Dr_Deathweed
Well-Known Member
UPDATE: Helpful posts and FAQ's
Explanation of "no chill: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/exploring-no-chill-brewing-117111/#post1299451
Hopping schedule chart: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/exploring-no-chill-brewing-117111/index12.html#post1542375
Winpack link:http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=usplastic&category%5Fname=25&product%5Fid=13648
5 gal jerrican link (for long term storage):http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/pr...e=usplastic&category_name=25&product_id=14603
Original Post
I will be hitting a time crunch here in the next week an a half where I will not have time to brew for a couple months, however, I should be able to make time to rack/keg during this time. I do have a couple days off where I can brew before hand (which I fully plan on doing), but due to local temps and the finite amount of room in my fermentation chiller, I can only brew/ferment ~10 gallons at a time and maintain my quality standards. For these reasons I am looking into exploring no chill brewing.
The Plan: Brew 20-30 gallons next week. For this project I will plan to brew medium gravity, moderately hopped beers with fairly well modified grains (no pilsner) to be stored for a period of 6 weeks at the longest before pitching yeast. Chill and ferment 10 gallons like normal, but "no chill" and store the remaining 10-20 gallons to be fermented at 2-3 week intervals to keep the pipeline flowing.
Materials: I will purchase 2-4, 5 gallon HDPE water storage containers from walmart to store the "no chill" wort in.
Update: I went with the 5 gallon stackable jerricans in the link above. The wal-mart water storage containers have an air vent spigot which is not air tight so does not work for long term storage, thus does not meet my needs.
Potential issues:
-DMS: This issue has been discussed in other threads, but I will touch on it here. It has been claimed as a non-issue for "no chill" proponents, and a huge factor by the opposition. An extended boil of 90 minutes will remove the vast majority of DMS pre-cursors, with will help prevent formation of detectable levels during a slow cooling process. Now if we consider we frequently tell noobs to chill their wort w/in 30 minutes using the sink and ice method, you have a rough window of ~20 minutes to bring the wort below 180 deg to prevent any detectable DMS formation. This is roughly a 2 deg/minute heat loss over a surface area of 4-5 square feet (figuring a little less than a square foot per side of the container) with a temperature difference between wort and ambient of at least 100deg at the lowest temp of 180deg for the wort, and an ambient of 80deg. Now I am sure someone out there is willing to crunch the numbers on that, but from here it looks incredibly feasible and the formation of DMS would really be a non-issue.
-Spoilage: As above, I will be using a 90 minute boil which should kill just about everything, and add in a good sanitation of my containers with star-san, and allowing contact of all surfaces with boiling wort for ~10 minutes should reduce all chances of contamination.
-Botulism: Spores from C. botulinum can survive hours in boiling water and grow in room temperature substrates with a pH as low as 4.6, botulism is something we should be concerned with. Luckily we are dealing with wort here. According to some information in "Advances in Thermal and Non-thermal food preservation" By Gaurav Tewari, the synergistic action of low pH and boiling temperatures for extended times act to inactivate C. botulinum spores. Couple this with a U.S. Patent (#6251461) which claims "hop extract" as a preservative to prevent growth of C. botulinum spores. So I guess I will just have to hop my beers (at least three times ).
Conclusion: UPDATED 9/10/09
My no chill bitter is fantastic! I ended up waiting about 8 weeks between brewing and fermentation. Will try and post pictures when I next remember to do so. As is, I am calling this project a success and prod all nay-sayers to give this method a try!
Explanation of "no chill: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/exploring-no-chill-brewing-117111/#post1299451
Hopping schedule chart: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/exploring-no-chill-brewing-117111/index12.html#post1542375
Winpack link:http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=usplastic&category%5Fname=25&product%5Fid=13648
5 gal jerrican link (for long term storage):http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/pr...e=usplastic&category_name=25&product_id=14603
Original Post
I will be hitting a time crunch here in the next week an a half where I will not have time to brew for a couple months, however, I should be able to make time to rack/keg during this time. I do have a couple days off where I can brew before hand (which I fully plan on doing), but due to local temps and the finite amount of room in my fermentation chiller, I can only brew/ferment ~10 gallons at a time and maintain my quality standards. For these reasons I am looking into exploring no chill brewing.
The Plan: Brew 20-30 gallons next week. For this project I will plan to brew medium gravity, moderately hopped beers with fairly well modified grains (no pilsner) to be stored for a period of 6 weeks at the longest before pitching yeast. Chill and ferment 10 gallons like normal, but "no chill" and store the remaining 10-20 gallons to be fermented at 2-3 week intervals to keep the pipeline flowing.
Materials: I will purchase 2-4, 5 gallon HDPE water storage containers from walmart to store the "no chill" wort in.
Update: I went with the 5 gallon stackable jerricans in the link above. The wal-mart water storage containers have an air vent spigot which is not air tight so does not work for long term storage, thus does not meet my needs.
Potential issues:
-DMS: This issue has been discussed in other threads, but I will touch on it here. It has been claimed as a non-issue for "no chill" proponents, and a huge factor by the opposition. An extended boil of 90 minutes will remove the vast majority of DMS pre-cursors, with will help prevent formation of detectable levels during a slow cooling process. Now if we consider we frequently tell noobs to chill their wort w/in 30 minutes using the sink and ice method, you have a rough window of ~20 minutes to bring the wort below 180 deg to prevent any detectable DMS formation. This is roughly a 2 deg/minute heat loss over a surface area of 4-5 square feet (figuring a little less than a square foot per side of the container) with a temperature difference between wort and ambient of at least 100deg at the lowest temp of 180deg for the wort, and an ambient of 80deg. Now I am sure someone out there is willing to crunch the numbers on that, but from here it looks incredibly feasible and the formation of DMS would really be a non-issue.
-Spoilage: As above, I will be using a 90 minute boil which should kill just about everything, and add in a good sanitation of my containers with star-san, and allowing contact of all surfaces with boiling wort for ~10 minutes should reduce all chances of contamination.
-Botulism: Spores from C. botulinum can survive hours in boiling water and grow in room temperature substrates with a pH as low as 4.6, botulism is something we should be concerned with. Luckily we are dealing with wort here. According to some information in "Advances in Thermal and Non-thermal food preservation" By Gaurav Tewari, the synergistic action of low pH and boiling temperatures for extended times act to inactivate C. botulinum spores. Couple this with a U.S. Patent (#6251461) which claims "hop extract" as a preservative to prevent growth of C. botulinum spores. So I guess I will just have to hop my beers (at least three times ).
Conclusion: UPDATED 9/10/09
My no chill bitter is fantastic! I ended up waiting about 8 weeks between brewing and fermentation. Will try and post pictures when I next remember to do so. As is, I am calling this project a success and prod all nay-sayers to give this method a try!