Cover AFTER boil?

I know quite well not to cover my boil kettle during the boil. but what about after flame out, during cooling?

I use to cover my partial boils with a lid while they were sitting in the ice bath...

now I'm using an immersion chiller and don't cover....

you would just use the cover to prevent any nasties from reaching your wort while its cooling...

I "loosely" put the lid on in the last couple minutes of the boil (being careful of boil-overs) to heat sanitize the inside of the lid. After the boil, it's best to cover the wort as much as possible to prevent contamination. But contamination isn't a huge concern until the temperature of the wort gets below the 140s°F.

I always cover mine right before I turn the flame off. What I do is get some aluminum foil and cover my kettle. I give it a nice hard 20 count to sanitize the aluminum foil with steam and then I shut the gas off. Normally I have my Wort Chiller in my kettle to sanitize it. So the wort chiller and my thermometer are the only things sticking out from the foil. I normally cool down outside so this keep unwanted airborne particles, dogs, bugs, stray water, etc out of my kettle.

Obviously you'll get several different answers here - what I do is leave the cover off for the first 10 minutes or so so I can stir the wort and speed up cooling. I figure the steam coming off will keep any bugs out. As it cools and the steam stops rising I usually cover it for the rest of the cooling process. I imagine by this time it's also dropped to the point where DMS shouldn't be a worry.

thanks everyone. I am doing my first brew- an all grain bavarian hefewiezen.

I never put my lid on after the boil and i have never had a problem.

Yes, I cover loosely to prevent things like Bird Poop Ale.

I place a towel on mine to let the steam out and nothing in.

I cover mine with the lid, which only sits on top loosely because of the immersion chiller. The cool thing is that because I'm using a turkey fryer, there's a tiny hole in the center of the lid for the deep thermometer to pop through, so that I can easily monitor my chilling. Occasionally, I lift and jiggle the chiller to agitate the water gently to increase efficiency. Last time, it was about 15 minutes from flameout to pouring into the fermenter.

I keep the lid off after the boil. I have a 3/8" copper chiller and I am constantly stirring it to cool it down. It takes me about 30 minutes to cool it down. I can only imagine how long it would take if I did not stir.

How long does it take you guys to cool it down to 70 without stirring it?

I put lid on to keep bugs out. Those bees like the smell of my sweet wort

Mine take a long time with no IC, like an hour of refilling the sink and stirring with frozen bottles. IC build coming soon...but I leave the lid off the whole time and no problems yet.

Q2XL said:

I keep the lid off after the boil. I have a 3/8" copper chiller and I am constantly stirring it to cool it down. It takes me about 30 minutes to cool it down. I can only imagine how long it would take if I did not stir.

How long does it take you guys to cool it down to 70 without stirring it?

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10 or 12 minutes I have a whirlpool line that I pump my wort thru while chilling and 50 ft 1/2 chiller.

Pat

It takes me 25minutes to chill down to 68 degrees. A little longer if I'm going to for a lager temp. I use 2x 50feet pre-chillers that feed into wort chiller. One is in a container that I freeze solid the night before. The other one is filled with ice and salt. I use the wort chiller to get it to 100 and then attach the other 2 and blamo....chillification.

I boil outside so I do cover after it has cooled a bit. My lid has a notch cut out for the IC so it fits snugly and I can still sort of 'stir' the chilling wort with it like that.