First I am a fan of No Chill brewing, mostly because my current set up is garden hose to an immersion chiller and while I can get 6 gals of brew down to pitching temperature in 30-45 mins depending on temps, I feel awfully guilty about letting the water blast and run into the gutter for that time period. I live in a city and don't have the option to water my lawn or garden with the runoff water . While my preference would probably be to have a plate chiller hooked up to a sump pump that recirculates ice cold water, I'm not there yet, so No Chill offers a great way to conserve water, shorten your brew day and reduce clean up time. Oh yea and still make great beer.
EDIT: I got a little carried away and maybe gave too much info, so only read on if you care about my two No Chill experiences.
I started brewing in Feb and have cranked out 13 batches so far, the amber below was a full boil extract batch and the Stout was a 6 Gallon batch of All Grain Oatmeal stout. After, I drank the amber and realized No Chill could result in good beer coupled with the weather warming up (100 degrees this weekend) I will probably be doing a lot more No Chill over the summer.
I brewed a Hoppy Amber Ale back in March and at flame out I racked into a six gallon sanitized Winpack (
http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.aspx?itemid=31615&catid=459) using my auto siphon which, by the way now has a 30 degree curve in it from placing in 212* water (DULT!!!). I thought for sure no chill was a huge mistake and ruined my beer yadda yadda yadda. Turns out it was one of the best brews I've made and amber clear after it sat in the keggerator for a few days (I used Irish Moss in the boil). I did bump my Hop Schedule forward 15 minutes -- do some research on no chill brewing and you can find what some do to adjust their hop schedule, there is some science but most is anecdotal info out there.
This past weekend I decided to brew an AG Oatmeal Stout and knowing the hop schedule was relatively simple and wanting to knock 45 minutes off my brew day I decided to go back to the winpack. This time I siphoned with silicon tubing. I sanitized the winpack, dumped in wort at flame out, put lid on tight, shook around to coat all surfaces to kill any remaining bugs and toss in basement until it cools to room temp (24 hours). I then rack into my fermentation container (bucket in this case, although some folks will ferment in their winpack), aerate with O2, pitch yeast, and dropped in the swamp cooler. I took a gravity reading yesterday 1.064 down to 1.020 in 56 hours and still pluggin along, tastes great.
If you do some reading you will find Aussie's and folks in the U.S. that face water restriction all have successful results with No Chill. Some folks using No Chill containers have even let the wort sit for a week or a month and then pitched yeast and had good results.
Linear Mode
.gif-1367621329.gif)
