Storing "no Chill" Cubes

[Bribie G]

Holey Moley Pete, that's really profound, what are you drinking? Please PM me for my address and then urgently send me a few bottles :icon_drunk:

 

[flattop]

BP's been drinking the "cool aid".....

If it looks like a sheep and bleats like a sheep the velcro is probably chafing....

 

[deathweed]

I think you can take heart with the Botulism argument - in the fact that at high temperatures the HDPE is quite permeable to oxygen. One of the reasons to squeeze out the air.. its getting quite enough oxygen contact through the material of the cube, without extra from the headspace. All you need to do is limit it a bit when the wort is hot enough for your traditional Hot Side Aeration to occur - As the wort cools down enough to actually absorb 02, the hdpe is still so permeable to the gas that the wort is far far from anerobic enough to be an issue.

I don't have figures to back this up (I am in the research phase of obtaining them)... but lets put it this way. Would you have a botulism concern if you put your hot wort into an open Carboy filled to the top (heated so it didn't shatter) closed with a bit of tinfoil?? Not sealed, just loose like a starter. I'm guessing no-body would have issue with that.

But - how much oxygen is actually making it through the couple of square inches of surface wort? None through the sides because glass is not permeable. Transfer rates of gas through liquid interfaces are pretty low without agitation. But I still doubt anyone would worry. Whether they should or not is a different question.

Now compare that to a sealed cube - sure, there is no actual liquid to air interface... but you have better than a square meter of surface area, which is Atransmitting oxygen at 58cc per square meter per 24hrs per mm of thickness at 25C - At 35C this rises to 111cc. Who knows at higher temps. After a couple of days at 25C - a standard cube might as well be in an open bucket from an oxygen levels perspective. Its saturated. And our cube has had a flying head start at higher temperatures while it cools down.

If anyone has better transfer rate figures, or can tell me what the transfer rate of oxygen across an undisturbed liquid/gas interface might be. That would be great. I am also hunting the levels of oxygen needed to inhibit Botulism spores.

I strongly suspect though I don't know for sure - that your sealed cube is actually as safe or safer than an open bucket made out of glass or stainless would be.

This is great, and I hope you dont mind that I posted this information on the US thread. I had not even considered oxygen permeability being high enough to inhibit anareobic growth.

On another topic, it has been sugested using a preservitive like campden tablets for storage. I imagine that they are pretty unessecary, but if anyone has any experience with using them, your opinion or knowledge is still greatly appreciated.

Thank you already for all your info and help! I look forward to using no chill much more in the future!

 

[Thirsty Boy]

OK here's a blast from the past.

In the late 70s I ran a home brew shop in Queensland and the standard fare was Brigalow kits, Pride of Ringwood pellets and flowers, a big honey dispenser of Malt Extract and a similar dispenser of Glucose syrup on the counter, and shelves full of airlocks, finings etc. The good old days. Then in 79 a wonderful thing happened. Coopers of Adelaide decided to go into Home Brew and what they did was to package the actual brewery wort into cubes and ship it out. That's right, the genuine wort of Sparkling ale and Stout and you could brew it at home, from the 23 litre five gallon imperial cubes. And they were cube shaped, not jerries.

I brewed quite a few and they were spectacular. Later they replaced the cubes with a plastic bag in a box. Freight, obviously, killed that model so they went into 'normal' home brew tins from the early 80s.

Cubes are tried and tested for over thirty years, shipped for thousands of kilometres in all temperature conditions. Floats my boat.

But we don't know that Coopers hot packed that wort. They may well have rapid chilled and packed the cooled wort in a sanitary way. Hard to do as a homebrewer - breweries do that sort of thing all the time though.

So though the fact that Coopers did it tells us about the storability of the wort in a cube - it doesn't tell us about HSA, it doesn't tell us about botulism, it doesn't tell us about DMS or variance in hop bitterness and aroma.

Don't get me wrong, I am a convert to no-chill. But its good to have a new set of people asking the old questions, and its good to play a bit of devils advocate to be certain that we are still convinced by the answers. Darren played Devils advocate perfectly during the earlier debates - and it was his constant chipping away that made people look so closely and be sure - not just fairly sure; that it was all safe and good.

Testimonials are great - I've won awards with no-chilled beer too... ta da!!! But testamonials aren't the way to convince everybody. Some need pictures, some need to see comp results, some want the science, some want the maths as well. Some will never be convinced till they taste the beer, so will need to try it for themselves.

And thats the most important one in my books. People will try this for themselves and discover that it actually works ... but not if they aren't convinced its safe to try. Which brings us back to the botulism thing. Boring but inescapable.

Why isn't it a problem?? Convince me

TB

 

[sumo]

I think those not willing to try new things, or are adverse to change may be the nay sayers. I was a little skeptical to start with expecially reading about the dangers of botulism etc. However tried it once, and again and again and find it to be a quick and easy alternative to immersion chilling.

Obviously if the science told be that it was a bad thing, it would be a little late. I also believe the Earth is round, not flat as scientist once proclaimed.

 

[RetsamHsam]

As I understand it the 'botulinum' spores' growth is inhibited in acidic solutions. With wort PH generally being between 4.8-5.6, and anything below 7.0 being considered acidic I would conclude that wort would be a hostile environment for botulinum spores.

 

[Bribie G]

TB, of course that's right I didn't consider how Coopers would have packaged those cubes. One argument it could demolish, however, is the claim that since Polyethylene is permeable to gases then the wort, after a short period, would become oxygenated and rapidly become stale / spoiled in the cube. Hasn't happened with any of mine yet, and I kept 4 mini cubes for partials from January until I used the last one 2 weeks ago. Smelt and tasted like freshly brewed out of the cube.

:icon_offtopic: does anyone where you work have any knowledge of the old Bulimba (Brisbane) brewery and whether the Carlton Draught brewed there was standard CUB or whether they just relabelled the old Bulimba Draught recipe? Long shot I know but I'm trying to recreate something similar as I loved the old CD before they moved to Yatala and dropped it for Fosters on tap and VB, before the recent 'revival' of CD.. (brewery fresh made from beer etc etc.)

 

[samhighley]

Thought i'd throw this in here.

I noticed on another thread that some people put taps on their no-chill cubes. How many people do this?

I don't see the point in having a tap on there. It's just another place for leakage, and another place for nasties to hide.

In fact, I usually search for no-chill cubes that haven't had the tap hole drilled out, for the aforementioned reasons.

 

[pdilley]

I picked up a couple taps when getting the Rays Outdoors jerry can style no chillers. They appear to be the same style as at the LHBSs. Those you can pop apart to clean out completely with the aid of a single screwdriver and a whack against a solid surface. Then you can clean and sanitise all the internal surfaces as well.

Still not decided whether to use them so they are still in the bag. They work well with plastic coupler inserted and a pvc hose attached if wishing to use gravity to dispense. I use similar on my plastic fermenter when racking or bottling.

 

[Tony]

I dont use a tap

I just pull the cap off and up end it into the fermenter

The risk of air leaking in through the tap worries me a bit

 

[flattop]

I sometimes use a tap in mine so it's easy to drain into my fermenter, sometimes i have the bung in and upend it... Either way no issue as i starsan everything first...

Ohh no chill.... no one died.... AFAIK it's safe in the short term, in the longer term the drinking of alcohol will kill me before the storage method

 

[PostModern]

I dont use a tap

I just pull the cap off and up end it into the fermenter

The risk of air leaking in through the tap worries me a bit

Me too. I worry it might EXPLODE if the tap is in there.

Seriously, tho, I like them undrilled. Less gaps for botulism to lurk between batches.

 

[Sammus]

But we don't know that Coopers hot packed that wort. They may well have rapid chilled and packed the cooled wort in a sanitary way. Hard to do as a homebrewer - breweries do that sort of thing all the time though.

I don't know about Coopers or other places, but when MHB used to get a lot of the NNL fresh wort kits, they often arrived quite warm, suggesting they were hot packed. Also at a HAG brew day we used the Potters brewery and did a big batch of oktoberfest, all hotpack no chilled. I didnt ferment mine for 18 months or so (yeah the one I mentioned earlier) - turned out to be a ripper

Why isn't it a problem?? Convince me

Me too!

I think those not willing to try new things, or are adverse to change may be the nay sayers. I was a little skeptical to start with expecially reading about the dangers of botulism etc. However tried it once, and again and again and find it to be a quick and easy alternative to immersion chilling.

Obviously if the science told be that it was a bad thing, it would be a little late. I also believe the Earth is round, not flat as scientist once proclaimed.

Back then science was basically just alchemy, it's a different story now day what with the scientific method and all. The point is that there is no doubt that botulism can be produced in these conditions, just that it isn't likely.

As I understand it the 'botulinum' spores' growth is inhibited in acidic solutions. With wort PH generally being between 4.8-5.6, and anything below 7.0 being considered acidic I would conclude that wort would be a hostile environment for botulinum spores.

pH has to be below 4.6 to stop botulism, even that sometimes isn't enough, and 4.8-5.6 certainly isn't. At least this convinced me that was the case.

 

[Polar Beer]

Me too. I worry it might EXPLODE if the tap is in there.

Seriously, tho, I like them undrilled. Less gaps for botulism to lurk between batches.

No taps!

I'm 99.9% one of my kids opened the tap of one of my stored cubes. This led to the only cube infection I've ever had.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

I don't know about Coopers or other places, but when MHB used to get a lot of the NNL fresh wort kits, they often arrived quite warm, suggesting they were hot packed. Also at a HAG brew day we used the Potters brewery and did a big batch of oktoberfest, all hotpack no chilled. I didnt ferment mine for 18 months or so (yeah the one I mentioned earlier) - turned out to be a ripper
-----
pH has to be below 4.6 to stop botulism, even that sometimes isn't enough, and 4.8-5.6 certainly isn't. At least this convinced me that was the case.

Yep, for mine that is the main answer to the safety concerns. Hot packing wort is practiced commercially, and I assume (perhaps wrongly I suppose) that the people who developed the product had to convince the food safety regulators that the product was safe to sell and consume. As near as I can tell, the homebrew process pretty much emulates exactly the commercial process... ergo I am convinced.

But I still want to know why its safe, when on the surface it looks like it shouldn't be.

and yeah - pH isn't anywhere near low enough in wort to be an inhibitor.

High sugar levels are supposed to inhibit the spores coming to life... but that was talked about in corn syrup and honey etc. So I'm guessing that the levels in wort wouldn't be high enough.

I have doubts - I'm, not convinced yet. More please.

 

[samhighley]

I sometimes use a tap in mine so it's easy to drain into my fermenter

But one of the benefits of no-chill is the opportunity to vigorously pour the wort from cube to fermenter to aid aeration.

 

[RetsamHsam]

Yeah.. I don't get the tap thing..

Unless they are putting a sediment reducer on it to filter out the break and hop material.

 

[samhighley]

Unless they are putting a sediment reducer on it to filter out the break and hop material.

I did think about something like that.

If you could get all the break to settle away from the tap, then you could get pretty clear wort out of the cube.

If you chilled the cube in the fridge (after the normal overnight cooling process) with the cube on its side so that the break settled on the edge furthest away from the tap, and then turned the cube right way up for another day or so, then the break might settle down in the back 'foot' of the cube.

 

[samhighley]

Here's a diagram to illustrate what I meant:

 

[RetsamHsam]

It may work, but i think it would be too much mucking around..

The break normally settles out underneath my tap in the fermenter and then i can just leave it behind when I keg.