Users Of The "no Chiller Method"

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Stuster,

A beer entered in the class of specialty beers and as a "poor richard" would be expected to have all the faults caused by a slow chill and uncontrolled ferment.

Darren did you judge the specialty category? If you did i'm looking forward to seeing your comments on the beer and why you reached the above conclusions. Fair enough as general comments for a Historic beer, but not IMO to my particular beer. ... and if you did judge I'd expect you to give the brewer the respect of letting them get their score sheets first before making statements of it's merit on a public forum.

If you didn't judge it, then your comments are purely speculative and have no foundation - and are being used purely to drag out an argument incorrectly.

Which part of my 18degree ferment (Wyeast ESB) would you call uncontrolled.

There are plenty of people on this forum who have tried the beer and funnily none made comments anything like yours.

I don't feel like i have to defend my beer ... but parents often get defensive of their children ;)
 
Well I'm setting up my AG brewery as we speak (just running off extracts and partials in the meantime).

This positive feedback for the no-chill idea is heartwarming (and potentially wallet-warming). The price of an immersion chiller is getting up there these days (as the price of copper soars), so any shortcuts I can take in my setup (without affecting my end product) are welcome. The only issue I have is that I'm a gadget man, so I will more than likely end up with an immersion/CF chiller at some stage...simply to satisfy my inner geek.

I find it mildly amusing that people are getting so agro about the whole thing, but I guess that's opinions for you...

Good brewing, whatever your method.
 
So apparently this is all about open-minded no-chill brewers who happen to flame anyone who dares to voice contrary opinions? Given accusations being levelled, this seems a tad hypocritical.

If these guys actually tried no-chill or had physical evidence it makes a so-called "lesser beer", exhibiting all the textbook problems, then we'd be happy to hear it. As it is, all they can come up with is "you'll die from botulism", "there's tons of DMS in every mouthful", "the book says chill quickly otherwise trub doesn't separate" ,etc etc - all points that have been rebuffed in the last pages of the thread. Remember the thread is for users of the nochill method not non-users.

I gotta say, i'm quite enjoying the new reasons why No-chill is bad every night....

Quite looking forward to the Bathurst & NSW HB champs, i wonder how many nochill beers will be entered?
 
back to the actual topic of no chill brews

I chucked 25 g of aroma hops in my last cube.
this beer will be ready to drink in a week
what re other peoples experiences of doing this - does it add much flavour/ aroma - does it work -is it worth doing - i will report back with my experiences soon

lou
 
I've done that a couple times, lou. Usually just after I've forgotten to add the finishing hops to the kettle.

Seems to preserve the flavour quite well, but I suspect it elevates the bitterness a little.
 
Stuster,

A beer entered in the class of specialty beers and as a "poor richard" would be expected to have all the faults caused by a slow chill and uncontrolled ferment.

Darren did you judge the specialty category? If you did i'm looking forward to seeing your comments on the beer and why you reached the above conclusions. Fair enough as general comments for a Historic beer, but not IMO to my particular beer. ... and if you did judge I'd expect you to give the brewer the respect of letting them get their score sheets first before making statements of it's merit on a public forum.

If you didn't judge it, then your comments are purely speculative and have no foundation - and are being used purely to drag out an argument incorrectly.

Which part of my 18degree ferment (Wyeast ESB) would you call uncontrolled.

I don't feel like i have to defend my beer ... but parents often get defensive of their children ;)


Boots,

You bought it up that your historical beer went well in a comp. Just putting your post into perspective.

No I didn't judge it. Just purely making the observation that it was entered in the specialty beers as a historic beer. If I were to judge such a beer I would expect it to be full of funky flavours otherwise it wouldn't be true to style, like a ginger beer with no ginger.

Finally, why didn't you enter it into a more conventional classsuch as English ale or did you?

The only class I judged was dark ale. Would be interested to hear how many no chills were in there and how they went!

cheers


Darren
 
Sorry bud, but you aren't going to get a lot of symapthy here by simply sprouting theories derived from large-scale commercial brewing practices. Homebrewing is different from macro brewing in both the process and the final product. What works for one may not work for the other and vice versa.

If you are so certain of your theories then please do us all a service and test them. Do a no-chill brew and a chill brew and compare them, side by side if possible. Tell us what you find. Other brewers here have done this, thus they are able to talk from experience. Then everyone can learn from it.

I agree with you Goatherder - Here is one datapoint for the discussion.

NNL Beer Supplies makes both beer and brewery wort packs. I have tasted the Sparkling Blonde fermented in the brewery and sold in pubs and the wort pack fermented at home.

They taste and look identical.

I think that this thread reached the point long ago where there are those that use the No-Chill method and like it, and those that haven't used it because they don't like it. And they are never going to agree.

The precipitation of cold Trub is a complex issue as it involves the precipitation of proteins with different properties, and these properties change as they oxidise. Bud has selectively quoted from a non-scientific book, but it may be usefull to remember that before there were chillers, breweries in Belgian and California cooled their worts overnight in shallow coolships. We also need to remember that DMS is a flavour characteristic in Lagers and not present in Ale malts.

Now lets get back to brewing and drinking good beer.

David
 
<abbrev>

I gotta say, i'm quite enjoying the new reasons why No-chill is bad every night....

Quite looking forward to the Bathurst & NSW HB champs, i wonder how many nochill beers will be entered?
</abbrev>

Is it cool to ask for a checkbox for No-chill to be included on the NSW State comp entry form?

That will help to make a few of us happy (such as Darren and I), as well as contribute hard evidence to this thread.

Seth (BJCP trainee) :p
 
Sorry bud, but you aren't going to get a lot of symapthy here by simply sprouting theories derived from large-scale commercial brewing practices. Homebrewing is different from macro brewing in both the process and the final product. What works for one may not work for the other and vice versa.

If you are so certain of your theories then please do us all a service and test them. Do a no-chill brew and a chill brew and compare them, side by side if possible. Tell us what you find. Other brewers here have done this, thus they are able to talk from experience. Then everyone can learn from it.

I agree with you Goatherder - Here is one datapoint for the discussion.

NNL Beer Supplies makes both beer and brewery wort packs. I have tasted the Sparkling Blonde fermented in the brewery and sold in pubs and the wort pack fermented at home.

They taste and look identical.

I think that this thread reached the point long ago where there are those that use the No-Chill method and like it, and those that haven't used it because they don't like it. And they are never going to agree.

The precipitation of cold Trub is a complex issue as it involves the precipitation of proteins with different properties, and these properties change as they oxidise. Bud has selectively quoted from a non-scientific book, but it may be usefull to remember that before there were chillers, breweries in Belgian and California cooled their worts overnight in shallow coolships. We also need to remember that DMS is a flavour characteristic in Lagers and not present in Ale malts.


David


Hi David,
Do NNL beer put the wort packs in new (essentially sterile) or second hand fermenters/jerry's? Most homebrewers using this method are definately re-using their containers so infection risk is increased.

Now there must be a reason why belgian and early american breweries used cool ships in the first place. I guess it was their understanding of the importance of rapidly cooling the wort.

Incidently, very few of these breweries exist today due mainly to the inconsistency in the drinkablility of the beer cooled in open pans.

Finally,

DMS in beer is often the result of infection and not always malt derived

:(

http://www.howtobrew.com/section4/chapter21-2.html

http://www.boulderbeer.com/Newsoct28.htm

cheers

Darren (trying to make better beer)
 
Darren,

I expect the reason they wanted to cool the beer quickly was the same primary reason commercial brewers do it today - Turnover!
Not really related to DMS etc, although I agree that might be a secondary or minor excuse.

BTW Darren, you're welcome to your opinion, and mine as well. :lol:

Seth out :p

* edit - missing words
 
Spoilage of wort by temperature resistant microbes would be the main reason for cooling quickly. Ie get it down to yeast optimal temperature as quick as possible.

but that is just my opinion.

cheers

Darren
 
Just a quick question for all those who spout commercial practices as the only way to brew and suggest that they rapidly chill their wort. Can you please tell me how long it takes Tooheys to chill a batch of their wort? Being able to produce 2 million stubbies per day, I'm guessing their kettles are HUGE. How long does it sit at near boiling temperatures before it's finally chilled? I'm pretty sure it's not 20-30mins. So if their beer is sitting at high temperatures for a prolonged time, why don't they suffer from terrible off flavours like DMS?

Just a thought.

Cheers
MAH
 
Just a quick question for all those who spout commercial practices as the only way to brew and suggest that they rapidly chill their wort. Can you please tell me how long it takes Tooheys to chill a batch of their wort? Being able to produce 2 million stubbies per day, I'm guessing their kettles are HUGE. How long does it sit at near boiling temperatures before it's finally chilled? I'm pretty sure it's not 20-30mins. So if their beer is sitting at high temperatures for a prolonged time, why don't they suffer from terrible off flavours like DMS?

Just a thought.

Cheers
MAH


MAH,

Not sure how long it takes! The plate chiller at the West End brewery was taller than me and was about 50 cm thick. Chilled water was run through the chiller to get the wort to lager temps. The kettle right alongside looked comparatively similar in size to your average HB CFWC (HB chiller would be bigger in ratio).

At a guess I would say an hour at most! Certainly not days.


cheers

Darren

EDIT: The kettle wasn't as big as i thought it would be. They had three of them I think. Now the lagering tanks were huge
 
Sorry bud, but you aren't going to get a lot of symapthy here by simply sprouting theories derived from large-scale commercial brewing practices. Homebrewing is different from macro brewing in both the process and the final product. What works for one may not work for the other and vice versa.

If you are so certain of your theories then please do us all a service and test them. Do a no-chill brew and a chill brew and compare them, side by side if possible. Tell us what you find. Other brewers here have done this, thus they are able to talk from experience. Then everyone can learn from it.

I agree with you Goatherder - Here is one datapoint for the discussion.

NNL Beer Supplies makes both beer and brewery wort packs. I have tasted the Sparkling Blonde fermented in the brewery and sold in pubs and the wort pack fermented at home.

They taste and look identical.

I think that this thread reached the point long ago where there are those that use the No-Chill method and like it, and those that haven't used it because they don't like it. And they are never going to agree.

The precipitation of cold Trub is a complex issue as it involves the precipitation of proteins with different properties, and these properties change as they oxidise. Bud has selectively quoted from a non-scientific book, but it may be usefull to remember that before there were chillers, breweries in Belgian and California cooled their worts overnight in shallow coolships. We also need to remember that DMS is a flavour characteristic in Lagers and not present in Ale malts.


David


Hi David,
Do NNL beer put the wort packs in new (essentially sterile) or second hand fermenters/jerry's? Most homebrewers using this method are definately re-using their containers so infection risk is increased.

Now there must be a reason why belgian and early american breweries used cool ships in the first place. I guess it was their understanding of the importance of rapidly cooling the wort.

Incidently, very few of these breweries exist today due mainly to the inconsistency in the drinkablility of the beer cooled in open pans.

Finally,

DMS in beer is often the result of infection and not always malt derived

:(

http://www.howtobrew.com/section4/chapter21-2.html

http://www.boulderbeer.com/Newsoct28.htm

cheers

Darren (trying to make better beer)

C'mon Darren, we have heard this rhetoric over and over....

What are you suggesting? Single use fermenters, lest we place ourselves at elevated risk of infection from the previous brew?

Give me a break. I think that the average home brewer is conversant enough with sanitisation/steralisation to give the brew a neutral cube to cool in.

Your Flat Earth Society viewpoint on all of this is mundane. Face it, people brew with this method, and they ejoy the results, and also benefit from the easier process. If there were major issues with the method, then they would surely pick up on it, as I'm sure that most brewers are their own harshest critics.

Good enough for St Peters brewery, (and I daresay G&G, although I havent had that confirmed) to no chill their commercial product, and also good enough for <90% of the respondants to this thread, then it's good enough for me, irrespective of what the purists say.


Either simply let it go, or build a bridge. Either way, unless you have tried it and have personal experience to contribute, then give the rest of us a break.


Festa.
 
...please tell me how long it takes Tooheys to chill a batch of their wort? Being able to produce 2 million stubbies per day, I'm guessing their kettles are HUGE. ....

Just a thought.

Cheers
MAH

Hi MAH - I don't subscribe to either method at the moment (open minds and all that), so I'm not here to take a side. But in answer to your question, I watched a video on the web recently (possibly copyright infringing) from America's History Channel covering "Modern Marvels - Brewing". Unfortunately, they focused on the Anheuser Busch conglomerate, but some of the history etc was interesting.

Their plate chiller was as big as my old apartment (admittedly small). The fermentation tanks were bigger than any silos I've seen and they bottle about a trillion stubbies per second...ok, now I'm exaggerating.

It seemed from the video that the wort was cooled to pitching temp after just one pass through the radiator-style cooler.

Anyway, at the end of the day, opinions (and perhaps die-hard rules) change in brewing every day. Look at how seriously John Palmer took the physics of the grain bed in the previous issue of his book! Most brewers these days aren't nearly as precious about these details.

It seems that one week's essential tip is next week's no-go zone*.

*I'm not saying that no-chill fits this category necessarily.

Over and out
Bugwan
 
my mate who is head brewer at a townsville micro informs me they chill 1700L in just over an hour, which he regards as "way too slow".

thought it might help people in making up their opinion, as the cooling times of breweries has been mentioned in this thread.
 
C'mon Darren, we have heard this rhetoric over and over....

What are you suggesting? Single use fermenters, lest we place ourselves at elevated risk of infection from the previous brew?

Give me a break. I think that the average home brewer is conversant enough with sanitisation/steralisation to give the brew a neutral cube to cool in.

Good enough for St Peters brewery, (and I daresay G&G, although I havent had that confirmed) to no chill their commercial product, and also good enough for <90% of the respondants to this thread, then it's good enough for me, irrespective of what the purists say.


Either simply let it go, or build a bridge. Either way, unless you have tried it and have personal experience to contribute, then give the rest of us a break.


Festa.


Hey Festa,

My only data point on the subject is that I am a professional microbiologist and have been for 20 years.

I KNOW that storing sugar solutions in anything but new (essentially sterile) or sterile containers is poor practice.

But I guess with your hundred (how many??) or so attempts at growing microbes you would be in a position to offer sound advice?

cheers

Darren
 
Hi David,
Do NNL beer put the wort packs in new (essentially sterile) or second hand fermenters/jerry's? Most homebrewers using this method are definately re-using their containers so infection risk is increased.


cheers

Darren (trying to make better beer)

So if boiling hot wort into a container that an experienced HB'er considers clean or sterile enough to his or her standards, is considered a no-no in "Dazza World", can I ask what the possible risks are in re-using plastic fermentor's? Surely we must all go for the "Single Use Fermentor" to eliminate the risk of infection from previous brews!

Got to go and order a heap of new fermentors, looks like another busy week! Thanks Daz

cheers
Gerard
 
Hi David,
Do NNL beer put the wort packs in new (essentially sterile) or second hand fermenters/jerry's? Most homebrewers using this method are definately re-using their containers so infection risk is increased.


cheers

Darren (trying to make better beer)

So if boiling hot wort into a container that an experienced HB'er considers clean or sterile enough to his or her standards, is considered a no-no in "Dazza World", can I ask what the possible risks are in re-using plastic fermentor's? Surely we must all go for the "Single Use Fermentor" to eliminate the risk of infection from previous brews!

Got to go and order a heap of new fermentors, looks like another busy week! Thanks Daz

cheers
Gerard


Gerard,

I think you and many others have missed the point. Many of these no-chill brewers are storing their wort for weeks, by some reports, prior to pitching their yeast.

Now for storage, the fermenter needs to be sterile (not just sanitised) as even very low levels of microbes will flourish with all that sugar and no competition.

If you pitch within a day or so the shear numbers of yeast cells consume all the nutrients and produce ethanol as a by-product therefore retarding the growth of any contaminating "bugs". Under these conditions there is nothing wrong with re-using a sanitised fermenter over and over again.

Now just let me get this right. You are a HB shop owner who advocates the use of second hand fermenters for the STORAGE of wort?

cheers

Darren
 
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