No Chill Hop Dilema

[Bribie G]

I brew 25 litre batches but only 21L ends up in the cube. The rest goes into sterilised lab bottles (which are like little no chill cubes) and when I'm ready to pitch, I reboil this extra wort and do the flameout addition in a coffee plunger and chill back to pitching temperature. So the late hops never go anywhere near the cube.
Works very well with hop flowers.

Argon does something similar but uses a bit more wort and chills the cube in the fridge first so that when he pitches the hot hoppy goodness the beer all ends up at pitching temperature.

Edit: I guess that a flameout addition done in a small quantity of wort could possibly have a different outcome to one done in the full wort volume?? If so then Argon's method would more closely resemble a full-wort addition. However my method is a lot quicker and simpler. Swings roundabouts

 

[Steve@PMF82]

I brew 25 litre batches but only 21L ends up in the cube. The rest goes into sterilised lab bottles (which are like little no chill cubes) and when I'm ready to pitch, I reboil this extra wort and do the flameout addition in a coffee plunger and chill back to pitching temperature. So the late hops never go anywhere near the cube.
Works very well with hop flowers.

Argon does something similar but uses a bit more wort and chills the cube in the fridge first so that when he pitches the hot hoppy goodness the beer all ends up at pitching temperature.

Edit: I guess that a flameout addition done in a small quantity of wort could possibly have a different outcome to one done in the full wort volume?? If so then Argon's method would more closely resemble a full-wort addition. However my method is a lot quicker and simpler. Swings roundabouts

Both these methods give excellent aroma in my experience.
The few times i have tried Whirlpool and cube hops no chilling i have not been impressed.

I add my late hops day 4 or 5 of ferment, using the late boil method and for me it gives the aroma i want and more. More stuffing around yes, but it really doed not take that long. I even occasionally do it with 1L of Briess LDME made to the same OG gravity when i have been to lazy to save wort, always works a treat.

 

[hsb]

How do you guys store the excess wort? My experiments with Erlenmeyer + Bung always result in stinky wort two days later. It's easy to make excess for starters/late hop additions but I'm finding it too hard to store.

 

[JDW81]

How do you guys store the excess wort? My experiments with Erlenmeyer + Bung always result in stinky wort two days later. It's easy to make excess for starters/late hop additions but I'm finding it too hard to store.

I put it into sterilised coke bottles and freeze it. I give it a 10 minute boil before I reuse it (be it for late hops or starters). Never had a problem yet.

JD

 

[Bribie G]

I was fortunate to get a few of these Schott bottles from RdeVjun a couple of years ago, they were chucking them out at his work and they all went to good AHB and brew club homes around Australia at the time.

You can buy them from lab supplies but not cheap, the litre ones are around $18. They will still be in use in the year 2150 - a few will even end up on Pandora

 

[hsb]

Thanks. I've foolishly tried PET bottles before straight from the kettle,great way to make interesting mini bottles.Ill investigate sterilizing Longnecks and putting them in the fridge. Or a Bain-Marie for the Erlenmeyer, transfer to plastic, them freeze.
Those Schotts look good, you just put them in the fridge I guess.

Those blue peace loving mofos probably are immune to alcohol or some horror.

 

[felten]

It is, but not no chill compatible (I have seen no mention of no chill on BS2).

I hope someone corrects me if I'm wrong here, but doesn't the no-chill option in brewmate just add 15 minutes onto each hop addition?

You can just do that manually in BS2 if you want.

 

[Rodolphe01]

I thought I'd chime in with my no-chill experiences on this not-too-old thread.

I have found generally with no-chill my beers to be far more bitter than expected. Especially APAs etc with late hop additions, very bitter and no aroma. Beers with only longer additions of about 60-30 minutes have been fine with adjustment on only the 30 minute addition.

I have done the bribie/argon method with some success, but it puts me off as I really like the simplicity of the no-chill, a second step after the no chill just makes me want a proper chiller.

I have found that even cube hops end up imparting too much bitterness and not enough aroma. In my opinion, even if you adjust accordingly for the bitterness, you are wasting your late additions. You might as well adjust all your recipes to have nothing shorter than a 30 minute addition, i.e. combining your 20, 10 and 0 minute additions as a cube hop doesn't make much sense. Should just call it a 30 minute addition in your recipe.
Of course this is just my (probably limited) experience, I am quite possibly getting it all quite wrong!
I got all my cubes for free, but if I had to go out and buy them again Id be buying a chiller instead.
I am interested though if anyone has more experience with the efficiency of the bribie/argon method? Bribie raised this above. For example, I have a mash on now, this beer has a 5 minute addition of 20g EKG. Will I get as much aroma doing this 5 minute boil in a portion of 1.5 liters as I would in a full volume boil (assuming it is cooled with a chiller)?

 

[Crusty]

I thought I'd chime in with my no-chill experiences on this not-too-old thread.

I have found generally with no-chill my beers to be far more bitter than expected. Especially APAs etc with late hop additions, very bitter and no aroma. Beers with only longer additions of about 60-30 minutes have been fine with adjustment on only the 30 minute addition.

I have done the bribie/argon method with some success, but it puts me off as I really like the simplicity of the no-chill, a second step after the no chill just makes me want a proper chiller.

I have found that even cube hops end up imparting too much bitterness and not enough aroma. In my opinion, even if you adjust accordingly for the bitterness, you are wasting your late additions. You might as well adjust all your recipes to have nothing shorter than a 30 minute addition, i.e. combining your 20, 10 and 0 minute additions as a cube hop doesn't make much sense. Should just call it a 30 minute addition in your recipe.
Of course this is just my (probably limited) experience, I am quite possibly getting it all quite wrong!
I got all my cubes for free, but if I had to go out and buy them again I'd be buying a chiller instead.
I am interested though if anyone has more experience with the 'efficiency' of the bribie/argon method? Bribie raised this above. For example, I have a mash on now, this beer has a 5 minute addition of 20g EKG. Will I get 'as much' aroma doing this 5 minute boil in a portion of 1.5 liters as I would in a full volume boil (assuming it is cooled with a chiller)?

This will help

If you are not happy with the aroma, wait until primary ferment is finished & hop tea with your aroma addition at a rate of 1g/lt into the fermenter. I have done this a couple of times & it works really well. My efficiency was better than planned & had to add some cooled boiled water to water down to my starting OG in the fermenter which threw out my hop additions a little. I hop tea'd to compensate & ended up with a great beer. 1g/lt was more than enough aroma for me.

 

[mje1980]

Or just dry hop

 

[Dazza88]

Wait 20 minutes to let the no chill sanitize all the insides of th cube then place the cube in a larger pool of water. Slow chill it down to 70 c, stop bittering of the late addition. if you are pitching the next day just give the lid and tap 5 min of heat then chill in water.

I could serve you an awesome iPa that was no chilled and minibioled ATM. this iPa wasn't dry hopped.

Another thing that works for me is to reduce bittering addition, add more late and cube hops, minibiol and dry hop.

Or not late hop in the cube and for it all in the miniboil

 

[black_labb]

I was mucking around with using flameout hops instead of cube hopping and found that cube hopping is much more aromatic. I do my own recipes (after having a bit of a look at other recipes) and I know what to expect from my system which includes using the cube. I only tend to do mini boils for hops when it just gets to silly numbers in the cube, but cube hoppoing up to 100g is fine in my eyes.

I can't comment on comparing late kettle additions when traditionally chilling to cube hopping but I'm happy with my beers and even picked up beer of show at the recent castle hill comp with a black IPA with plenty of hops in the cube as well as in a secondary mini boil. BIAB as well before I built my new 1V rig.

 

[jyo]

If brewing a beer that requires a heap of hops, particularly late/aroma hops such as an APA, I will set brewmate to no-chill and then use a 40 minute bittering addition. Then all additions after 10 minutes. Usually like this: 40, 10,5,flameout, whirlpool achieving over half of the IBU's using the additions after 10 minutes.

I throw a heap in at whirlpool. That is: flameout, wait 15 minutes then whirlpool. The wort has usually dropped below 90' at this stage. I get a decent aroma this way in my APA's without dry hopping. It's probably a bit hit and miss, but works for me.

I perceive a significant increase in IBU's if late hopping with high alpha hops like galaxy, so will compensate for it. I've never cube hopped, so may have to give it a crack.