No Chill Hopping

[rich_lamb]

Sorry if this is a repeat - the search engine isn't working for me (links anybody?)

After completing my first no-chill brew I noticed a distinct step up in bitterness from what I'd expected - I was aiming for 32IBU (25 @ 60min, 7 @ 30min) in a beer with an OG of 1.042, but it's fairly intense. Tastes like about 45IBU.

Now I know people have differing no-chill techniques. Personally, I just went straight from flameout into the cube and let the thing cool overnight.

Is there a way to modify the bittering calcs to compensate for no-chill?

 

[bradsbrew]

This something I have thought about too. Initially i thought if I no chill then my flavour and aroma additions go out the window and become bittering additions.
But then I thought if i strain the hops off before they go to cube does this not stop them from bittering any further??

Cheers Brad

 

[buttersd70]

there is fairly lengthy discussion in this thread.

In my case, the difference is there, but is very small, possibly due to a/low bittering in the first place, b/small flavour additions, and c/not carrying any hop matter over into the cube. (I use a hopsock).....this is comparing my own beers both chill/no chill, brewed to the same recipe.

It would appear to me from the comments by others in that thread, that the degree to which NC effects bittering appears to increase with the bitterness of the original recipe.

 

[browndog]

This something I have thought about too. Initially i thought if I no chill then my flavour and aroma additions go out the window and become bittering additions.
But then I thought if i strain the hops off before they go to cube does this not stop them from bittering any further??

Cheers Brad

Hit the nail on the head there Brad, B&T it won't be an issue if you leave the hops in the kettle and not put them in the fermenter. There are several ways to do this, the most popular is whirlpooling. The way I do it is to whirlpool and when I drain the wort into the cube (fermenter in my case) I have it going though a hop sock so that when I lift the hop sock out of the fermenter, hey presto, no hops in the wort and hence no extra bittering.


cheers

Browndog

 

[rich_lamb]

Ah yeah - thanks for the link buttersd,

this hop sock you speak of browndog - wot, like a strainer on the inlet of your fermenter?
Are you using flowers to do that; I've tried straining to remove pellet residue in the past and found it very messy. Clogs up fast too. There must be a simple way to do this.

 

[rude]

Only done 2 AGs but the first was suppose to be 32IBUs but definately more.
As said before I threw the whole lot in trub & all.
So I think I will use a termimesh filter around my kettle pickup tube next time.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

I disagree - mostly.

I think hop matter into the cube is far less important than whether you used, how much you used and what variety of hops - were in your late hop additions.

Basically - the alpha acids compounds in the physical hops are not particularly bound up in the plant matter of the hops themselves once they are in the wort (assuming pellet hops) - the amount of bitterness they contribute depends on how much of those alpha acids are isomerised by the heat into a form which is soluble and will stay in your final beer.

So - when you chill a beer - the hops you put in "late" in the boil, contribute their aroma and or flavour, but the alpha acids dont get a chance to be significantly isomerised before the wort is cooled down. ie: not much added bitterness. However if you no chill - the alpha acids are going to keep right on isomerising at a fairly decent rate, till the wort is below about 70ish degrees.

So even if you carefully strain out all the green bits - significant amounts of the alpha acids are still floating around in your wort, happily isomerising away. Sure, less than if you leave the green bits in, but still a pretty high proportion.

So the upshot is - if you stick 30g of late hallertau at 3.3% alpha in at 5 mins to go and carefully strain out all the hop matter, its not going to contribute a lot of bitterness - not many alpha acids to convert. But if you were searching for hop flavour and aroma in the beer - and you shoved in 60g of 14% Galaxy at 5 minutes to go ... well, in your NC cube, no matter how carefully you filter out the green bits, there is going to be significant added bitterness from isomerisation that happens after the cube is sealed. Your original bittering hops do basically nothing even if you get them in the cube, their alpha acids are pretty much as converted as they are going to be by the end of the boil.

Its my suggestion that if you add hops late in the boil and are planning to no-chill, you need to account for the bitterness they will contribute. I assume that late hops in an NC brew will contribute bitterness as though they had been boiled for 10-15 minutes.... if you let the actual hop matter go into the cube, then I would say calculate as though they were a 20-25 min addition.

Personally I no longer add late kettle hops to my NC batches - nothing after 30mins to go. Firstly because I find that the No-chilling process itself diminishes hop aroma from late additions; and secondly to counteract the bitterness problem. Aroma hops are dealt with by Ultra Late hopping during the actual fermentation, or for a lesser effect by deliberately adding a hop bag to the NC cube and making sure I include the bitterness they would contribute as equivalent to a 20 (less because they are contained in a bag) minute addition.

I have done a few little experiments around cube bitterness and thats what I have come up with anyway.

TB

 

[matti]

TB.
A great summary and explanation.
I must commend you in your excellent wording.

B & T.
Try add Bittering hops at 45 minutes, Flavour hops at 20 min. and Aroma hop into actual cube.
The times are a rough estimate but it seem to be working for me
You can strain the hops and trub out when transferring into your fermenter(s).

Butter.
How did you find that thread? I was looking for it but the search engines failed me.

 

[browndog]

Ah yeah - thanks for the link buttersd,

this hop sock you speak of browndog - wot, like a strainer on the inlet of your fermenter?
Are you using flowers to do that; I've tried straining to remove pellet residue in the past and found it very messy. Clogs up fast too. There must be a simple way to do this.

Some great advice from TB there for you to consider B&T. On the matter of a hop sock, I am refering to one of Craftbrewers hop socks, it is a large sock about 150mm Dia. and about 500mm long. Most people use them in the kettle to keep the hops out of the wort, but I go the other way and use it as a large strainer to keep trub and hops out of the fermenter when draining the wort from the kettle.

cheers

Browndog

 

[reviled]

Thirsty, im no chilling in the kettle at the mo untill I get a tap on my pot...

Ive still been doing FO additions, and 5 min, 10 min additions etc... I never notice a massive increase in bitterness, and I allways get alot of aroma out of my late hop additions?? Is it that im not getting as much aroma as I should be due to the aroma being diminished by the heat?

For example, I threw in 15g of Galaxy and 15g of Nelson Sauvin into a FO addition on an APA, its quite bitter, but I was aiming for 65 IBU's which is what I think its come out at, but it still has a massive hop aroma??

 

[warrenlw63]

Though I haven't done it for a while I was getting great results using a "no chill hopback". In short exactly the same thing as a regular hopback with the exception being the hot wort ran through the hopback and into the cubes.

To me it was probably the best way to capture aroma without adding any further bitterness whilst the hot wort sat in the cube.

Warren -

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Thirsty, im no chilling in the kettle at the mo untill I get a tap on my pot...

Ive still been doing FO additions, and 5 min, 10 min additions etc... I never notice a massive increase in bitterness, and I allways get alot of aroma out of my late hop additions?? Is it that im not getting as much aroma as I should be due to the aroma being diminished by the heat?

For example, I threw in 15g of Galaxy and 15g of Nelson Sauvin into a FO addition on an APA, its quite bitter, but I was aiming for 65 IBU's which is what I think its come out at, but it still has a massive hop aroma??

Kinda hard to say - at 65 IBU all you are going to notice is that it is bloody bitter. If its 55 or 75.. well I certainly couldn't tell the difference.

However if you are talking a nice german lager at say 20 IBU... but you were looking for lovely hop aroma and chucked in a great wad of finishing hops... and that added 10 IBUs, you'd notice the difference in that.

I dont think that NCing kills off aroma completely, I just think you get less than you would if you chilled. Or I do at any rate. And I think that your late hop additions are going to increase your final bitterness due to isomerisation in the cube. But if its not happening to you... then don't worry about it.

 

[reviled]

Kinda hard to say - at 65 IBU all you are going to notice is that it is bloody bitter. If its 55 or 75.. well I certainly couldn't tell the difference.

However if you are talking a nice german lager at say 20 IBU... but you were looking for lovely hop aroma and chucked in a great wad of finishing hops... and that added 10 IBUs, you'd notice the difference in that.

I dont think that NCing kills off aroma completely, I just think you get less than you would if you chilled. Or I do at any rate. And I think that your late hop additions are going to increase your final bitterness due to isomerisation in the cube. But if its not happening to you... then don't worry about it.

Maybe it is and I just like the extra bitterness :icon_cheers: Who knows, ive got a couple of low IBU beers cc'ing at the moment, guess ill know then...

 

[BusinessTime]

Sorry to cross the threads but could you do a no chill beer and completely leave out the aroma/flavor additions then do something like the french press method outlined here : http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...view=getnewpost

If you did that after ferment wouldnt that give you something quite close to chilling etc .... ???

Just an idea nothing to back this up...

 

[rich_lamb]

Yes I think that "ultra late hopping" (the french press) method is very useful, and I may use that in future for aroma.

Good discussion TB: Based on my understanding of how hop oils are isomerised - which agrees with yours - I had been a bit confused at how people were getting around this problem by removing the hop matter. It seemed to me that isomerisation of compounds already in suspension would still occur. Also that no matter how fine you strain you'd still get these compounds through.
I think it's actually a blend of the two; you've hinted at this in your suggestion.
- you will get some increase from ongoing reaction of suspended compounds
- you will continue to "extract" compounds from the trub

So here's my suggested improvements - for myself - based on all this great advice:

1) Leave as much trub behind as possible. I like simplicity and don't have anything fancy inside my kettle so I may build a hop-sock-back to catch it on the output. Probably also do some whirlpooling and turn my pickup sideways so I leave more in the kettle too.

2) After the cube's had 10 minutes to nicely sanitise, I'll dump it in a bucket of cold water to cool quicker. "Semi-chill" ?

3) Adjust my hopping schedule to compensate. Probably by 15 minutes for all additions initially, until I dial it in. Might modify my brew calculator (excel sheet) to do this correctly.

obviously aiming for a consistent and repeatable technique - with minimum effort - and best possible beer - etc.

thanks guys

 

[BottleBitch]

Ok so I work in the brewing industry and Oh my god!!! I have participated in a few not chill's, its by far not a good idea according to all the studies I have done over the years, but that said its the lazy mans way to brew without a lot of gear and you can still make some decent brews using the no chill, but to balance my position here, my new home brewery that yes I will finish some day I promise Ash, has two plate heat exchangers, so I guess, I can take the higher middle ground on the never ending argument of no chill V's chill, hehehehe

depending on your brewhouse, the hop utilization rates are roughly as follows and I do mean roughly because this is all from my not so great memory, but you get the idea.

90-60 mins 40% utilization
60-45 mins 33%
45-30 mins 25%
30-15 mins 20%
whirlpool 15%

So if you add start, middle and end of boil additions and calculate as above, then go to a cube to cool down as TB says the utilization rates will be right out the window and he is also right that the resins that contain most of the bittering compounds in the hop pellets are dissolved very quickly into the wort, so trying to strain out the hop matter will not stop the IBU's of your beer going up, but it is still a good idea, because it reduces trub in your cube which is good for beer flavour stability, but thats another story. So to make your bitterness more predictable, why not add some start of boil for foam suppression, then some at whirlpool and just increase your utilization factour on the whirlpool addition, but the factour I'm guessing could go as high as 33%, but will take some trial and error. because its only home brewing I till reckon throw the hops straight into the cube, I tried this at work this week, by borrowing some hot wort between the kettle and heat exchangers and running it into a 15 liter keg, throw in a large hand full of new cascade pellets because the wort was only 15-19 IBU's and a bit of Sinimar colouring because the wort was only 9 EBC, will be drinking it on friday if the ferm and filter go well, but it tasted great and reeked of cascade when I tasted it last night, a far cry from the donor wort.

Cheers

Brett

 

[PostModern]

Has anyone got actual data on utilisation rates at different temperatures? I'm sure the data you've listed is valid at 103C, but does isomerisation continue to occur at below 80?

 

[Adamt]

I picked this journal article up a while back... haven't really gone through it in a lot of detail but it covers isomerisation and degradation reaction kinetics.

J. Agricultural and Food Chemistry, vol. 53, 2005,
Isomerization and Degradation Kinetics of Hop (Humulus lupulus) Acids in a Model Wort-Boiling System
Malowicki M.G., Shellhammer, T.H.

View attachment Iso._and_Degrad._Kinetics_of_Hop_Acids.pdf

EDIT: Only seems to look at 90C as a minimum... a good rule of thumb for reaction rates for any reaction is "the reaction rate doubles for every increase of 10C".

 

[BottleBitch]

Has anyone got actual data on utilisation rates at different temperatures? I'm sure the data you've listed is valid at 103C, but does isomerisation continue to occur at below 80?

As I said it is all from my memory, but yes isomerisation still occurs at below 80, its just at a slower rate. At a brewery that I once worked at, we carried out and experiment to see just how quickly the hopback's IBU where formed, and the wort passing throw the hopback was far from boiling, because of transfer to whirlpool time and stand time once in whirlpool, it was 40mins after boil and the wort was now approx 80-85 degrees. we took 1min interval samples after the heat exchanger and found that pretty much all the utilization occurred in the first 15mins, then plateaued from there on in. we were all very surprised with the results.

 

[PostModern]

I picked this journal article up a while back... haven't really gone through it in a lot of detail but it covers isomerisation and degradation reaction kinetics.

J. Agricultural and Food Chemistry, vol. 53, 2005,
Isomerization and Degradation Kinetics of Hop (Humulus lupulus) Acids in a Model Wort-Boiling System
Malowicki M.G., Shellhammer, T.H.

View attachment 23323

EDIT: Only seems to look at 90C as a minimum... a good rule of thumb for reaction rates for any reaction is "the reaction rate doubles for every increase of 10C".

I skimmed it and looked at the graphs. Seems like isomerisation at 90C is greatly reduced compared to boiling wort. (Dangerously) extrapolating data of the graph on page 4437, I think isomerisation at 80 and less would be negligible. Unless you add 100g of flameout additions or use very high AA hops at flameout, I don't think the additional bitterness due to their isomerisation will amount to much. My house ales get about .8g-1.5g of whirlpool hops (where the whirlpool is performed in the kettle with a big SS paddle), depending on what variety I've got at the time, so perhaps that is why this is not much of an issue for me. I can see how it would if you finished with Warrior (15%AA) or even Nelson Sauvin (12%) in large quantities, but not with 1g/l of 5%AA hops. There just isn't enough alpha acid there to make a difference, even if 30% of it isomerised.

As I said it is all from my memory, but yes isomerisation still occurs at below 80, its just at a slower rate. At a brewery that I once worked at, we carried out and experiment to see just how quickly the hopback's IBU where formed, and the wort passing throw the hopback was far from boiling, because of transfer to whirlpool time and stand time once in whirlpool, it was 40mins after boil and the wort was now approx 80-85 degrees. we took 1min interval samples after the heat exchanger and found that pretty much all the utilization occurred in the first 15mins, then plateaued from there on in. we were all very surprised with the results.

I wonder if I'll notice a difference in my own setup between Summer and Winter brewing. Surely a 20 degree difference in ambient temp will slow down the cooling in summer time leading to more isomerisation over the slower cooling period?