No chill in corny keg

[Rambo]

Ah I see, cheers. Thinking ill give this a go over the weekend too. Though will put slight positive pressure of co2 while it cools.

 

[mb-squared]

mb-squared I'm not manticle - he is much more patient than me (probably types a lot faster to) and might spend a couple of hours answering your question, and its a very reasonable question, just extremely provocative.
Please don't take offence, I know its no longer fashionable to tell new members to go and do a search, but in this case, considering the size of the can of worms you are opening some one might be forgiven, up the top right in the search area put in chill v nochill - that got me 89 results as topics or threads, without trying variations on the spelling of nochill, no-chill, no chill and adding ing's on the end.
1/ every fresh wort pack sold is made this way, and lots of them get sold
2/ lots of people here do it without problems (including me)
3/ just because some American thinks it doesn't mean its right or applies everywhere
4/ have a look in the wiki topics (4th one down) Ahb Wiki: The No-chiller Method / Using A Cube
5/ plan on having a very late night
Mark

feeling properly schooled. thanks for being gentle. I've learned how to brew by reading books and I never came across the no-chill method where one pours boiling hot wort into a plastic container. But I now see lots of people do it and are very happy with their results. So, learn something new all the time.

Cheers,

Matto

 

[surly]

Seems to be a consensus that the gas and beer posts could suck air in as the wort cools. Basically just blocking the avenue.

Sorry to further re-hash this, but..
As I have never used a pluto gun, or seen how one works, I may be incorrect, but will this actually stop air getting sucked in the out post via the vacuum effect of cooling wort?
I would have assumed the gun would seal in the same manner as the post, therefore, all you have REALLY done is increased the length of the post??

All this is moot if the keg is maintained under greater than atmosphere pressure, which you have already stated as your intention.

 

[simplefisherman]

If you are breaking the vacuum through the gas in post then you wont suck air in through the liquid out post, and even if you did it would still suck past the pluto gun seal which is also designed to hold pressure not suction... so wont do any harm but probably wont help much either. That's my take on it anyways, otherwise very interested in your results.
A certain 3- letter- acronymed retailer gave me a tip which may prove useful for excluding trub, havent tried it but sounds good; find a stainless thimble and put it under the bottom of the dip tube when assembling the keg. Then you don't suck as much trub out, only as much as in the thimble... something to think about.

 

[Florian]

OK, I have just done this, sort of.

I haven't brewed since May last year except for a single batch in August for a barrel project, but I still had a cube sitting in the fridge that had accidentally been frozen for the last 10 month.
This cube needed reboiling because it originally had split at the top when filling (and hence ended up in the fridge) but also because it contained only IPA base wort hopped to 20 IBU.

Usually I would reboil this cube, no chill again and once cool do a 3 or so litre boil to add all the hops from 30 minutes downwards. As I couldn't be bothered doing two boils though I decided to combine the bug and hop boil and fast chill the keg in the pool.

Ended up like this:



Will pitch a rehydrated pack each of US05 and BRY97 tomorrow once it's cooled and oxygenated. Was originally planning on adding the spunding valve straight away, but I'm a bit worried about it being flooded with yeast, so I might attach a blow off via a disconnect first and replace with the spunding valve after a few days.

 

[MaltyHops]

Great, now we all need to get a pool for chilling our wort! :angry:

 

[pk.sax]

Should I post that again?

Although, I do live close-ish to the beach now...

 

[Rambo]

Doing a trial run with water. No pool unfortunately, though thought I better put it in the bath in case it does leak somehow. Using my soda stream gas bottle and an old reg.

 

[manticle]

ESB this saturday. Looks like I'm behind.

 

[Rambo]

Plenty of time to build a pool.

 

[manticle]

Laying bricks as we speak. It was raining here today too so I have a head start.

 

[Florian]

Chilling was over and done with in a hour or so thanks to the fairly large surface area compared to a cube and stainless steel being a better heat conductor than plastic.
No chilling would be obviously the same concept minus the pool, so safe your bricks for a brew stand or something.

Chilled the keg further down to pitching temps over night and discovered a bottle of antifoam (fermcap-S) that I had long forgotten about. Seeing the wort level was fairly high in the corny and I really wanted to attach the spunding valve from the start I considered this a worthwhile addition.

Pulled out the old oxygenation wand which is just about perfect for cornies.



As I wanted to dry hop this beer, but felt that opening the vessel half way through would somehow counteract the whole idea of not oxygenising the beer during transfers etc, and also being worried that the hops would clog up the poppet in the beer out post (had that happen before), I came up with this dry hop fandangle:







The idea is that the hops sits just above wort level during fermentation, then, when ready to dry hop, I pull the PRV a little so the hops get pulled into the beer by the weight of the spoons and just float a little above the bottom of the keg. When finished dry hopping I can either pull the hops out of the beer again or just leave them down there and transfer the beer of the hops to the serving keg.


Here's the whole thing ready to go into the fridge:

 

[manticle]

Great to see florian.

 

[Rambo]

I found in my trial run that the keg took a lot longer to cool than a cube. Presumably because it was insulated from the floor, which draws a lot of the heat away.

 

[manticle]

Part 1 just done (no chill in keg). I'll probably transfer this lot and aim for fermenting in keg at a later point.

At the moment I have just left the gas connected at 100 kpa. Will see if pressure remains tomorrow. I believe it should.

 

[Florian]

I would dial that pressure right down, otherwise your wort will be carbonated if you leave it too long.

You only need the tiniest amount of pressure, so that when the wort volume shrinks it can be easily displaced without pulling together those poppet springs. I had mine at 10 or so kPa.


I have once seen something that I found 'weird' which makes me a bit cautious with wort and Co2:
I had a 25L no chill cube, but only about 18L of wort, so the difference was too much to just squeeze the sides to push all the air out. I decided to just fill the cube and completely displace the head space with Co2, then pulled the lid tight.

The next morning all of the Co2 had been absorbed by the wort, there was literally no head space at all left in the wort and the cube was just a shrunken weird looking thing. I expected the walls to be pulled in a little by the cooling wort, with the volume of head space remaining the same, but instead the head space had disappeared completely.

Anyway, that's one of the reasons I wouldn't put the pressure on the reg too high, as it seems like the wort could 'eat' more Co2 than you would like too.

 

[Rambo]

Geez, thats a bit of a concern cause I was hoping to leave my wort in the keg for about a week while I wait for space in my fermenting fridge (once cooled I will disconnect the gas). There didn't seem to be any CO2 absorbed into the water in my trial run this week, hoping it's the same with my wort.

Edit: Gas pressure was really low, about 10kpa.

 

[manticle]

Will drop when I get home. Based my numbers on roger mellie's experience. If carbing a cold keg 100 kpa does very little overnight though.

 

[Florian]

yeah, not overnight. still not necessary.

Rambo, I wouldn't stress about it, have no idea why it happened and have never seen it again (but haven't replicated the situation either), but somehow thought it had to do with the wort being hot and all. Maybe one day I'll replicate it to see that I wasn't dreaming.

 

[Rambo]

No stress, just slightly concerned. I'm sure I'll soon find out if its an issue.

Thanks for the heads up though!