Chill: Prior to, or following my whirlpool?? Effect on late hop add'ns

Let me start by saying I have a CF chiller and a pump with the ability to recirculate.

To this point, I've whirlpooled and allowed trub settle while the wort is still hot out of fear that chilling PRIOR to whirlpooling would increase my risk of infection due to extended exposure to the elements while the wort is below 140 degrees F. Is this an irrational fear?

My other fear is that I'm depleting the benefit of my late hop additions (flameout/whirlpool) by allowing them to be exposed to hot (but not boiling) wort for and extended period (20-30 minutes).

Would my hop character be better served by a simultaneous chill/whirlpool to decrease the amount of time exposed to high temperature wort? I'd hate to be steeping away the beautiful flavor and aroma characters that the late additions are intended to create.

Comments, experiences, and thoughts would be much appreciated!

this is something that, as far as i've read, is not fully understood in the brewing community yet.

hop utilization (bitterness, IBU's) increases with "boil duration". But when does it end? Does it cutoff once the rigors of boil are gone?

The likely answer is that it tapers off slowly, and then drops off somewhere around 180 degrees, though this is just my personal theory.

What we know for sure is that varying cooling times have an affect on the hop flavor profiles of excessively hopped times. I know this from my own personal experiences as well as from a BYO article about Hop Rod Rye.

When you start talking about plate chillers vs. immersion it gets even more confusing because plate chillers cool a small volume instantly while immersion cools a large volume slowly.

For now you can at least be as consistent as possible. If you're cloning a very hoppy beer you could also attempt to emulate that breweries cooling practices.

So, when do you actually engage your chiller? Hard to tell from your description.

If you do late additions for aroma, letting the hops sit in steaming wort for 20 minutes while you wait for...whatever it is you're waiting for...will definitely reduce their impact on the final character of the brew.

On top of that, there's the whole increased DMS thing to consider.

Imo, the best practice to maximize late addition hop aroma and flavor characters - and minimize DMS production - is to go from boil to pitching temperature as quickly as manageable. If you follow a decent sanitation regimen there's little to worry about vis a vis infection...

Cheers!

day_trippr said:

So, when do you actually engage your chiller? Hard to tell from your description.

Click to expand...

I begin the whirlpool 10 minutes before flameout to sanitize all my plumbing, and continue whirlpooling (hot) for another 10 minutes, post-flameout. I then kill the pump, allowing the trub to settle for 15 more minutes. At this point there is no further recirculation; I simply drain the kettle (pump assisted) through my CFC.

It's the 25, unchilled minutes prior to draining the kettle through the CFC that cause my concern. And, according to the research I just did...my concern is likely justified:

http://www.mrmalty.com/chiller.php (Read paragraph starting with "The first three are based...")

Decent insight within the article. However, I don't think a CFC should be completely ruled out (see my comments below for a proposed solution for CFC users).

THE FOLLOWING LINK IS PROBABLY THE BEST INFORMATION I'VE EVER SEEN ON LATE-HOPPING:
http://486286.cache1.evolutionhosting.com/attachments/0000/1249/MJzym06_LateHops.pdf

This quote from the above article get's right to the point:

“Getting great hop aroma takes execution,
knowing your raw materials and knowing
your brewhouse,” Brynildson says. “If you
throw hops into the whirlpool and then
take two hours to cool, you will not get
the effect you are looking for. We throw
our late hops into the whirlpool at the
last possible moment and then cool and
transfer to the fermenter as quickly as
possible.”

So...what I've learned is that I should chill immediately upon flameout and allow my trub to settle afterward. In fact...next time I go after a hop-monster, I'm going to distribute my late hops more evenly between 10 minutes, flameout, and mid-whirlpool to get varying degrees of wort exposure and duration. I'll immediately begin recirculating chilled wort at flameout to get the temperature down as quickly as possible.

To further assist my counterflow chiller, I think I'll bring my immersion chiller out of retirement and put it in-line BEFORE the inlet water flow to the CFC. If I put the IC in a tote/5-gallon pail/cooler filled with iced salt water, I should be able to drastically reduce my chilling times! On top of maximized hop character, this technique should also result in a substantial cold break (therefore assisting in visual clarity of the finished product) and squash any DMS-related concerns.

I feel so enlightened!