No-chiller Moving To Immersion Chiller

[jc64]

Hi, I've just finished another batch with my immersion chiller. When I No-Chilled I was able to get a really good whirlpool going at flameout and leave most of the trub in the kettle. Now I'm chilling I realise I will have cold break in the kettle, however taking this into account I cannot seem to get a nice trub cone.

I've tried to whirlpool during chilling as well as after chilling has completed but still seem to have a level layer of trub at the base of the kettle when draining. Anyone have any tips or tricks to help out a new chiller?

Also I'm chilling the final few degrees in my fermenting fridge before I pitch, any issues with doing this?

Cheers

 

[Bribie G]

If you drop the coil into the kettle and chill then what else do you expect? (not being smartarse but there is hot and cold break and never ye twain should meet)

Whirlpool in kettle and run into fermenter then chill there.

I no chill but above is what I saw an Aussie winner do at a brewday.

QED

 

[jc64]

Yeah, I knew I'd have more break material in the kettle still hoped to leave most of the trub behind though. I'm using brewbrite to help drop the break and that seems to be working, just can't get a cone of trub for the life of me now. Chilling in the fermenter is something I have never heard of, anyone else do this?

'never ye twain should meet', a very apt phrase for the two substances, well played!


Cheers

 

[dr K]

From the bottom up:
If you are making a lager a good idea, for an ale..well your choice.
Never whirlpooled cooled wort so NFI
Unless you are using a continuous Jamil type whirlpool chiller maybe best to just immerse and cool .
Do not get too concerned about what you see as break or trub. The big thing is to cool the wort ASAP (which you are now doing), you may not see what you are leaving behind but you should taste it.

K

 

[jc64]

Thank's for the tip's, next batch I will just chill with the immersion chiller giving it a whirl every five minutes or so, then drain to fermenter etc. I'll just close my eyes when I see all that wasted wort at the bottom.

 

[QldKev]

If it's the chiller causing issues with the cone formation can you: chill, remove chiller, whirlpool

QldKev

 

[TasChris]

I use an immersion chiller and I chill, then remove hop sock and chiller, stir like hell to form cone, leave for 15-20 mins.
Drain to fermenter. some break material does get transferred to the fermenter at the start of the transfer and at the end but not that much.
Don't worry about it

Cheers
Chris

 

[Nick JD]

This was posted by someone a few days back.

http://www.basicbrewing.com/index.php?page=radio

Scroll down to February 23, 2012 - Trub Experiment Results. They asked a bunch of people to brew a split batch: take the first half of completely clear wort into one fermenter; and the second half was to include the hotbreak.

Remember these are Americans mostly, who all rapid chill - so cold break is always in their beer - this is about hotbreak.

To sum up what they found: in the majority of beer styles, there is no negative consequence to including the hotbreak in your fermenter ... and in some cases, there are actually a few advantages.

End of the day, if you slop a shitload of horbreak into your fermenter it won't matter squat, and it might even improve your beer.

 

[Crusty]

If it's the chiller causing issues with the cone formation can you: chill, remove chiller, whirlpool

QldKev

Yep!
This is what I used to do. Not a hope in hell getting a trub cone with the immersion chiller in there.
Chill it down, remove the chiller, whirlpool & come back in 10mins.
As Nick mentions above, hot break into the fermenter won't cause you any problems.

 

[jc64]

Thanks, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something blindingly obvious. Chill, then whirlpool, I guess any splashing would not be a big deal. After all I'm going to aerate the wort in the fermenter.

Cheers.

 

[Nick JD]

Thanks, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something blindingly obvious. Chill, then whirlpool, I guess any splashing would not be a big deal. After all I'm going to aerate the wort in the fermenter.

Cheers.

After listening to that podcast, I'm going to start adding all my hotbreak to the fermenter.

 

[glenwal]

After listening to that podcast, I'm going to start adding all my hotbreak to the fermenter.

Why not just ferment in the kettle (gives a whole new meaning to 1V brewing)

 

[Nick JD]

Why not just ferment in the kettle (gives a whole new meaning to 1V brewing)

I've done that before. Worked fine - bit of a bummer waiting for FG though when you want to make another batch...

Listen to that podcast. It's an eye opener - for the guys doing it as well.

The Americans are such conservative brewers. Whole bunch of people leave the hotbreak in and freak out at the beer in over half the cases being better with the hotbreak left in.

So much of brewing "rules" are written by people who have never broken them to see what happens.

 

[jammer]

I use an immersion chiller and I chill, then remove hop sock and chiller, stir like hell to form cone, leave for 15-20 mins.
Drain to fermenter. some break material does get transferred to the fermenter at the start of the transfer and at the end but not that much.
Don't worry about it

Cheers
Chris

+ 1 for that. Took me a while to work that one out...I brew in a garage, so I put the kettle lid on after the whirlpool To stop dust, flys etc getting into the wort

 

[CosmicBertie]

I've done that before. Worked fine - bit of a bummer waiting for FG though when you want to make another batch...

Listen to that podcast. It's an eye opener - for the guys doing it as well.

The Americans are such conservative brewers. Whole bunch of people leave the hotbreak in and freak out at the beer in over half the cases being better with the hotbreak left in.

So much of brewing "rules" are written by people who have never broken them to see what happens.

I chill using a immersion chiller and never achieved a cone. I also got a bit miffed with pouring 3 or 4 litres of break/trub ladened wort down the sink.

Nowadays I stick the syphon tube into the bottom of the kettle and transfer everything into the fermenter. The break material settles out in the bottom and compacts well. I have no problems with off tastes and no hazey beer. The beer tastes great. You do end up with a couple of inches of trub/yeast cake on the bottom of the fermentor, but hey, it causes me no harm.

I've also just tried one of my beers where I'd dumped the wort from the kettle onto the whole yeast/trub cake of a similar finished beer, and it fermented fully within 4 days. The beer turned out great too.

Im now back-combing my hair into a full on mad professor look, so that I can manically laugh at my next experiment!

 

[Spiesy]

wouldn't a couple of inches go past your fermenter tap? or do you siphon out of the fermenter too?

 

[CosmicBertie]

wouldn't a couple of inches go past your fermenter tap? or do you siphon out of the fermenter too?

Yeah it does. But once the beer has finished fermenting, I rack to secondary, gelatine, and CC for 4 days. The beer comes out crystal clear.

 

[hsb]

You can also just angle the fermenter back on something, to lift the tap free from the trub.
I prefer to take a cup of the yeast slurry out, clean the fermenter, then pitch the slurry back with the wort. Means you don't start with caked krausen around the top of the fermenter, and maybe more in the ballpark for pitching rates?

 

[CosmicBertie]

You can also just angle the fermenter back on something, to lift the tap free from the trub.
I prefer to take a cup of the yeast slurry out, clean the fermenter, then pitch the slurry back with the wort. Means you don't start with caked krausen around the top of the fermenter, and maybe more in the ballpark for pitching rates?

You can, but the trub level is above the fermenter, so you'd have to lean it a long way back. Besides the trub compacts down well and when racking it creates a small channel and doesnt draw all the trub from above the level.

My experiment with a full yeast slurry shows that it ferments out just fine with no weird off-flavours. I never removed the glad wrap from around the top (only loosened it when racking), so the caked krausen didnt cause any concerns.

Note: Im not advocating that this is the only way to do it, but it works for me with the detrimental affects to the beer(s).

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Cold break sinks very very slowly - even if you have used kettle finings and have gone to the trouble of working out the correct amount. If you immersion chill, it still wont have settled in any apreciable way in the amount of time its practical to let it rest. People who immersion chill and think they are "leaving behind" the cold break are pretty much kidding themselves. The best they are doing is leaving behind a little bit and transferring the majority to the fermenter just like everyone else.

If you want to leave behind your cold break - No Chill, its the only practical way for a homebrewer to actually achieve it.

The upshot for you, is that whats likely to be happening - is that your hot break is falling to the bottom the same way it ever did, probably a little more effectively because the chilling process is giving it more time to do so and you just have a bit of a sludgy layer of cold break on top - its settled to the bottom a bit, but only enough to be

Play around a bit, suck out about as much wort as you did before and see what happens - look at the left over trub and see whats there. You'll probably find that its three layers... bottom to top - hop stuff, hot break stuff, cold break stuff. The cold break will be fluffy and not really in a distinct layer. If you pull some off the cone or whatever, dont worry about it - if you leave behind the hot break, you are leaving behind everything you were before so from a precipitated solids point of view, you haven't changed your practise from when you no-chilled, so it should have no impact on the quality of your beer one way or the other.

As for forming a cone out of what does settle - you'll just have to play about with it. If you were getting a cone of hops and hot break in the pot before, then taking the chiller out and giving it a spin and a similar rest will almost certainly mean you are getting a cone of hop and hot break now. You just cant see it through the cold break murk.

 

[jc64]

Makes perfect sense Thirsty Boy, thanks. My next brew day I will put these tips into practice. How many brewers do both chilling and no-chilling? I'm thinking my lack of fermentation fridge space may see me doing a combination of both.

Cheers

 

[spudfarmerboy]

Cold break sinks very very slowly - even if you have used kettle finings and have gone to the trouble of working out the correct amount. If you immersion chill, it still wont have settled in any apreciable way in the amount of time its practical to let it rest. People who immersion chill and think they are "leaving behind" the cold break are pretty much kidding themselves. The best they are doing is leaving behind a little bit and transferring the majority to the fermenter just like everyone else.

Thirsty Boy,
I have seen people who immersion chill and also have a stainless steel mesh filter, similiar to a "hop stopper" in the bottom of their kettle.
Do you think that would strain out the cold break when transferring from the kettle to the fermenter?

 

[glenwal]

Do you think that would strain out the cold break when transferring from the kettle to the fermenter?

If its fine enough to filter the break, then its going to get clogged up pretty quickly imo.

 

[DJR]

I set up a whirlpool pump with sparge arm on my kettle once ala Jamil - besides it being a bit faster to chill I still ended up with break - all that happened was I had break at the bottom in a cone (from the initial whirlpool with a long spoon), no break in the middle then break floating on top where the whirlpool return was. I was using a Hoprocket though so it was filtering a lot of the break. Sure the beer in the middle was clear but it's just more stuff to clean and sanitise on brewday.

Now i just start off a whirlpool with a large spoon about 5 minutes after boil finishes (so convection currents from the hot pot don't stir it up too much) then kick off the chiller and give it a gentle stir until it starts to get down to about 70C or so, then I leave it till it gets to pitching, usually there is a cone but a lot of the break material does "float" back around the fermenter. Never really noticed it causing a problem if it gets in the fermenter, made some clean lagers/kolsch with a fair amount of break in.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Thirsty Boy,
I have seen people who immersion chill and also have a stainless steel mesh filter, similiar to a "hop stopper" in the bottom of their kettle.
Do you think that would strain out the cold break when transferring from the kettle to the fermenter?

yeah - why not. some of it at least. If you have some hops in there, they'll build up on the mesh, a depth filter will develop and it will eventually run clear.... you might need to re-circ a bit back into the kettle. How much will it clog? How fast will it flow?? I suspect lots and slowly and that if it isn't lots and slowly, then its probably not doing that great a job.

If i want to exclude cold break (I normally dont) I just fail to tip it out of my NC cube - if for some reason I want to both rapidly chill AND exclude cold break - then I'd just cool wort with a regular whirlpool (i use a plate chiller, but thats irrelevant) and transfer to fermenter without worrying about cold break, and probably being a little less fussy about hot break too - then after pitching and about 24 hrs later, just before things start to get going fermentation wise - I'd rack away from the trub in the fermenter. That'd exclude any leftover hot break and a decent proportion of the cold break (not all of it mind you, just a decent whack)

But mostly I whirlpool, and then run clean hotbreak free wort to either a cube or a plate chiller. Cold break has minimal to zero negative effects on beer quality - so it just goes to fermenters and I ignore it.

 

[Bribie G]

Cold break mostly just settles out to a neutral layer at the bottom of the fermenter. For those who came in late, about 3 years ago I did an experiment where I brewed two batches of an identical Aussie style Ale and no chilled them. I poured the top clear halves of both cubes into a fermenter and the bottom halves into the other - with all the cold break and other shyte.

Then when the beers were ready to drink I took bottles of each to a club meeting for a blind test and on balance the cold break brew was described as a bit fuller and hoppier, not that many people could tell a lot of difference between them anyway.

 

[Nick JD]

I listened to that basic brewing podcast last week - where they got 20 people around the world to split their batch (taking clear wort into one vessel and clumpy hotbreak into the other) and then report back on how it went.

More than half (including a few triangle testers) found that the hotbreak left in tasted better, fermented better and cleared better.

That's right - fermenting on the hotbreak.

 

[spudfarmerboy]

yeah - why not. some of it at least. If you have some hops in there, they'll build up on the mesh, a depth filter will develop and it will eventually run clear.... you might need to re-circ a bit back into the kettle. How much will it clog? How fast will it flow?? I suspect lots and slowly and that if it isn't lots and slowly, then its probably not doing that great a job.

If i want to exclude cold break (I normally dont) I just fail to tip it out of my NC cube - if for some reason I want to both rapidly chill AND exclude cold break - then I'd just cool wort with a regular whirlpool (i use a plate chiller, but thats irrelevant) and transfer to fermenter without worrying about cold break, and probably being a little less fussy about hot break too - then after pitching and about 24 hrs later, just before things start to get going fermentation wise - I'd rack away from the trub in the fermenter. That'd exclude any leftover hot break and a decent proportion of the cold break (not all of it mind you, just a decent whack)

But mostly I whirlpool, and then run clean hotbreak free wort to either a cube or a plate chiller. Cold break has minimal to zero negative effects on beer quality - so it just goes to fermenters and I ignore it.

Cheers TB for the informative reply.

 

[iralosavic]

I have reduced my kettle losses to under 100ml since installing a false bottom. The break material seems to collect ontop of the hop devbri. that geing said, I couldn't care less about hot or cold break going through to the fermenter, personally. The end results are fine either way. Anyway, just my 2c - my kettle false bottom was the best upgrade I've fine and I have not since looked back and wondered if there were better options.

 

[jc64]

I have reduced my kettle losses to under 100ml since installing a false bottom. The break material seems to collect ontop of the hop devbri. that geing said, I couldn't care less about hot or cold break going through to the fermenter, personally. The end results are fine either way. Anyway, just my 2c - my kettle false bottom was the best upgrade I've fine and I have not since looked back and wondered if there were better options.

Just a quick question about false bottoms in boil kettles. Is it ok to join the elbow from the false bottom to the spigot using a short piece of silicone hose? How does this hold up when boiling the wort for a hour or more? What is the best way to connect if this is no good? Thanks for the advice.

Never mind just thought of the fact nothing would be holding the false bottom down.

Cheers