Throw Out Your Cubes

[kieran]

I brew on top of my cold break as I ferment straight in the cube. While there may be some observed or measured issues with this on a molecular level, on a taste level, real level, actual level, whatever level of relevance you want to use to a homebrewer and the consumption of their beer, there is no significant issue I can point to and say "cold break is responsible for that". I challenge anyone else to do so too.

I do separate my wort from the hot break and trub though.

The point about plate chillers made above to me is a good one - as far as I understand all cold break is transferred to fermenting vessel so its not uncommon for some chillers to be fermenting with CB.

I don't drink my beer cold enough for chill haze to be an issue but my understanding is that long lagering times will reduce chill haze (as will putting tiny pieces of plastic in it but I prefer not to))

Not sure if youre referring to what I wrote, but that wasn't what I was really talking about. More about the advent of eventual chill haze.

Even still, alot of these things can be circumvented with things like 1um filters, etc. to clarify.

As for fermenting on Trub, I agree that perhaps there indeed is some metabolic bonus to yeast to having it present.. maybe it's a good thing for yeast vigor.

Anyway, I'm not going to bother with that experiment now. I've thought about it thoroughly, and unless I'm no chilling a >20L volume and comparing against a chilled >20L its not really worth it to the homebrew community. I was going to do 1L of each, but the time 1L takes to return to RT will be tiny compared with the thermal mass of 20L cooling in the same manner (more rapid chilling, not really like no-chill!). So I don't think many brewers will be able to take much away from a sampled experiment like I was planning .. so I'll save my sunday afternoon and spend it with my kids.
I do agree with you Manticle, that a quantitative measurement does not necessarily reflect on a qualitative measure (e.g. a taste), and vice versa. Human perception plays a big role in that. We can detect minute details of some flavours, and bugger all of others.

 

[manticle]

Not sure if youre referring to what I wrote, but that wasn't what I was really talking about.

Not specifically - more a general response to the ensuing discussion about precipitated proteins and cold break and so forth (stux's post for example).

Just an experiential observation to add to the discussion.

 

[The Village Idiot]

Geez fella's been reading this topic and I suggest you have another beer......... too much chemistry dudes..........giving me a headache

Supposed to be a hobby not a lifestyle

 

[lickapop]

I tried no chill at least twice.

Next time you are in at bunnings or super cheap crack open a fresh willows cube and breath in all of its VOC goodness and then whack 90C+
liquid in it. Top stuff

Does my beer smell like an empty above ground pool on a scorching hot summers day? I cant really tell, but taste and smell aint everything.

I havent really crunched the numbers but I think I can come close to having as much useable water left over using my plate heat exchanger than what I PERSONALLY use with no chill.

3 x 25L willows cubes, slightly used to give away to a new home. Townsville area. PM me

<3

 

[bum]

Geez fella's been reading this topic and I suggest you have another beer......... too much chemistry dudes..........giving me a headache

Supposed to be a hobby not a lifestyle

You're new at this, hey?

 

[Cocko]

You're new at this, hey?

:lol:

 

[///]

You're new at this, hey?

Ohh no, bring on the science ... it learnt me some important stuff ...

As one who produced a few thousand cubes in his time, taking the same attention (or lack thereof) to late kettle utilisation and putting this approach to a plant with a spectophotometer (a scientific thing which tests for bitterness in beer), using higher alpha hops in the whirlpool (effectively a cube) gave a bitterness contribution of approx 30% which was unaccounted in the original recipes.

So, the old Amber Ale based on 35 Bu, would have been approx 52 BU. Bo Pils, 30 Bu would have been 45. But the craziness does not stop there, one of my beers with a target of 20 Bu sees 12Bu from the whirlpool hops with a 45 minute run off. We bitter to 8 bu, the WP gives the late kettle pickup and for flavour we dry hop the be-jesus out of the beer. Otherwise, if I did not cut back the WP hops we get a BU of about 40 ... the hops are 17 AA btw ...

So, if you are cubing knock off at least 30% of your bittering hops due to that scary science stuff giving good results ...

Scotty

 

[The Village Idiot]

You're new at this, hey?

Na, not really, just drink too much

 

[ekul]

When i was chilling it would take 45mins+ to chill a 23L brew. The water coming out of the tap was 5L a minute (with a maxiumum of 20L a minute), so 230L of water (at least) to chill a brew (immersion chiller). This was not really a problem as the water came from the dam, and was returned to the dam. I would have to completely fill and empty a cube 10 times for it to be the same amount of water used. This was in QLD were the water is coming out of the tap at around 25C.

To clean a cube i think i would use about 35L. I store my cubes full of napsian solution and then rinse them out when i need them. In my mind its considerably less water but i didn't stop chilling because of it. I stopped because i was getting recurrent infection from my wort sitting around unprotected for 45mins.

Are people using this amount (35L) of water to chill a brew?

 

[lickapop]

less

5L water in a bucket with a submersible pump and a big bucket of ice from the work ice machine.
! still really want to know how much water I use to clean the chiller with but that all gets recycled back thru it with the pump. Maybe 10L of unusable water.

actually I tip it out half way thru so it is 10L plus the Ice

 

[kieran]

spectophotometer (a scientific thing which tests for bitterness in beer)
Scotty

i wrote a big reply asking how that can be done, and then found my answer here that it can only be done after solvent extraction. 275nm absorbance after acidification and organic phase extraction with iso octane.

For any rev heads out there, you'll know that iso octane was the first additive to be mixed to fuel in the 1926 to reduce the common engine 'knocking' effect.. the name of iso octane is what has rubbed off on what we now term the "octane" rating of petroleum. Its good to have wikipedia back.

 

[kieran]

Are people using this amount (35L) of water to chill a brew?

Shitloads more, but I'm recirculating through a 'dam' (rainwater tank) like yourself. Except my water is colder and I use a plate chiller (Therminator).
I just don't think immersion chillers are that great, I started off with one... it it was far too inefficient. Counterflow or plate chiller for me.
I can chill a 20L brew to 18C in 20 mins in summer (that's whirlpooling and getting the kettle down to almost that temp too [speaking of inefficiency! i need to do something about that!]).

 

[Doubleplugga]

i whirlpool, leave for 15 to 20 mins. then run it through my plate chiller. all used water goes into the pool to top it up so it works out well. this is perth in summer though so my wort only gets dow to about 25-28 degrees. put fermenter in my fermenting fridge and cool it down to around 20 degrees then pitch. takes a few hours to get down to this temp but never had a problem yet.... touch wood! then i just crack it and add the yeast. ****, now that i have just spoken my next brew will probably be crawling with all sorts of shit

 

[stux]

Next time you are in at bunnings or super cheap crack open a fresh willows cube and breath in all of its VOC goodness and then whack 90C+
liquid in it. Top stuff

Does my beer smell like an empty above ground pool on a scorching hot summers day? I cant really tell, but taste and smell aint everything.

I don't know about everyone else but when I beak in a new cube it involves deep soaks with hotwater and PBW to remove the VOCs

 

[Thirsty Boy]

My 2c.

One thing you wont get around is higher levels of non-precipitated protein -- I don't know how significant that is without actually doing a side by side comparison. I'm doing a brew tomorrow, so perhaps I'll ween off a litre and let that "no chill", and I'll do a protein prep and do a proper quantitative comparison using a Bradford assay or something. Assuming there inherently is more protein, I think it could be said that bigger body beers, hoppy bitter Ales, IPAs and Stouts would see little effect from an increased protein content from a no-chill. However, more carefully balanced beers would require a significant amount of work to get them "right". However, the average general home brewhouse, I think is unable to make such consistent minor, well balanced, modifications to hit the nail on the head consistently for those beers. I would think that there is just too much variability and inconsistency.

think you will get around it - pretty sure that "it" doesn't actually exist.

The protiens in question are soluble at certain temperatures - insoluble at lower temperatures - and they come out of solution at those lower temperatures just as well whether it takes 15 minutes or 15 hours to get there. Think about it from the perspective of the concern you have - chill haze, which is mostly just an extension of cold break anyway. If those protiens only come out of solution and complex with tannins when the temperature is "quickly" lowered - then beers would only ever have chill haze if you chill them suddenly. Beer into bucket of ice equals chill haze - Beer into fridge door that tales a couple of hours to get it cold, equals no chill haze. We could all avoid it completely by just cooling our beer down slowly enough. That doesn't happen because its the temperature that matters, not the rate at which it gets there.

I'm just not sure where this notion that you need to chill quickly to form cold break comes from, if someone could point to to some decent source for the theory behind it, I would actually really appreciate it. I want to understand why so many homebrewers think its so, when I've yet to come accross a single reason why they should.

 

[bum]

I'm just not sure where this notion that you need to chill quickly to form cold break comes from, if someone could point to to some decent source for the theory behind it, I would actually really appreciate it. I want to understand why so many homebrewers think its so, when I've yet to come accross a single reason why they should.

The entire reason is paragraph two.

http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter7-4.html

I hope you understand that I don't think that I am providing you with the proof you are looking for.

 

[MHB]

The only people on the planet who have any justifiable concerns about Cold Break are North American brewers using 6 row malt and/or those using loads of unmalted adjunct.
All the literature about cold break comes from American commercial brewers and is picked up on by the home brewing community there and frustratingly at times here.
Where the idea that fast chilling is advantageous comes from is ultimately down to Stokes Law - the quicker you chill the faster the break forms the faster it forms, the bigger the flock the bigger the flock, the faster it settles.
Ultimately you get the same amount of break, fast chilling makes it clear faster and if you are concerned about cold break (remembering this was all written about in the pre-nochill days) and keeping it out of the fermenter fast chilling makes perfectly good sense. At best the cold break separation in any fast chill system available to home brewers is going to be partial at best, in theory I suspect that no-chill could give better separation as we can give the break material days even weeks to settle that might be an issue if you give a frig about cold break in the first place. Being fortunate enough to live in a place where we dont have to make beer out of cow food I dont.
Mark

 

[Phoney]

I find it interesting how a lot of brewers who are so against NC, chill their beer with a chiller of some sort and don't quite reach pitching temperatures. Then guess what ? They put the fermenter in a fridge and pitch the next morning, much like no chill if you ask me.

Batz

I did this until I got an infection.

Now I pitch at ~25C (usually the ambient temp that my starter is at anyway) and within 8 hours in the fridge it's down to 18C.

-No chill when done properly can and will use less water. Bugger cleaning the chiller - it's the water you run through the chiller. IF you have a tank - no big deal. IF you don't (and many don't) then yes - big deal.

Another misnomer. You currently cube your wort, right? So cube your hot water instead! Obviously doesnt take a PHD student to figure that out.

After splashing some hot water into the urn for cleaning, giving the bag and hop sock a hosing out, I never even manage to fill up my second 25L cube. These go on the vege garden in the following days/weeks.
I suppose if you live in an apartment and the water is going down the sink then fair enough, but then with the amount of water you're saving by not having a garden you're still coming out on top of a housedweller.

 

[Hippy]

Ohh no, bring on the science ... it learnt me some important stuff ...

As one who produced a few thousand cubes in his time, taking the same attention (or lack thereof) to late kettle utilisation and putting this approach to a plant with a spectophotometer (a scientific thing which tests for bitterness in beer), using higher alpha hops in the whirlpool (effectively a cube) gave a bitterness contribution of approx 30% which was unaccounted in the original recipes.

So, the old Amber Ale based on 35 Bu, would have been approx 52 BU. Bo Pils, 30 Bu would have been 45. But the craziness does not stop there, one of my beers with a target of 20 Bu sees 12Bu from the whirlpool hops with a 45 minute run off. We bitter to 8 bu, the WP gives the late kettle pickup and for flavour we dry hop the be-jesus out of the beer. Otherwise, if I did not cut back the WP hops we get a BU of about 40 ... the hops are 17 AA btw ...

So, if you are cubing knock off at least 30% of your bittering hops due to that scary science stuff giving good results ...

Scotty

If this is remotely accurate I have finally learnt something useful from this post.

 

[manticle]

I cube my cleaning water which goes on a vege/herb/hop garden. The rest of my cubes are used for fermenting in - I don't transfer the no chill wort, partly due to a horrible spate of infections I had some time ago.

You are right though - more than one way to skin a cat and a chiller can be conscientious with water even without a tank or pool. I may even add a plate chiller to my purchase list some time this year just so I can sit comfortably on the fence.

Let me rephrase. No chilling should use less water than chilling, regardless of what happens to the water afterwards. The idea that cleaning a chiller uses less water than cleaning a cube (as stated in the OP) was what I was originally responding to and seems a little bit of a straw man argument to me.