Letting Your Beer Cool On Its Own

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Duffman53

Active Member
Joined
Feb 15, 2011
Messages
41
Reaction score
1
Location
cincinnati
Hey, everyone! It is my understanding that we want to cool our beer down as quickly as possible after brewing to avoid it getting any bacteria in it, correct?

Since I'm on a budget I decided to let my beer get down to room temperature by sitting in my fermentation pail overnight with the lid on and a filled airlock in the grommet. Once it had cooled I removed the lid and sprinkled my Safale-05 in it and it is bubbling away.

Does anyone see any risk in this approach or anything that may alter my beer if it sits in the pail while it cools?

Thanks for your answers.
D
 
There is risk involved since you are not pitching yeast right away, and the wort will be in the 'danger zone' for an extended period of time. But if you sanitize well and keep it all sealed you shouldnt have any issue. FWIW they call this "no chill brewing", there are tons of threads on the subject.
 
You run a greater risk of infection and/or soured wort this way, but you should be ok if your sanitation was on par. Why not place your brew kettle in an ice bath to cool it? That's what I do and I can chill 4 gal to 70*f in under 45 mins.
 
The other thing to consider is hop utilization. Basically your aroma hops release more AA when doing no chill, so people adjust their schedules. Search for those threads, theres tons of good reading on hop schedule adjustments.
 
Did you pour it into your bucket right after boiling? Fermentation buckets aren't rated to tolerate temps of non-cooled wort so if you want to use the method of letting it cool overnight you usually leave it in the brew kettle with the lid on then transfer it after it is cooled.
 
I do it all the time and put them in the swamp cooler overnight and pitch the next day. I make a few adjustments. First i add the last 10 minute hop additions after the boil has ceased and let it sit there lid on the pot until the temp is 165 and transfer to the bucket. It works fine and it takes an hour and a mess off the brewday. I have never had and infection in a primary by the way. I have two upstairs now that are chugging along.
 
Did you pour it into your bucket right after boiling? Fermentation buckets aren't rated to tolerate temps of non-cooled wort so if you want to use the method of letting it cool overnight you usually leave it in the brew kettle with the lid on then transfer it after it is cooled.

While I wouldnt dump boiling hot wort (212 F) directly into a fermenting bucket, food grade plastic is typically rated to be able to handle temperatures up to 180 F. When I bought my Ale Pail, it was advertised as food grade plastic.

I would think that if you let it cool for 5 minutes or two then dumped you would be fine.
 
While I wouldnt dump boiling hot wort (212 F) directly into a fermenting bucket, food grade plastic is typically rated to be able to handle temperatures up to 180 F. When I bought my Ale Pail, it was advertised as food grade plastic.

I would think that if you let it cool for 5 minutes or two then dumped you would be fine.

While that may be true, I'd still take the "better safe than sorry" approach.
 
I always thought that yhe benefit of rapidly chilling cooled wort was to achieve a cold break - am I misundestanding the concept?
 
Hey, everyone! It is my understanding that we want to cool our beer down as quickly as possible after brewing to avoid it getting any bacteria in it, correct?

Since I'm on a budget I decided to let my beer get down to room temperature by sitting in my fermentation pail overnight with the lid on and a filled airlock in the grommet. Once it had cooled I removed the lid and sprinkled my Safale-05 in it and it is bubbling away.

Does anyone see any risk in this approach or anything that may alter my beer if it sits in the pail while it cools?

Thanks for your answers.
D

You will be fine as stated as long as you cleaned well. I watched my dad do it and then I did it for about 30 years that way.....not a plastic bucket when I was a kid, they didn't have plastic 5 gal buckets then, or at least he didn't know about them then. About ten years ago I started cooling in an ice bath and then about 5 years ago made a copper coil chiller. There is no denying that the changes that I have made over the years ended up with me making a better beer but bottom line is that there are lots of ways to get the job done and lots of suggestions how to do it. You did it, it will be great beer and you learned a little more for next time. I will suggest that you try giving the boiled Wort five extra minutes in the kettle with the flame off to cool it down a little and then give the ice bath a try, it works and is cheap until you can take the next equiptment step.
 
While that may be true, I'd still take the "better safe than sorry" approach.

Thats fine. I just wanted to let people know that lots of people are dumping hot wort into food grade buckets, with little to no impact on their beer (that we can differentiate).

Hell some people even boil in plastic buckets with electric heating elements. I would NOT do this, but people do. Google it.
 
I'm on a tight budget, too, and still make partial boils because it's a smaller sized kettle....

Two days before I brew, I boil 2.5 gallons of Campden-treated water for 20 minutes, then seal two gallons worth in those disposable "Glad"-type soup/salad containers (sanitized, of course). Then I freeze them.

By the time I brew, I've got two gallons of frozen, sterile, oxygen-free water that I drop in the kettle after the boil. Just the ice, not the containers.

I can usually bring it down to pitching temperature in under 40 minutes.
 
I thought when wort is above 140 degrees a chemical known as DMS is created. While boiling that DMS will evaporate out. Once the boil is stopped the DMS continues to be produced and will no longer evaporate. If too much of this is in the beer it will produce off flavors (butterscotch or popcorn). Quickly cooling the wort to below 140 reduces the DMS in the wort and will also give a "cold break" to help remove proteins that can cloud the finished beer. Am I wrong here?
 
I thought when wort is above 140 degrees a chemical known as DMS is created. While boiling that DMS will evaporate out. Once the boil is stopped the DMS continues to be produced and will no longer evaporate. If too much of this is in the beer it will produce off flavors (butterscotch or popcorn). Quickly cooling the wort to below 140 reduces the DMS in the wort and will also give a "cold break" to help remove proteins that can cloud the finished beer. Am I wrong here?


Not sure about that, but my beer doesn't have that flavor and I have no problems with clarity after a good cold crash.
 
I thought when wort is above 140 degrees a chemical known as DMS is created. While boiling that DMS will evaporate out. Once the boil is stopped the DMS continues to be produced and will no longer evaporate. If too much of this is in the beer it will produce off flavors (butterscotch or popcorn). Quickly cooling the wort to below 140 reduces the DMS in the wort and will also give a "cold break" to help remove proteins that can cloud the finished beer. Am I wrong here?

DMS precursors are boiled off. I no-chill all the time, and I have never had any detectable DMS. That being said, if I am using Pilsner malt (high in DMS precursors) I will boil for 90 minutes rather than my normal 60 minutes.

I also do not think one can tell the difference between a no-chill beer and a traditionally chilled beer. Well, perhaps someone can, but it is certainly beyond the palates of myself or anyone I have let sample the beer.

The cold break happens as it chills, just slowly relative to a fast chill. I often throw everything in the kettle into my Winpak container, hot break, hops and all. It all settles out with time to make clear beer, but a cold crash and sometimes gelatin can shorten the timeline.

Sanitation is key. I do use StarSan before filling with 190F wort, which is probably overkill, as at 190F any of the traditional bugs causing infections are not going to make it. I seal the container and stand it on its head to allow the heat to get to the entire inner surface.

I did my first no-chill batch in November of '09 and have not brought out the chiller since. Brew your own brew.
 
I'm going to go a little against the flow here and advise against this protocol. I presume you're not aerating at elevated temps - as oxygen won't absorb in hot liquid and you don't want hot-side aeration. Also, be aware that as the headspace air cools within the fermenter and "shrinks", outside air will likely enter through the airlock in a sudden gurgle, and unless it contains vodka, you risk gurgling some nasties into your wort. Your fermenter can be sanitized but not sterilized, so by allowing an extended time for organisms to propagate, you're adding a risk factor that IMO is not worth it. My advice, get a cheap IC on Craigslist, but if you can't, then take the prior contributors advice to heart and sterilize meticulously.
 
Just get a 5 gal water container from wal-mart and pour your boiling wort there, seal it, let it chill overnight, transfer to your fermenter, pitch yeast and you all set. Search for "no chill brewing" here and you'll get lots more details

Sent from GT-I9100M
 
Using this method will increase the time you have unpitched wort at temperatures that are ideal for bacterial growth, increase levels of DMS and increase haze potential.

That being said plenty of people do it. If you don't have the ability to chill your wort quickly I would go ahead and brew anyways. Maybe pick a style where these defects will be less noticable (ie. NOT a helles or a cream ale).

And now, an Australian man who will claim his Pilsener turns out flawless when he dumps his hot kettle into a cube and pitches it the following week:

;)
 
I used to do "no-chill" brewing. Its simple, cheap and easy but there is disadvantages to this method. I never noticed any DMS or had any problems with infections. Bacteria cannot leave in vacum sealed container where you poured boiling wort. You can leave it for weeks and nothing will happen, as long as its vacum sealed and you don't have any suck back. People little over-paranoid about this issue here :)
Main problem with doing no-chills is different hop utilization and chill haze. I was struggling with both. You can adjust hop schedule and such but no matter how I tried there was just no consistency untill I said "screw it" and spent $60 on 50' 3/8" copper pipe. Chill haze is a little tougher one to battle. Cold break did formed in a cube and I was pouring crystal clear wort to fermenter next day but my chill haze problems only went away after I started using IC to cool down wort fast.
 
Just to post an update I've brewed another batch with the no chill method and so far I'm 2-0 against infections. However, I have also since decided to stop brewing this way. I figure the $3 investment for a clear, clean bag of Home City Ice was better than risking dumping out a $40 batch of beer every six weeks.

happy brewing!
D
 
Back
Top