Ross's Nelson summer ale but ommitted all the hop additions bar the bittering. Once the fermenting fridge is empty i will be doing the 20 min and onward additions.
Has anyone tried just using malt extract for the hop boil? If only a litre or two of 1040 wort was used do you think it would make much difference to the malt profile? I spose the cube has to be chilled anyway so its neither here nor there what wort is used, except when it comes to flavour.

Hey ekul, Did you get a chance to do this yet? Would love to know how you went. I did a NC version of Ross's Nelson Summer Ale and it came out very bitter. I didn't adjust the hop additions at all as I had read that some people found the difference neglible but this last batch of mine is tasting like cats piss haha
I'm thinking this method might be the way to go with recipe's that include a lot of late hop additions

 

[Mayor of Mildura]

Hey ekul, Did you get a chance to do this yet? Would love to know how you went. I did a NC version of Ross's Nelson Summer Ale and it came out very bitter. I didn't adjust the hop additions at all as I had read that some people found the difference neglible but this last batch of mine is tasting like cats piss haha
I'm thinking this method might be the way to go with recipe's that include a lot of late hop additions

Interesting observation there. I have also found the same thing especially with a high aa hop like Nelson. If I were making this recipe I'd either be going argon style or cube hope and hop tea.