No Boil Hopping // Use Of A "cube" For Cooling

[t2000kw]

I just read about the boil in a bag technique in Brew Your Own magazine. In the US it's not something commonly discussed, but I like the idea and want to try it. Just because a technique comes from somewhere outside the US is no reason to try it, but in our BrewingEquipment and Zymurgy Yahoo groups there seems to be some controversy over whether it's worth doing or not. I believe the only way to know is to get some input from our Australian friends and find out more about this technique.

I'd also like to know if it's proper to refer to an Australian as an Aussie, or is it sort of like calling someone from the US as a Yankee (not a serious slur, but slightly derogatory)? I don't want to offend in any way when I share what I learn here in my Yahoo groups (and any and all of you are welcome to join them --links will be provided below for your convenience. Just mention that you know one of the group owners, t2000kw, and you should be approved with in a day, more likely hours, unless we're asleep here.

In the article, use of a cube was mentioned to let the wort cool overnight (or longer?). No boil hopping can be done with this method, and it seems that improved flavor and aroma result from the hops.

I have some questions for those of you who use this method. I am an all grain brewer now, though I do some extract with grain brewing at times just for the sake of convenience. My technique uses a mash tun, a separate lauter tun, and I cool with an immersion chiller. I was planning on making a different false bottom to use in my mash tun to make it dual purpose and eliminate moving the mash from one container to another when I saw the Australian BIAB method in the BYO article.

1. Are there any recipe adjustments needed in the hopping rates, and how do you distribute the amount of bittering, flavoring, and aroma hops in a batch when you use them in the cube while it allows the wort to cool?

2. Do you let this just cool until you can get around to dumping it into a sanitized fermenter, or do you need to only let it cool say 8 to 12 hours or so?

3. Where can I get what you call a cube? I brew 5 gallon batches, which are common in the US, but I have no problem with brewing a slightly larger batch, unless my 10 gallon pot won't be big enough for BIAB brewing. Is there a certain type of plastic I need to look for, is there a safe source you are aware of that I can buy one from, and hopefully not pay too much for shipping (like overseas)?

Any suggestions, help, etc., would be appreciated. This will prove to be an interesting journey, I think.

Our Yahoo groups are below.

Donald

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Zymurgy/
(general homebrew discussion group, and it's where I "moved" the BIAB discussion to from the Brewing Equipment group)

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BrewingEquipment
(about brewing equipment)

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Grow-Hops
(about growing hops, and we have some Australian friends in this one also)

 

[Cortez The Killer]

Here's am article which discusses no chilling

http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...;showarticle=56

Cheers

 

[Ronin]

I just read about the boil in a bag technique in Brew Your Own magazine. In the US it's not something commonly discussed, but I like the idea and want to try it. Just because a technique comes from somewhere outside the US is no reason to try it, but in our BrewingEquipment and Zymurgy Yahoo groups there seems to be some controversy over whether it's worth doing or not. I believe the only way to know is to get some input from our Australian friends and find out more about this technique.

I'd also like to know if it's proper to refer to an Australian as an Aussie, or is it sort of like calling someone from the US as a Yankee (not a serious slur, but slightly derogatory)? I don't want to offend in any way when I share what I learn here in my Yahoo groups (and any and all of you are welcome to join them --links will be provided below for your convenience. Just mention that you know one of the group owners, t2000kw, and you should be approved with in a day, more likely hours, unless we're asleep here.

In the article, use of a cube was mentioned to let the wort cool overnight (or longer?). No boil hopping can be done with this method, and it seems that improved flavor and aroma result from the hops.

I have some questions for those of you who use this method. I am an all grain brewer now, though I do some extract with grain brewing at times just for the sake of convenience. My technique uses a mash tun, a separate lauter tun, and I cool with an immersion chiller. I was planning on making a different false bottom to use in my mash tun to make it dual purpose and eliminate moving the mash from one container to another when I saw the Australian BIAB method in the BYO article.

1. Are there any recipe adjustments needed in the hopping rates, and how do you distribute the amount of bittering, flavoring, and aroma hops in a batch when you use them in the cube while it allows the wort to cool?

2. Do you let this just cool until you can get around to dumping it into a sanitized fermenter, or do you need to only let it cool say 8 to 12 hours or so?

3. Where can I get what you call a cube? I brew 5 gallon batches, which are common in the US, but I have no problem with brewing a slightly larger batch, unless my 10 gallon pot won't be big enough for BIAB brewing. Is there a certain type of plastic I need to look for, is there a safe source you are aware of that I can buy one from, and hopefully not pay too much for shipping (like overseas)?

Any suggestions, help, etc., would be appreciated. This will prove to be an interesting journey, I think.

Our Yahoo groups are below.

Donald

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Zymurgy/
(general homebrew discussion group, and it's where I "moved" the BIAB discussion to from the Brewing Equipment group)

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BrewingEquipment
(about brewing equipment)

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Grow-Hops
(about growing hops, and we have some Australian friends in this one also)

Hi Donald,

welcome to the forum. I don't think anyone will be offended by Aussie....haven't you heard the Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! chant at sporting events?

I've done 'no chill' for a dozen or so beers now. Not had a single problem.

To try and answer your questions,

1. I've never adjusted a recipe for bitterness. There are a few threads discussing that if you want to do a search, but I've made some very mildly hopped beers (Helles, Weizens etc) and have never had too much bitterness. I've also never had a problem with not enough hop flavour or aroma. YMMV.

2. I've let it sit for days, as long as your sanitation is good, the pasteuriisation effect of the hot wort keeps it from getting infected. I'm a microbiologist so am naturally very carful with sanitation. If yours isn't up to scratch maybe this isn't the best technique.

3. I get my cubes from hardware stores. They're just jerry cans used to store water etc.

I think it's a great technique for a country in a drought. I can't justify the water use for a normal cooler when we're on stage 4 water restrictions (We can't use water for pretty much anything except washing and drinking).

I've never done BIAB, so I can't help there, but there's heaps of others who can and a lot of information on the board about it.

Good luck,

James

 

[raven19]

Welcome to the forums firstly.

1. Are there any recipe adjustments needed in the hopping rates, and how do you distribute the amount of bittering, flavoring, and aroma hops in a batch when you use them in the cube while it allows the wort to cool? You will get move bittering as the wort is still hot for a longer period. Alight adjustments can be made. I lie a bitter beer, so have not worried about adjusting my recipes as yet.

2. Do you let this just cool until you can get around to dumping it into a sanitized fermenter, or do you need to only let it cool say 8 to 12 hours or so? You can let it sit in the cube for 6 months plus if you like, or once it has cooled overnight, you can also dump into the fermentor. The heat that pasturises the cube means no infections if done correctly. I had mine in the cube for 3 weeks prior to dumping into the fermentor.

3. Where can I get what you call a cube? I brew 5 gallon batches, which are common in the US, but I have no problem with brewing a slightly larger batch, unless my 10 gallon pot won't be big enough for BIAB brewing. Is there a certain type of plastic I need to look for, is there a safe source you are aware of that I can buy one from, and hopefully not pay too much for shipping (like overseas)? HDPE water gerry cans are what we often use - from a hardware store like Bunnings. Give it a rinse with bleach or similar prior to use.

 

[zebba]

I'd also like to know if it's proper to refer to an Australian as an Aussie, or is it sort of like calling someone from the US as a Yankee (not a serious slur, but slightly derogatory)? I don't want to offend in any way when I share what I learn here in my Yahoo groups (and any and all of you are welcome to join them --links will be provided below for your convenience. Just mention that you know one of the group owners, t2000kw, and you should be approved with in a day, more likely hours, unless we're asleep here.

Nothing negative about Aussie - feel free to use it with reckless abandon

 

[PostModern]

Gday and welcome t200kw,

You seem to be mixing two techniques here. Firstly Brew In A Bag (BIAB), is a means to produce wort. No-chilling is an alternative to traditional chilling or wort. You can obviously use these techniques independently of each other.

Lots of info on both of these techniques on the forum. Cortez has given you the link to the main no-chill article, which should cover the hows and wherefores. Here is a thread with lots of discussion about hop utilisation.

Lots of attachments about BIAB can be found in the wiki article here.

Read up, as I think most of your questions, and lots more, will be answered under those links. By all means come back with more questions, but as people on here have already done the hard miles compiling the work, you may as well read it rather than have it re-hashed for you

Best of luck with these techniques. Aussies are great innovators.

As to sourcing stuff in the US, you're much better placed to find that out than we antipodeans.

 

[Bribie G]

greetings t2000

Edit: Postmodern beat me to it but here goes anyway

The actual term is 'Brew in a bag' and there's a fairly long thread here in the All Grain section, it's a 'sticky' at the top and the full article can be downloaded as a PDF.

Yes it's ok to refer to us as Aussies, I'm an Aussie but also get referred to as a Pom... but that's getting off topic :lol:

Basically a full volume mash is done in a bag inside the kettle. The best material is a synthetic nylon called 'Swiss Voile' over here. I got a local seamstress lady to make mine up. The full amount of water is used, so no sparging as such. In other words if you are aiming for say 24 litres you would add enough water initially (at strike temp of course) so that when mashing has finished and the bag lifted out and drained there will be enough wort to boil down to your 24 litres. Hop additions are as per any normal kettle boil.


No chill in a cube is another subject altogether. I BIAB and I no chill.
I use a water quality 'jerry can' available from all big hardware stores. It holds about 23 litres which is five gallons imperial in the old measure. I also have a few little five litre jerries which I use to store wort for a 'partial' lager style beer that I make regularly.



The four little 'cubes' holding wort in the foreground were made at the beginning of January, I still have two left and they are perfectly sweet and fresh. Cubing a brew is really like doing farmhouse pickles, preserves and jam... it's a food product and provided the container is well sanitized and the wort is sterile then they last for ages. I have seen reports on the forum of people keeping worts for a year. In Australia you can buy cubes of wort from suppliers called "fresh wort kits" and basically they are the same thing although produced on a more industrial scale.


The hop question is to do with the continuing isomerisation of the hop when it is in the cube resulting in the perception of a more bitter beer than if crash chilling. If you coil chill or plate chill the wort out of the kettle then further isomerisation is killed stone dead. With a cube it continues for a while until the wort has dropped to the temperature that it no longer occurs.

For the styles I make, a hypothetical example might be:

If I was crash chilling:

45 g fuggles 60 mins
25 g goldings 20 mins
20 g goldings 10 mins
15 g styrian goldings at flameout

However because I no chill I would tend to tweak the above:

30 g fuggles 60 mins
25 g goldings 10 mins
20 g goldings flameout
dry hop with 15 g styrians after 4 days in the fermenter.

I don't use brewing software, but find that the above seat of the pants method gives very nice results.
I have never added anything to the cube itself so can't comment on that

Cheers

 

[buttersd70]

Nothing negative about Aussie - feel free to use it with reckless abandon

As long as you can pronounce it properly.....

There is a bit of debate about whether no chill adds any additional bitterness or not.....personally, I'm in the 'no it doesn't' camp, having been a convert from rapid chill to no chill, doing the same recipe with both methods, I get no real difference....although I don't use massive amounts of late hops, so that may be a factor.

 

[Bribie G]

..........................

There is a bit of debate about whether no chill adds any additional bitterness or not.....personally, I'm in the 'no it doesn't' camp, having been a convert from rapid chill to no chill, doing the same recipe with both methods, I get no real difference....although I don't use massive amounts of late hops, so that may be a factor.

..........................

Funny, I was only thinking about that the other day when bottling a Yorkshire Bitter. I made it to almost the same recipe as my first Yorkie, and that first one I didn't 'tweak', I just proceeded as if crash chilling. It turned out very nice. The second one I lowered the 60 minute hops and replaced the flameout with a dry hop addition. In a few more days when it's tastin' time I'll be able to tell, and may well just go back to the original regime. I'll keep you posted on that.

 

[Effect]

I will only do a no chill if there is no hops later than 60 minutes to flame out.

 

[t2000kw]

Here's am article which discusses no chilling

http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...;showarticle=56

Cheers

Great place to start. Thanks!!!

Donald

 

[t2000kw]

1. I've never adjusted a recipe for bitterness. There are a few threads discussing that if you want to do a search, but I've made some very mildly hopped beers (Helles, Weizens etc) and have never had too much bitterness. I've also never had a problem with not enough hop flavour or aroma. YMMV.

Do you boil the hops before putting it in the cube? (Do you call it cubing the beer?)

Or do you add them to the wort in the cube before capping?

I grow (some of ) my own hops, so I am looking for ways to make unprocessed hops bring their great flavor through. I do lightly process them, actually, by making plugs out of them, but I don't compress them at very high pressures and heat to make tiny plugs. Mine just are compressed perhaps 20:1 in volume over loose hop cones. When I add them to the boiling wort, you can see them immediately return to the look of loose cones.

Donald

 

[t2000kw]

Welcome to the forums firstly.

You will get move bittering as the wort is still hot for a longer period. Alight adjustments can be made. I lie a bitter beer, so have not worried about adjusting my recipes as yet.

Thanks for the welcome, everyone!

How do you handle the flavoring and aroma (later additions in a boiled hops brew)? Do you only brew beers that don't call for these, or do you add them anyway?

My guess is that, with a sealed cooling chamber, you're going to get some flavor and aroma (in addition to bitterness) from the bittering hops that would otherwise be added to the beginning of the boil. Is this undesirable, or is this minimal?

I guess there's some interaction with this, and all that really matters is if I like my beer. I don't need more awards to tell me it tastes good.

Don

 

[t2000kw]

Funny, I was only thinking about that the other day when bottling a Yorkshire Bitter. I made it to almost the same recipe as my first Yorkie, and that first one I didn't 'tweak', I just proceeded as if crash chilling. It turned out very nice. The second one I lowered the 60 minute hops and replaced the flameout with a dry hop addition. In a few more days when it's tastin' time I'll be able to tell, and may well just go back to the original regime. I'll keep you posted on that.

I'd be interested in the results and if they are different.

 

[buttersd70]

Don...I just had a thought....
One of the things with No Chill is the possibility of increased DMS levels. There was a post a while back from an American brewer that had tried no chill with really bad results, it was full of DMS. I can't remember the specifics of it, but opinion was given that it might have something to do with the differences between US malt and australian/european malts....so this might be something to look at. (as I presume you're a seppo.)....

Can anyone remember who the OP on that was? Katzke,maybe??

 

[t2000kw]

Thanks for the answers so far!

I do realize that BIAB and no-chill brewing aren't always part of the same process and can be done independent of the other and used with other brewing techniques.

I might have split the post up into two separate ones, but I didn't.

What puts them together, at least in my mind, is that they are both techniques that are from Australia and are ones that I want to try for myself, so I wanted to get straight to the point and keep it all together so I could easily follow the thread. Of course, I will be following a thread that will be going in two directions at times, sometimes on no-chill, and sometimes on BIAB, and sometimes both at once. But I'll follow it nonetheless, and thanks for what you all have put together so far with your answers and links.

I like the idea of being able to cut down my brewing time. All grain takes hours for me to do and it looks like this could shave off a couple of hours for me. I might need to get a bigger kettle if I go over my 5 or 6 gallon batches (US gallons, 4 quarts or approximately a little less than 4 liters), but in any case, I might use a small pulley arrangement from an overhead board to hang the bag above the kettle to drain it fully so I won't have to hold it up with my arms.

 

[Cannibal Smurf]

I might use a small pulley arrangement from an overhead board to hang the bag above the kettle to drain it fully so I won't have to hold it up with my arms.

Hey t2000kw, the pulley system works quite well. Both BribieG and myself (and probably a few others) use the same method. Good luck and let us know how it all goes for you.

 

[Ronin]

Do you boil the hops before putting it in the cube? (Do you call it cubing the beer?)

Or do you add them to the wort in the cube before capping?

I grow (some of ) my own hops, so I am looking for ways to make unprocessed hops bring their great flavor through. I do lightly process them, actually, by making plugs out of them, but I don't compress them at very high pressures and heat to make tiny plugs. Mine just are compressed perhaps 20:1 in volume over loose hop cones. When I add them to the boiling wort, you can see them immediately return to the look of loose cones.

Donald

All the hops are boiled in the kettle before going into the cube.

I've actually never 'dry' hopped a cube before fermentation. Is that what you mean? What goes into the cube is wort that has been boiled prior to fermentation. I guess you could use a hop back in between the kettle and the cube.

Either way I'd be a bit unsure of putting hops directly into unfermented wort. Without the antibacterial properties of the alcohol, I think it'd be asking for trouble.

Edit: Although upon further consideration, as long as you were careful with your sanitation, the hot wort should pasteruise the hop pellets/flowers just as if it was the plastic. I don't know if anyones every added hops directly to a cube before fermentation. Anyone?

 

[Ronin]

Thanks for the welcome, everyone!

How do you handle the flavoring and aroma (later additions in a boiled hops brew)? Do you only brew beers that don't call for these, or do you add them anyway?

My guess is that, with a sealed cooling chamber, you're going to get some flavor and aroma (in addition to bitterness) from the bittering hops that would otherwise be added to the beginning of the boil. Is this undesirable, or is this minimal?

I guess there's some interaction with this, and all that really matters is if I like my beer. I don't need more awards to tell me it tastes good.

Don

I think the issue some have with 'no chilling' is not flavour and aroma from the bittering hops, but too much bittering from the flavour/aroma hops. The flavour and aroma additions are exposed to wort at boiling temperatures for longer than the allocated time, possibly causing more alpha acid isomerisation than if the wort was cooled straight away.

I don't see an issue with losing aroma, the cube is sealed straight away. I've never lacked aroma, nor hop flavour when 'no chilling'.

 

[stueywhytcross]

All the hops are boiled in the kettle before going into the cube.

I've actually never 'dry' hopped a cube before fermentation. Is that what you mean? What goes into the cube is wort that has been boiled prior to fermentation. I guess you could use a hop back in between the kettle and the cube.

Either way I'd be a bit unsure of putting hops directly into unfermented wort. Without the antibacterial properties of the alcohol, I think it'd be asking for trouble.

Edit: Although upon further consideration, as long as you were careful with your sanitation, the hot wort should pasteruise the hop pellets/flowers just as if it was the plastic. I don't know if anyones every added hops directly to a cube before fermentation. Anyone?

I regularly dry hop my cube. I first throw the dry hops into the cube, and then pour in the near boiling wort from the kettle. My theory has been that the wort temp is hot enough to kill any nasties on the hops.