no chill into white plastic fermenter?
- Thread starter The_Monk
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butisitart
Well-Known Member
you mean at 90 degrees??
Grmblz
Well-Known Member
Nope, as long as it's HDPE be it clip on lid bucket fermenter or screw on lid barrel type it's tolerant of 100 deg's, it's what hot cubing is all about.
Sidney Harbour-Bridge
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White could be a problem though
butisitart
Well-Known Member
hope you're doing all this on the deck, with a proper bucket
sp0rk
Mayor of Pooptown
Don't forget the bucket, you don't want to go getting stuff everywhere
No-chill has been a pretty big thing for well over a decade, during that time I think about every possible variation on the theme has been tried, including going straight to the fermenter.
The whole point of No-chill is to keep the wort sterile while its cooling. People have tried kegs, fermenters, plastic bags...
Best results are still into a fully closable container that will take the heat, what you are calling white plastic is I suspect called Neutral in the trade, its that sort of translucent Polyethylene that most water and other food grade containers like fermenters are made out of. It has the advantage of having no colouring agents in it, being free of plasticisers that can contaminate beer, available in a bunch of sizes, pretty cheap and easy to get.
Its is a good idea to get as much of the air out of the container as you can, we are relying on the heat in the wort to heat the container and any air in it enough to sterilise the whole interior.
HSA (Hot Side Aeration) is real, as the wort cools it takes up quite a lot of air if it can, this will do some harm to your beer. This is a measurable fact, the debate on HSA is really around if id does enough harm to be concerned about.
Fill the cube, squeese out any any air, close and lay on its side, turn it over a couple of times so all the surfaces are heated, especially the more complex shapes around the ports and handles (the top).
I very much doubt a fermenter will be either full enough to get proper heating of all the surfaces to insure sterilisation. That you will get enough air out (and still have room for fermentation) so you will get HSA. That the fittings on a fermenter will seal well enough to stop air (with bacteria in it) getting sucked in and infecting your beer.
What it comes down to is if you aren't sure you can't stand your fermenter full of near boiling wort on its head without its leaking - think again because that's what it takes.
Mark
The whole point of No-chill is to keep the wort sterile while its cooling. People have tried kegs, fermenters, plastic bags...
Best results are still into a fully closable container that will take the heat, what you are calling white plastic is I suspect called Neutral in the trade, its that sort of translucent Polyethylene that most water and other food grade containers like fermenters are made out of. It has the advantage of having no colouring agents in it, being free of plasticisers that can contaminate beer, available in a bunch of sizes, pretty cheap and easy to get.
Its is a good idea to get as much of the air out of the container as you can, we are relying on the heat in the wort to heat the container and any air in it enough to sterilise the whole interior.
HSA (Hot Side Aeration) is real, as the wort cools it takes up quite a lot of air if it can, this will do some harm to your beer. This is a measurable fact, the debate on HSA is really around if id does enough harm to be concerned about.
Fill the cube, squeese out any any air, close and lay on its side, turn it over a couple of times so all the surfaces are heated, especially the more complex shapes around the ports and handles (the top).
I very much doubt a fermenter will be either full enough to get proper heating of all the surfaces to insure sterilisation. That you will get enough air out (and still have room for fermentation) so you will get HSA. That the fittings on a fermenter will seal well enough to stop air (with bacteria in it) getting sucked in and infecting your beer.
What it comes down to is if you aren't sure you can't stand your fermenter full of near boiling wort on its head without its leaking - think again because that's what it takes.
Mark
butisitart
Well-Known Member
mmm, interesting 
i don't cube, not required in my regime, BUT, lhbs guy was telling me he cubes, squeezes, then throws it in the swimming pool to get the temp down fast. different approaches
i don't cube, not required in my regime, BUT, lhbs guy was telling me he cubes, squeezes, then throws it in the swimming pool to get the temp down fast. different approaches
Arguably No-chill isn't the best option for those in a hurry
It takes time to sterilise, give you a good example. Expended grist will be full of lacto 12 hours after it has cooled down it stinks. This is malt that has spent an hour or so around 65oC, then been heated to close to 80oC to mash out. The lacto on the malt survives.
One of the reasons we boil a wort is to sterilise it. if you then let it cool to 80oC and it gets exposed to any of the lacto we know can survive (brewing areas tend to be pretty full of lacto on malt dust, in the air...) we can be pretty confidant that we have infected the brew.
Bacteria can reproduce 10-20 times faster than yeast, if it gets that much of a head start while we are waiting for the wort to cool to yeast pitching temperatures, it's going to be seriously stuffed.
Pasteurisation is the process of killing bacteria with heat, its a pretty well understood process that relates temperature and time and gives an answer in PU (Pasteurisation Units), worth looking up.
NO-chill works best if the wort is hot and it has time to heat the container and kill any bugs in there before it gets cool enough to for bacteria to take off.
If you cubed the wort at say 90oC and waited till it was down to say 70oC you have probably sterilised it, but that is going to take several hours, so you might as well leave it overnight and be really sure.
Mark
It takes time to sterilise, give you a good example. Expended grist will be full of lacto 12 hours after it has cooled down it stinks. This is malt that has spent an hour or so around 65oC, then been heated to close to 80oC to mash out. The lacto on the malt survives.
One of the reasons we boil a wort is to sterilise it. if you then let it cool to 80oC and it gets exposed to any of the lacto we know can survive (brewing areas tend to be pretty full of lacto on malt dust, in the air...) we can be pretty confidant that we have infected the brew.
Bacteria can reproduce 10-20 times faster than yeast, if it gets that much of a head start while we are waiting for the wort to cool to yeast pitching temperatures, it's going to be seriously stuffed.
Pasteurisation is the process of killing bacteria with heat, its a pretty well understood process that relates temperature and time and gives an answer in PU (Pasteurisation Units), worth looking up.
NO-chill works best if the wort is hot and it has time to heat the container and kill any bugs in there before it gets cool enough to for bacteria to take off.
If you cubed the wort at say 90oC and waited till it was down to say 70oC you have probably sterilised it, but that is going to take several hours, so you might as well leave it overnight and be really sure.
Mark
No chill, especially in the fermenter has been around as long as brewing and was the norm in home brewing before chillers became easily available. No chill in a sealed container like a cube has more recently become popular and has the advantage keeping air out and the wort sterile.
Most home brewers in the sixties, seventies and in to the eighties only had simple BIAB breweries available for purchase from the LHBS not usually chillers or cubes. It was pretty advanced brewing if you could cobble together a chiller. If not it was straight in to the fermenter and pitch next day when it cooled or speed thing up by placing the fermenter in a bath of cold water.
Most home brewers in the sixties, seventies and in to the eighties only had simple BIAB breweries available for purchase from the LHBS not usually chillers or cubes. It was pretty advanced brewing if you could cobble together a chiller. If not it was straight in to the fermenter and pitch next day when it cooled or speed thing up by placing the fermenter in a bath of cold water.
I think you have mixed a lot of home brewing history into a bit of a mishmash that isn't very historically accurate.
My recollection of the early writings on All Grain brewing involved what people today call 3V systems, things like Bruheat and 1V brewing came along a bit later, BIAB as we know it in response to systems like Baumeisters, then it all went crazy.
Immersion chillers or putting the kettle (stock pot) into a tub of cold water was the norm until the 2000's.
What ever you want to do and however you want to make beer, look at the processes, try the well tested and proven first, learn what the various steps in brewing do, then maybe look for ways to improve your processes.
After you know what the steps in the process are for and the effect mucking around with them will have on your beer, is a better time to reinvent the process.
Mark
My recollection of the early writings on All Grain brewing involved what people today call 3V systems, things like Bruheat and 1V brewing came along a bit later, BIAB as we know it in response to systems like Baumeisters, then it all went crazy.
Immersion chillers or putting the kettle (stock pot) into a tub of cold water was the norm until the 2000's.
What ever you want to do and however you want to make beer, look at the processes, try the well tested and proven first, learn what the various steps in brewing do, then maybe look for ways to improve your processes.
After you know what the steps in the process are for and the effect mucking around with them will have on your beer, is a better time to reinvent the process.
Mark
We have had this conversation several times before Mark and still seem to be going around in circles. As I have explained before BIAB as you know it was known and used way before Braumeisters at least outside Australia. I find it hard to believe that it was unheard of in AU though perhaps just not as common as homebrewing seems to have taken off a lot later here than Europe and elsewhere?
What I wrote above is my recollection of homebrewing and the equiptment used from when I first took an interest and started brewing in 1979.
The first time I personally saw a BIAB system (as it is now called) was about a couple years prior to that in Ireland. I moved back to the UK in about 1981 lived with an uncle and helped him brew but didn’t really start brewing in earnest myself until several years later.
My memory of exactly when I bought my own BIAB system is a bit hazy but I think would have been late eighties when I went to the LHBS and bought a Bruheat boiler (think my first one was actually an Electrim Bin boiler but same as Bruheat) a grain bag and fermenter. Also bought a keg system, plastic keg and co2 bottle.
The homebrew books I read at that time did sometimes show grain bags used in a separate mashtun but leaned towards 1v brewing using just the Bruheat and grain bag and that’s what I did. The bag was hoisted above the Bruheat and supported between two chairs with broom handles through the bag handles. I was living and brewing in a single room bedsit at that time and only had a shower so had to wait till next day to pitch yeast. After I moved to a house with a bath tub I used that filled with cold water to cool the wort.
Not sure why your recollections of early writings on all grain brewing only involved 3V systems but I am guessing you may have started reading and brewing a lot later when 3v systems were the norm and popular on mostly American chat rooms? I remember first seeing these on the interweb around 1994-95.
I would also hazard a guess that there were not many homebrew books in Australia prior to 1974 when I think homebrewing was made legal here? The UK had a head start with modern homebrewing as it was made legal to brew again without a license 1963.
Another reason why home brewing with simple equipment took off earlier in the UK than AU may be that it is easier to brew there most of the year so an easier hobby to take up. With the cooler climate you mostly need to keep the fermenter warm which is easier with a heat mat or belt than cooling in a temp controlled fridge.
When did temp controls like FridgeMate or STC1000 become available?
I also found kegging easier in the UK than here as near cellar temp was easy to achieve just leaving the keg in a garage or cool room in the house. That’s not quite as easy these days though as most houses have central heating radiators in every room.
My grandfather did what we would now call BIAB back in the day. A couple of sheets of cheesecloth stitched together by my grandmother (the top tied shut with garden twine), and using the Fowlers Vacola boiler as his single vessel. No sparge.
Last time we had this conversation I went and looked at all the old home brewing books I could find (some back to the 1950's) what I have posted is what is reported in those references. Most of these are English books.
If I recall correctly I posted copies of some of the information. You are invited (again) to provide any evidence to the contrary, other than your personal recollections.
Believe me I started brewing well before the WWW was a thing even vaguely like it is today.
I don't know when FridgeMate and STC's hit the market, Analogue controllers date back to the late 1800's, (arguably the late 1500's) probably not far from when refrigeration became reasonably accessible. My first couple of fermenting fridges had analogue controls, I recall one that didn't have a very narrow range, needed about a dozen bricks in the bottom to keep the beer stable.
Like I said, you have an opinion, do some research to support and post the evidence. Its pretty hard to expect everyone to just agree with you.
Mark
butisitart
Well-Known Member
that would make you 104
No but I recall my first modem making bilppy cheep noises if you picked phone and listened, **** it was slow and there weren't many people out there. Mind you it took half an hour to rotate an monochrome image, 128K of RAM, same on the disc and no hard drive 9 pin dot matrix at near letter quality was the nuts, paper came with holes down the side... Ar the good old days (not). Sure there's room for a Monty Python sketch in there somewhere.
Apparently you are only as old as you feel so you might be right 104 it is.
Mark
Apparently you are only as old as you feel so you might be right 104 it is.
Mark
Geez Mark, I know you personally, and you look darned good for 104! I thought coalminer and myself were the oldest HUB members, but you take the biscuit. LOL.
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