Users Of The "no Chiller Method"

[Stoodoo]

FFS people, this thread is titled: Users Of The "no Chiller Method. If you haven't used this method, then please, PLEASE don't bother posting your useless information. If you have used the no chiller method, then by all means, post replies, whether they were positive or negative toward this method. I am sick to death of reading replies that come from people who have not even tried this method, yet are willing to crap on about there beliefs. If you want to do that then start up a new thread.

Oh, by the way all of my AG brews have been "no chiller", and I can say that they are some of the best beers I have tasted. I make all my brews in the afternoon, early evening and leave my boiled wort in the boiler overnight to cool, then move it into a fermentor the following morning, pitch yeast and wait.

Lastly, and quietly........maybe if we ignore him, he'll go away

Cheers

 

[Gerard_M]

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

No Darren. I didn't mention STORAGE of wort in fermentors. I was advocating the enviromentally unfriendly method of single use fermentors, which will be on special this week for $35 including airlock grommet tap & sediment reducer. :beer:
I have just had a taste of Duff's Aust Pale that sat in a cube in my garage for 6 months. Bloody great beer. I would send you a bottle Darren, but I only have 2nd hand bottles, wouldn't want you to get crook!
Cheers
Gerard

 

[Beerpig]

I have no need to "chill" or "no chill" ...................... but I'm still loving this thread

Keep up the healthy difference of opinion

Cheers

 

[Maxt]

Darren, do you know of an easy way to sterilize a cube?

 

[Darren]

Sanitise is about as good as you will get. If the cube has handles you will struggle to even sanitise

 

[Darren]

No Darren. I didn't mention STORAGE of wort in fermentors. I was advocating the enviromentally unfriendly method of single use fermentors, which will be on special this week for $35 including airlock grommet tap & sediment reducer. :beer:
I have just had a taste of Duff's Aust Pale that sat in a cube in my garage for 6 months. Bloody great beer. I would send you a bottle Darren, but I only have 2nd hand bottles, wouldn't want you to get crook!
Cheers
Gerard

Geez, You are a funny bloke Gerard?

New cube was it?

cheers

Darren

 

[Darren]

I have a suggestion for you no chillers/storers.

Get yourself a small clear sterile tube.

After a week of storage in the cube take a sample into the tube. Leave the tube on top of your cube a have a look at what happens. If it doesn't start bubbling you have no worries. If it does you have wasted a batch.

cheers

Darren

 

[Linz]

I have a suggestion for you no chillers/storers.

Get yourself a small clear sterile tube.

After a week of storage in the cube take a sample into the tube. Leave the tube on top of your cube a have a look at what happens. If it doesn't start bubbling you have no worries. If it does you have wasted a batch.

cheers

Darren

But that would involve opening the cube to collect the sample, thus allowing airbourne contaminants into the cube and infecting the wort.

 

[Darren]

FFS people, this thread is titled: Users Of The "no Chiller Method. If you haven't used this method, then please, PLEASE don't bother posting your useless information. If you have used the no chiller method, then by all means, post replies, whether they were positive or negative toward this method. I am sick to death of reading replies that come from people who have not even tried this method, yet are willing to crap on about there beliefs. If you want to do that then start up a new thread.

Oh, by the way all of my AG brews have been "no chiller", and I can say that they are some of the best beers I have tasted. I make all my brews in the afternoon, early evening and leave my boiled wort in the boiler overnight to cool, then move it into a fermentor the following morning, pitch yeast and wait.

Lastly, and quietly........maybe if we ignore him, he'll go away

Cheers

Stuster,

Yeah sure I will go away.

Nothing wrong with cooling overnight and pitch the next day. Believe it or not this isn't a new process. I have always chilled my lagers in the fridge overnight to get down to pitching temps.

You problem will occur when daytime temps are 30+. How will you cool to ferment temps? How long will it take under those conditions.

Next you will be arguing that a can of extract and coupla kilos of sugar are the easiest way to produce good beer.

You may consider this useless information but bear in mind newbies to the forum may come in and think that the no-chill method is best practice to produce good beer. Clearly it is not.

Finally, you vocal proponents of the no-chill method should get together and write a manuscript to be submitted to a peer-reviewed beer journal. If you could carry out those experiments and get it accepted into a beer journal, that would give some credibility to the method.

Good luck

cheers

Darren

 

[MHB]

Darren:-
On this one you are wrong; I agree that in a perfect world the best results would be obtained by boiling, chilling to pitching temperatures and inoculating the wort immediately.
You admit that your brewing technique is adapted from the theoretical optimum, for convenience. Let others make similar choices.
Your point about the handles being a concern I concur with. It is important to fill a cube to capacity (excluding air) and to turn the cube so that the handle and lid area are heated to insure "sterilisation".
Used properly with a clear understanding of the pros and cons; this method provides both home brewers and manufactures with a valuable resource.

I started to work out the number of Pu's that a wort run at 90 C into a cube, that was at 40 C - 6 hours later, the answer is so ridiculously high that I lost interest.

MHB

The following is from a brewing textbook, it relates to packaging finished beer. However the same principals apply to the thermal protection provided to a fresh wort pack or the no-chiller method.


The surest way to provide the customer with beer containing no viable micro-organisms is to treat it at the last possible moment. That is, the beer is treated in its package after closure. The beer is not exposed to the atmosphere until it is consumed. This is achieved by pasteurization (Pasteur, 1876). Pasteurization is the killing of micro-organisms in aqueous solutions by heat. Beer can be pasteurized in bulk while flowing, which is known as flash pasteurization, or in the package, which is known as tunnel pasteurization. Flash pasteurization occurs before the beer is put into its final container and so is an alternative to sterile filtration. Flash pasteurization is usually associated with the preparation of keg beer. Tunnel pasteurization is most commonly used with small-pack beer, either bottles or cans. The theory of pasteurization is common to both systems.

Theory of pasteurization.
The basis of pasteurization is establishing the minimum time and temperature required to destroy all expected biological contaminants at the highest concentrations at which they may occur in filtered beer. Different food products have different requirements for pasteurization, and those that can contain sporforming bacteria require much higher heat treatment than beer. Mixed populations of common brewery contaminating organisms were subject to a range of times and temperatures in beer (Fig. 21.8, known as a lethal rate curve) and were examined for subsequent viability. Typically at temperatures of over 50 C (122 F) an increase in temperature of 7 C (12.5 F) accelerated the rate of cell kill by ten times.

Therefore:
53 C: minimum time to kill population 56 min.
60 C: minimum time to kill population 5.6 min.
67 C: minimum time to kill population 0.56 min.

View attachment 9164

One pasteurization unit (PU) for beer has been arbitrarily defined as the biological destruction obtained by holding a beer for one minute at 60 C (140 F) (Del Vecchio et al., 1951). Therefore in Fig. 21.8 the point at which the line crosses the 60 C line Fig. 21.8
he effect of time and temperature on the viability of a mixed population of yeasts and brewery bacteria. The hatched area shows the range of conditions where all cells are killed (Hough et al., 1982).

gives the thermal resistance of the particular suspension of organisms, this is 5.6 min and so to achieve effective pasteurization the holding time at 60 C (140 F) must exceed 5.6 min. The slope of the line in Fig. 21.8 is known as the Z value. The lethal effect (PU) is simply the product of the lethal rate and the time of application. The lethal effect at various temperatures in a process is additive, therefore the sum of the lethal effect is the quantity of sterilization achieved:

Lethal Effect
View attachment 9163

Under laboratory conditions beer can be sterilized by treatment with 56 PUs when cell numbers are <100/ml. However, most brewers would regard this low level as unsafe in practice and would choose treatment at 1530 PU (Willox, 1966)

 

[Stuster]

FFS people, this thread is titled: Users Of The "no Chiller Method. If you haven't used this method, then please, PLEASE don't bother posting your useless information.

Stuster,

Not me, Darren, but it's nice that you thought of me. :wub:

As you have stated, you are a scientist. We are hoping that you as a person with this background can provide independent verification by attempting to reproduce these results. As you know, this is the basis of the scientific method and is the accepted practice for the proof or disproof of new research.

 

[Boots]

I may be missing something extremely simple here ... but ... if a beer got infected in the no chill cube, wouldn't the resultant wild fermentation create CO2, making the cube expand? My pale ale is still sitting there after a couple months with the sides sucked in with a very tight vacuum. (unless botulism / nasty scary bugs don't create CO2 as a byproduct)

Off topic - Darren, no I didn't enter the poor richard into any other categories. It doesn't really match styles so would have been a waste of time.

 

[user 384]

Finally, you vocal proponents of the no-chill method should get together and write a manuscript to be submitted to a peer-reviewed beer journal. If you could carry out those experiments and get it accepted into a beer journal, that would give some credibility to the method.

So every step of your brewing practices adhere to methods set out in peer reviewed journals?

 

[user 384]

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

I had a look at some of West Ends own documentation. They have 150,000 litre kettles and their chiller workst at a rate of 100,000 per hour. So if you consider that they first transfer the wort to a whirlpool tank, then chill it's likely that it's around 2 plus hours before the wort is completely chilled. Now my point here is that brewing theory tells us that covering hot wort for this long is a no-no and will produce flavours like DMS. Surprisingly on a commercial scale they too theoretically take too long, but no DMS.

Your argument so far has shrunk to bedating the issue of long term storage using this method. But as many have shown, your theories are not borne out by our practice.

Give it a rest and start your own thread if you want to debate the validity of the method.

Cheers
MAH

 

[Uncle Fester]

I have a suggestion for you no chillers/storers.

Get yourself a small clear sterile tube.

After a week of storage in the cube take a sample into the tube. Leave the tube on top of your cube a have a look at what happens. If it doesn't start bubbling you have no worries. If it does you have wasted a batch.

cheers

Darren

Darren,

Yes, you may be a microbiologist, and no, I am not. But the beauty of this forum, is that I do not have to be. Within this very thread, there are almost 400 posts, many of them being from people wo have used the no-chill method, and have had nothing but either praise for the method, or could not notice a significant difference to a chilled brew.

In fact, and please correct me if I am wrong, but there was only 1, maybe 2 references to the cube expanding under pressure (Was it Weizguy?). Even then, Am I correct in saying that he went ahead and brewed it anyway? And wasn't the result as expected?

I'm sorry if you dont get it, and can't get your head past the theoretical possibilities of what may happen to your brew in a worst case scenario. Let the stats do the talking.

Maybe Gerard could give us some stats from St Peters Brewery as to how many of their thousands of no chilled cubes have turned into hydrostatic bombs whilst awaiting sale on the HBS floor?

Its all about statistics and probability. If the hygene is good, and sanitisation is good, then the probability of the brew being infected is low. Sure there is a possibility that something may get in there, but then there is also the possibility that some microbes survive the boil as well. And I assume that you are also against the practice of dry hopping? Or adding finnings?

And as for propping yourself on the soapbox as a microbiologist of 20 years standing, remember, Eddie the Eagle was a ski jumper of 20 years standing. Didn't make him any good though. (even if the was the best in England)

Try it, report on it. Don't gob on from the sidelines.

Festa

(Going to try my 101st attempt a growing microbes. Fortunately, all 100 so far have yielded good ones. I'm sure there is a bad on out there....)

 

[DJR]

Finally, you vocal proponents of the no-chill method should get together and write a manuscript to be submitted to a peer-reviewed beer journal. If you could carry out those experiments and get it accepted into a beer journal, that would give some credibility to the method.

Good luck

cheers

Darren

Darren

You sound like you are changing tack. That is, i reckon even if you actually did try the no-chill method or used a fresh wort cube, you would still not believe that a good result was actually indicative of a good practise. It sounds like the only way we can make you happy to leave this thread alone is to go to considerable expense setting up a laboratory controlled experiment into the different aspects of No-chill vs chilled beer, even though the overwhelming evidence in this thread, although anecdotal, seems to suggest that it is working fine, both on a home scale, and on a commercial scale with the Fresh Wort Kits. Now obviously this method won't work with commercial large scale breweries needing to chill hundreds or thousands of hectolitres, hence why a peer-reviewed brewing science study into nochill would be largely worthless, as it would not cover the main method of production of beer in the world, large scale brewery production.

As i've said before, we're homebrewers and whatever gets good results in an achievable, repeatable manner works fine for us. 1 or 2 infections out of many hundreds of batches does not completely invalidate a method. How many infections would have been caused by ferment flies landing in cooled wort as an immersion chiller was being used?

Remember the main point of science was to disprove and/or prove hypotheses via experimentation. Do some experiments, get some hard evidence and we'll listen.

And remember, don't let the facts stand in the way of a good argument! :lol:

 

[SJW]

I have been following this thread from the start and took on board all of the early pro's and cons and finally gave it a go. About 5 or 6 times now, only as it was convenient at the time to do so. Like most, (who have actually tried it), I found no noticeable adverse affects or flavours and ended up with some top drops, and thats what its all about "making beer" we are not splitting atoms.
IMO this thread is starting to go a bit pear shaped and I think I will be signing off now and wont be following the thread anymore. So in the interest of getting a result that would let the numbers speak for themselves is there anyway of doing a Poll or some type of summary of what everyones results have been. As I would love to know if anyone has had a cube explode or ended up in hospital with some type of disease as a result of using the "No Chillier Method".
This thread is turning out like the place to go to make a few crazy statements and see who bites.
But I guess if people are still getting useful info out of the thread and it is making a meaningful, productive contribution to Craft brewing, I say keep up the good work.
But I have has enough!


Steve

 

[Batz]

Me too!

If these boys can't talk nice then I'll be taking out the strap !

Batz

 

[Gulf Brewery]

I think this thread has gone off track far enough.

Before someone closes this, I would never use the no chill method.
If I brew a beer, I can't wait until it ferments and is kegged so that I can try it. .

How could you leave a beer 6 weeks without wondering what it is going to be like

Cheers
Pedro

PS - on the subject of possible infections, our beers are never going to be perfect, we just accept a level of infection that we can live with. Enuf Sed

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

My brain hurts