Throw Out Your Cubes

[///]

@///:If you are cubing and going by a recipe that was designed around chilling, maybe. If you are using a recipe designed for an NC system- no.

Also if you are making a single bittering addition beer, you won't get anything like 30% extra aa. It's late hopping that's the issue.

If I'm incorrect, I'm happy to be corrected - your results were measured Scotty but my understanding is that a 90 minute boil won't extract a whole lot more aa than a 60 min - certainly not 30% more. NC wouldn't be too different.

For late hopping, I know from my own palate that NC does indeed make a difference and I could believe 15-30% quite easily.

Some well made points, and you are right, late hopping is the issue. The approach for hops i used for NC I applied to chill, different grists but still truck loads of hops. I dug back through my records, the pale at work I tested with the Spectro on an old batch from the previous brewery I bittered to 35 BU with no consideration for isomerization from the 2 grams a litre whirlpool hops at the whirlpool. The tested bitterness was 70. A NC likely, and I say likely, could have been higher.

So I take a minimum of 30% off for the target bitterness on a chill recipe, if I was NC I would likely take off 50% to get it correct.

For the single hop edition and the bittering contribution, for a 60 - 90 minute boil with 1 edition my results showed a 3 Bu difference. Why anyone spend the extra time and energy boiling that extra 30 minutes I do not know ...

Scotty

 

[manticle]

I'm also curious (and speculating myself) as to what individual homebrewers' storage of hops will bring to the party.

It becomes very inaccurate trying to account for increase in bitterness when no chilling if your 5.8% hops have been in a plastic bag in the fridge for 7 months.

Main point I guess being back to what TB was saying - all methods need you to work with the advantages and limitations within that method, not cuss the method itself (not suggesting in any way that you are Scotty)

 

[pk.sax]

hey darren, health risks aside, from a scientific point, how long do you reckon it would take a 10,000 square container full of 100 deg wort (made of stainless steel) to cool to ambient temp of 20 deg ?

say it was 10mm thick to stop it collapsing

any idea ?

I'll tell you one other thing from my limited non-scientist, engineering perspective.

Ever noticed how much the cube shrinks as it cools? Making tanks taht would withstand that kind of expansion and contraction on a regular basis would be collosal waste of money. If a commercial brewery does do that, they don't deserve to be in business.
Besides that, unless they are putting the tanks outside the buildings, the heat radiated/conducted to air from these would make working in that brewery impossible, and then again, even outside, ever noticed how bad it is in underground carparks where aircons blow out all the heat?
Lets not even talk about the commercial implication of going that far from a standard practice and the negative publicity and loss of (paranoid) customers they will suffer if they did so in giant plastic tanks.
All in all, no-chilling on a commercial scale is a stupid idea that would get a brewery to go under real fast (or contribute to it).

For craft business, 'traditional' is a word that sells. If you fermenters are 'traditional squares', that sells, someone who is in the business might even confirm this.

 

[donburke]

I'll tell you one other thing from my limited non-scientist, engineering perspective.

Ever noticed how much the cube shrinks as it cools? Making tanks taht would withstand that kind of expansion and contraction on a regular basis would be collosal waste of money. If a commercial brewery does do that, they don't deserve to be in business.
Besides that, unless they are putting the tanks outside the buildings, the heat radiated/conducted to air from these would make working in that brewery impossible, and then again, even outside, ever noticed how bad it is in underground carparks where aircons blow out all the heat?
Lets not even talk about the commercial implication of going that far from a standard practice and the negative publicity and loss of (paranoid) customers they will suffer if they did so in giant plastic tanks.
All in all, no-chilling on a commercial scale is a stupid idea that would get a brewery to go under real fast (or contribute to it).

For craft business, 'traditional' is a word that sells. If you fermenters are 'traditional squares', that sells, someone who is in the business might even confirm this.

i walk into the room the next day and notice the difference in temperature, and thats only 80 litres

might try sending this challenge in to mythbusters

 

[Shed101]

I'm also curious (and speculating myself) as to what individual homebrewers' storage of hops will bring to the party.

To quote a homebrewer - William Cobbett - from 1821 (I happened to be reading Cottage Economy):

"As to the age of hops, they retain for twenty years, probably their power of preserving beer; but not of giving it a pleasant flavour. I have used them at ten years old, and should have no fear of using them at twenty. They lose none of their bitterness, none of their power of preserving beer; but they lose the other quality..."

Now this fella was definitely a 'no-chiller.' Although he did use coolers.

My personal experience with slow-chilling (I throw the cube into 1200 gallons of rainwater) is I use at least as much as recipes suggest and don't get unbalanced beers.

 

[Shed101]

might try sending this challenge in to mythbusters

Excellent - then we can start another thread about how they did it wrong!!! :lol:

 

[yardy]

a stainless steel cube would solve the worlds problems...

 

[Shed101]

a stainless steel cube would solve the worlds problems...

Good thinking ... maybe double skinned with some kind of frozen liquid in the cavity?

 

[pk.sax]

Excellent - then we can start another thread about how they did it wrong!!! :lol:

THinking about it, if the challenge were to keep your room warm by using a cube of NC wort, with its higher heat retaining capacity than regular 100C water, that might get some all-grain brewer on the show to make said cube of beer

 

[pk.sax]

a stainless steel cube would solve the worlds problems...

Bring it on skynet, we're training our knees to squeeze steel.

 

[Bada Bing Brewery]

It would make for riveting television. Imagine watching the SS vessel cool that wort .... i'm excited......
Cheers
BBB

 

[///]

Main point I guess being back to what TB was saying - all methods need you to work with the advantages and limitations within that method, not cuss the method itself (not suggesting in any way that you are Scotty)

No problemo, either method far from wrong, calcs were!

 

[manticle]

With you on that.

Cheers

 

[the_new_darren]

hey darren, health risks aside, from a scientific point, how long do you reckon it would take a 10,000 square container full of 100 deg wort (made of stainless steel) to cool to ambient temp of 20 deg ?

say it was 10mm thick to stop it collapsing

any idea ?

Hey Don,

What is the ambient temperature?

Can I whirlpool or stir?

What are the size of the container?

If its tall and thin like most fermenters and not sealed (aka no-chill cubes) I cannot see a problem with cooling.

2 days maybe?

lets get the myth busters stuff going....inoculate wort with Clostridium botulinum and see if it grows under anaerobic conditions. Compare low-hopped wort with highly hopped wort.

Sounds like a challenge to me. Would answer the debate (hypothesis/null hypothesis).

cheers

Dr. Darren

 

[bigfridge]

i walk into the room the next day and notice the difference in temperature, and thats only 80 litres

/// will remember the time that we filled his little Corrolla with a few hundred litres of red-hot cubes plus some just primed and bottled beers.

The next day as he opened the door to go home he was blown backwards by the heat wave that exploded from the cab. Needless to say he didn't need the heater on all the way home plus the beers were fully cabed and conditioned !

 

[bum]

and not sealed (aka no-chill cubes)

For someone who seems to post only in order to discredit no-chilling, you'd think you might go out of your way to find out what no chilling actually is.

An airtight seal is essential to the practise.

 

[the_new_darren]

For someone who seems to post only in order to discredit no-chilling, you'd think you might go out of your way to find out what no chilling actually is.

An airtight seal is essential to the practise.

Yeah, likewise, an airtight seal is exactly why CB will thrive................anaerobic conditions (no air)

tnd

 

[pk.sax]

so, ur saying NickJD's method of chilling in 19L pot sealed with clingwrap (airtight but with trapped air) is actually better?

 

[manticle]

Yeah, likewise, an airtight seal is exactly why CB will thrive................anaerobic conditions (no air)

tnd

One verified example of CB living in wort or beer - just one.

You have several thousand years of brewing history and practice in which to find an example.

Again not saying you are wrong - just asking you, kindly and politely, to provide some reasonable evidence for your assertions.

There is a lot of experiential data that suggests CB is not an issue with no chill, wort or beer. Can you provide evidence to the contrary?


Nothing I have written there is rude or antagonistic and I am interested in any real data you may have.

 

[Thefatdoghead]

People keep banging on about bloody Botulism and VOC's in plastics but I gotta say shouldn't we be more worried about alcoholism? I have about 150L of piss in my fridge because I love brewing, try my hardest to get through it I even get the mates around to try and free up some kegs. I'm going to have to set myself some rules or something.
Im off to search a thread that I have no doubt is on here about drinking to much
:icon_cheers: