No chill hardware mods?

[spittybug]

I have a 3 Sanke keg brew setup; HLT, mash tun and boil kettle. Straightforward. Brewing in Houston in the summer is a bear because it's so hot and the tap water is fairly useless for cooling unless you use huge quantities to get down to ~90 degrees. Well, we're building a home out in Hill country where water is scarcer and more expensive, so I'm not liking the waste involved with cooling....

I'm thinking of going no chill. After boil is done I was thinking of fitting some kind of lid on the BK and just letting it sit for a day before sending off to fermenter. My fermenter sits in a temperature controlled upright freezer but is a plastic conical (love it by the way...). I don't want to simply transfer hot wort into it and spend $ on electricity and wear on the compressor. I figure the sitting time would also allow trub to settle in the BK instead of the fermenter. I might go the extra mile and add a purge port to the lid and hit it with some CO2 to purge 02 out, but that might be overkill. Has anyone done this? What kind of lid did you create to fit on a Sanke style boil kettle? It will obviously need to be a good fit to keep bugs out - I don't want a Berliner Weiss!

 

[Ninoid]

I leave the hot wort for up to one hour in an open kettle. During this time the temperature drops below 75'C, which is safe for a plastic fermenter. In addition, this temperature guarantees that no DMS will be produced. After the transfer, the temperature drops slightly and I close the fermenter firmly. The next day I pitch the yeast and put airlock.

I have been doing this for over 30 batch so I have no problem. For no chill, the later addition of hops should be adjusted.

 

[easttex]

I don't have a water available outside my apartment so running my immerision chiller is kind of a challenge. The best solution I've come up with is an ice chest with a couple bags of ice, a few gallons of water, and a pond pump to recirculate chilled water through my chiller. I didn't time it Sunday morning but it pulled the heat out of my 5 gallon batch quickly enough to suit me.

If you're concerned about wasting water, you could heat up the cooler water later to clean and rinse with.

 

[applescrap]

I just put the lid on. Then pitch the next day. Getting the hops right is the challenge to no chill. Some brew styles work better than others at least in theory. I would probably ferment in the kettle too if I didn't move the beer downstairs.

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

this is what I did for a no chill, transfer to this strait from the kettle no pump, then it sits air tight over night on my deck, by the next morning it's cool enough to set in the chamber and either chill or ferment

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001QC31G6/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[Staticsouls]

Brewer from California, so water is tight here too. I started using red solo cups and Tupperware to make ice blocks. I have a standard fridge as my kegerator so the freezer section holds hops and makes ice. I usually fill my hlt to cover half the coils and add ice to bring the water level over it. I do have to make slight adjustments for when I whirlpool vs not, but it saves me tons of water and sometimes I dont even use my cfc at all. When the wort is in the fermenter I fill my cups back up and toss em back in the freezer and use the rest of the water to clean up. It really helps with summer tap water temps.

 

[apache_brew]

Brewer from California, so water is tight here too. I started using red solo cups and Tupperware to make ice blocks. I have a standard fridge as my kegerator so the freezer section holds hops and makes ice. I usually fill my hlt to cover half the coils and add ice to bring the water level over it. I do have to make slight adjustments for when I whirlpool vs not, but it saves me tons of water and sometimes I dont even use my cfc at all. When the wort is in the fermenter I fill my cups back up and toss em back in the freezer and use the rest of the water to clean up. It really helps with summer tap water temps.

How well does the ice pop out of the solo cups? I assume theyre mostly reusable and don't crack? I normally buy 40 lbs of ice for each brew day but am considering using my upright freezer (ferm chamber) to freeze some ice blocks ahead of brew day instead.

 

[Staticsouls]

The solo cups kinda suck. They split after a few uses. I am now using silicon bread pans and some silicon sand buckets. They stretch when the ice bulges amd can be reused for a long time. It's also easier to remove the ice.

 

[tesoradog1]

I leave the hot wort for up to one hour in an open kettle. During this time the temperature drops below 75'C, which is safe for a plastic fermenter. In addition, this temperature guarantees that no DMS will be produced. After the transfer, the temperature drops slightly and I close the fermenter firmly. The next day I pitch the yeast and put airlock.

I have been doing this for over 30 batch so I have no problem. For no chill, the later addition of hops should be adjusted.

 

[tesoradog1]

I have been doing BIAB no chill for 8 years. Never had a problem. I typically leave my boiling wort “uncovered” for 18 minutes after I take it off the burner then cover and seal with blue painters tape. I know, sounds stupid but never had a problem and have made many great beers this way. Typically I attach a fermometer thermometer the next day and pitch when it’s around 78 degrees.