The "no Chiller" Method

[Steve Lacey]

I was talking to a professional brewer about this on the weekend and he made a couple of contradictory points. On the one hand he said well, in the old days when they used coolships it would have still taken 24 hours for wort to cool, so the method is at least on a par with that.

On the other hand he reckoned that without rapid cooling there will not be a good cold break and that the beer won't drop bright (not consistent with people's observations).

One other point he made was that there will still be some certain enzymes in the boiled wort that are active only in the range of about 40 degrees C. He said what they do is convert some of the maltose into sugars that provide sweetness but are not digestible (a bit like some low-cal sweeteners). So as the wort takes a while to get through that temp range, some of the maltose will change into these sugars and you will get a slightly sweeter but slightly less malty beer (because the sugars are not metabollised by yeast).

Well, that's just what he said and it sounds plausible in theory, but whether it makes any practical difference, I don't know. It would take a fairly careful bit of controlled brewing to really find out. Can anybody who has been trying this method say that their beer is sweeter than they might have otherwise expected?

Steve

 

[Thommo]

I could be wrong on this but my understanding was that as the temperature was increased, different enzymes came into effect, before being destroyed at higher temperatures. Therefore, after a boil, the enzymes would have already been destroyed and thus have no effect as the wort cooled.

Not 100% sure though.

 

[Steve Lacey]

I could be wrong on this but my understanding was that as the temperature was increased, different enzymes came into effect, before being destroyed at higher temperatures. Therefore, after a boil, the enzymes would have already been destroyed and thus have no effect as the wort cooled.

Not 100% sure though.

OK, let me stress, I am pretty sure he was not referring to conventional alpha and beta amylase enzymes, but some other buggers. He said they are only active at a certain temperature (in the 40s)...I also want to emphasize that I am not putting this up as some kind of gospel, but rather as hearsay that I would like to see tested against experience. The guy seemed generally knowledgeable, he was a pro after all, but was surprisingly ignorant of one or two things that he should have known...so I am not prepared to take his word completely at face value. He wasn't talking about regular mash enzymes or regular starch conversion though.

 

[Ray_Mills]

Hi
Well i had to test the biggest concern with this method in one of my batches i brewed 8 weeks ago. One brew day i intended to make a blond Ale to test some hopping concerns for Scottys NNL batches. The brew day did not end up as planned as some huge rat from the creek ate through my huge plastic container and got stuck into my last 3kg of Pilsener malt. I hade some wheat to use so i made a 50% ale malt and 50% wheat malt beer with a few other malts like carapils and a little carahell.
I thought this will test the clarity concerns some technical brewers were cumming up with. Left the beer in the wort for 5 weeks and fermented the beer on a lager yeast for 3 weeks and kegged.
The beer was in the keg for 4 days so it did not have much time to clear. Being 50% Wheat i did not mind, but after 4 days of drinking it and runnings from the last 25% of the keg it was a very clear and it did supprise me.
So my theory is the no chill does not effect the clarity of the beer. Maybe it has to do with todays well modified malts, who knows.
Cheers
Ray

 

[Darren]

Darren
this method eliminated my infection problem.
Ray

Why do you think that is so Ray?
You were making test runs with Scottys NNL batches with an infection problem?

cheers

Darren

 

[Ray_Mills]

Darren
this method eliminated my infection problem.
Ray

Why do you think that is so Ray?
You were making test runs with Scottys NNL batches with an infection problem?

cheers

Darren

Hi
This may sound strange to a lot of you but its TRUE.
I have a backyard full of trees, for those that have been to my funny house they will back it up.
Well i had a tree that was weeping all this stuff around the yard (the yard did not get much sun) and where it landed on anything in the yard wild yeast would ferment it. This is true and a fine example was my blue tradsman trailer went from blue to black. You had to really scrub this stuff off everything in the yard that was there for just a short period. The stuff was sticky just like leaving some malt out and let it run wild.
All this was in my brewing area and it really became impossible to brew or ferment. Now this took 9 months to find out why every mash batch after batch was being infected. (luck i have patience)
I could not do tests anywhere to find out where the onfections were coming from.
It took that 9 months period to find out it was when the wort was cooling there was so much wild yeast about living from this tree it got into my beer before my yeast did and i was about to call it quits till i got rid of the tree.
After big brew day in 2004 and we all racked into a drum it solved my problem.
The tree has gone and my infections have gone and things are back to normal. The water restrictions have changed my brewing as well.
Cheers
Ray

 

[PostModern]

The water restrictions have changed my brewing as well.

The water you're saving, my DH of a neighbour is spraying all over his 1/4 acre of lawn every Wed and Sunday night.

 

[Darren]

Thanks Ray,
I agree that water restrictions would be a good reason to no-chill.
Double use of the warm chilling water would also be an option.
The tree sounds like a nightmare. Glad you got rid of it and solved your problems.

cheers

Darren

 

[Beerpig]

Ray

What sort of tree was it?

Cheers

 

[Ray_Mills]

Ray

What sort of tree was it?

Cheers

A Fuc..................................ing nitemare tree. Other than that the big kiwi guy how got it down with some others mentioned it had a unusal Disease he had only come accross a few times in 10 years of cutting down tress.
Typical it had to be in my brewery
Cheers
Ray

 

[shonky]

Cheers TD, I have waded through most of the 25 odd pages at some point. I must have missed your post.

Cheers for the feedback, and yours MAH, makes me feel more comfortable.

Still in two minds though.

Should I experiment on this most important of batches. My brain ramblings are going somthing like this:

1. Have the fridge space now to ferment both batches temp controlled.
2. Want to cold pitch, slurry only from 4lt starter - not enough for 80+ Lt
3. Would prefer to get beer out of fermenters and into cubes ASAP as lagering space will then be the next challenge
4. Have one saflager 34/70 dried yeast.

I've broken this down to 4 options

1. Split yeast slurry into two and pitch both on Sun
2. Make yeast starter (say 3lt) out of saflager tonight, pitch to 2nd batch on Sun
3. Make yeast starter out of some (how much) fermenting wort from exiting starter (scaled up yesterday currently at Krausen) and pitch no Sun
4. No-chill, start another starter on Sun after pitching majority of current one, step it up over two weeks and pitch then

Aggghh it's too hard, to make matters worse I've got no beer on tap, so I can't just sink a few and forget about it. My head hurts :blink:

Normally would just suck it and see but this is one beer I want to shine!

I need to make the decision in the next 1hr due to other commitments.

Anyone help? Pllllleeeeaaassee........

 

[Jye]

I will be fermenting my first no chill beer today and was surprised to see the amount of trub in the bottom... I did add 90g of Amarillo to the cube but I still think this is a lot :blink:

 

[dicko]

I will be fermenting my first no chill beer today and was surprised to see the amount of trub in the bottom... I did add 90g of Amarillo to the cube but I still think this is a lot :blink:

View attachment 7548

Hi Jye,
I noted the same thing when I experimented with the NCM.
I first tried to rack the beer to the fermenter and leave that cold break behind, but that was almost impossible as it (the cold break) is very light and it seems to run into the fermenter from the tap anyway.
I realised that to try to leave this trub behind I would be wasting a lot of beer so I adopted the "what the heck" attitude with the next one and I just tipped the lot into the fermenter.
Both beers fermented out perfectly and the 2112 yeast dropped extremely bright in the cube after a cc period in the fridge of 3 to 4 weeks.
The 1056 was not quite as bright but cleared well. This result was to be expected from these respective yeast strains.
The third brew of my experiment was back to 2112 and it was fine as well.
I noticed no detrimental flavours or any problems at all with the three brews and although I have used my cfwc for the following two brews I will be using that method again as necessary.
From what I am led to believe, the cold break still ends up in the fermenter if you use a CFWC so in my limited experience it doesn't matter.
It will be your choice as to leave the trub behind but IMO it is not worth worrying about.
Cheers

 

[lonte]

I've read through first 15 pages of this and hope what I say now isn't covered in the second 15 pages.

My interest in this has grown as before my next brew day on 18 June Brisbane gets Level 3 water restrictions. Gotta do something about my IC water wastage.

Some questions:

1) Is the stored hopped wort likely to suffer from light strike? If so, it would be best to cover the cubes or even use black rather than white ones.
2) Will the colour of the cube affect the cooling time? Black cars in the sun are hotter than white cars - would a black cube keep more heat than a white one, or even give more heat off and so cool quicker? Thoughts?
3) Since the cubes are sealed, this method might also bring into play all the "old" cooling methods for fermenters like the damp towel and electric fan, etc.

Very interested in thoughts on the cube color, if relevant at all.

On on, Lonte.

 

[bigfridge]

From what I am led to believe, the cold break still ends up in the fermenter if you use a CFWC so in my limited experience it doesn't matter.

This is very true and large commercial breweries do remove the cold break by bubbling sterile air thought the wort and skimming the scum that forms.

Smaller breweries don't worry about it as most is carried up in the yeast/foam head and sticks to the sides of the fermenter - above the tide line.

Either way we have nothing much to worry about.

David

 

[Jye]

1) Is the stored hopped wort likely to suffer from light strike? If so, it would be best to cover the cubes or even use black rather than white ones.

Hey lonte, Im not sure but it would be best to keep it out of direct sunlight, maybe after a day in a cool spot move it to a cupboard until your ready to pitch.

2) Will the colour of the cube affect the cooling time? Black cars in the sun are hotter than white cars - would a black cube keep more heat than a white one, or even give more heat off and so cool quicker? Thoughts?
3) Since the cubes are sealed, this method might also bring into play all the "old" cooling methods for fermenters like the damp towel and electric fan, etc.

A lot of people are brewing and pitching a week or two later so the speed of cooling doesnt matter but by the sounds of it this is your first all grain and you want to pitch ASAP. If that so then yes all the old methods could be used to cool and I think the colour of the cube will have minimal/zero effect. A first brew day can be pretty long so the wort may not be cool enough to pitch using these methods before its time for bed. Its been pretty cold in Brisbane lately so leaving it outside over night will have it at pitching temps by the morning.

Good luck with the brew day :super:

Cheers
Jye :beer:

 

[JasonY]

As we all know there are many factors which affect the final quality of a brew so the observations below are exactly that, observations on a split batch.

brew
House Pilsner which is one of my favourites. 96.5% Weyermann Pils, 3.5% Acidulated Malt, Wyeast 2247 European Lager, SaazB bittering, flavour & aromoa (24IBU). Brewed 43L on 02-Apr-2006, first 20L where chilled via CFWC as per usual with the remainder of the batch sent to a jerry can. Jerry was left at Perth ambient temp for 24hrs.

1.5L yeast starter was pitched 8hrs later after shilled wort was at 13degC, jerry was squeezed into ferment fridge fridge as well. Primary ferment of chilled beer for 12days, racked to keg. No-Chill beer was dumped onto yeast cake, allowed to ferment for about 12 days then kegged.

Basically I drank the chilled sucker after 4 weeks of conditioning as I was thirsty bt I saved a couple of pints for comparison. Pic below:



Chilled beer is on the left, now it looks like the no-chill is a little clearer but they are the same, both very clear.

Result
I was expecting them to be extremely similar, how wrong I was. :huh:

The aroma of the chilled beer was much hoppier than the no-chill one! Upon tasting it was like chalk and cheese to coin a term. The chilled pils was much fresher and hopier than the no chill. I can't really explain it and perhaps somehting else is at play but to my palete the chilled beer was by far superior to the no chilled one. From memor the no-chilled beer was initially hoppy but dryed out quicky to its present state (still a nice drop). But if I had to pick one it would be a no brainer, I would be going for the chilled one.

Didn't expect such a clear result but there you go. Who knows if it was down to the chill/no-chill part but given that I CFWC I dont think I will use this method again as it does not really save me any time. :beer:

 

[hupnupnee]

Could the difference be in the age of the two brews??


Tim

 

[JasonY]

Could the difference be in the age of the two brews??


Tim

Well lets remember that the wort is from the same batch so the age is identical, only difference is that the chilled wort was fermented 2weeks prior to the no-chilled one.

 

[Stoodoo]

JasonY, interesting observations. I guess that with the no chiller beer, some of the hops flavour and aroma may have been driven off while the wort is still rather hot. However, by pitching fresh yeast into the chilled wort, and by pitching the no chiller wort onto this aged yeast cake, I don't believe it could have been a very accurate comparison. Though I stand to be corrected.

Cheers