"No Chill" wort transfer

[jamina1]

Hey all! I'm relatively new and since I don't have a lot of equipment yet I've decided to no-chill / slo-chill. I almost always pitch yeast within 24 hours but as I don't have an immersion chiller I've just been letting the wort cool down in the pot or in the fermenter. This was batch #4, and for batches 2 and 3 I let the wort cool down in the pot and then siphoned it into the fermenter.

I read up on the particular variant of HDPE that my fermenting buckets are made of and realized it's stable at high temperatures so I decided to just transfer it directly instead of waiting for it to cool on its own and then transferring it (my rationale is that I can double sanitize the fermenter or other HDPE storage container because it's all still hot enough to be "safe")

This weekend was the first time I transferred the wort straight from the kettle into the fermenter while hot, and unfortunately this seriously warped my auto siphon

I don't have a kettle with a spout on it, and I'd prefer to move the wort when hot if possible, but I don't know what to do to prevent this from happening with another siphon. And I really don't envy trying to manually dump out 4+ gallons of boiling wort by hand.

 

[joebob296]

Just use silicon tubing. Fill it up with water, drop one end into the bk, and the other into your fermentor. If you do it right it will start siphoning.

 

[jtratcliff]

If you really want hot wort in your fermenter, best choice is to install a ball valve... Weldless can be done very inexpensively.

Next might be to cool in a water bath until it's manageable but still hot, and then pour...
Low-Temp/Long Time method: http://www.foodsafetysite.com/educators/competencies/general/foodprocessing/processing2.html

Or you could also get a stainless racking cane and make a T-siphon using hi-temp tubing:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=25774&highlight=siphon

 

[CUrchin]

Why not just keep letting the wort cool in the pot? Transferring hot wort without a ball valve sounds like a good way to earn yourself a trip to the emergency room.

 

[jerbrew]

^^^ this is true^^
not to mention a great way to 1) oxidize your hot wort and 2) make it really hard to get oxygen back into your cool wort. Since boiling removes dissolved gasses, without an oxygenation system splashing your cooled wort into your fermenter while transferring is the best way to dissolve oxygen back into your wort before pitching yeast. sure splashing it around once it's cooled in the bucket will help some but a nice splashy transfer exposes smaller amounts of wort to air at a time and provides more surface area for oxygen to dissolve.

 

[jamina1]

Why not just keep letting the wort cool in the pot? Transferring hot wort without a ball valve sounds like a good way to earn yourself a trip to the emergency room.

That's why I was using the siphon - like I said I don't envy trying to pour a full kettle into my bucket

If you really want hot wort in your fermenter, best choice is to install a ball valve... Weldless can be done very inexpensively.

Unfortunately I don't have a way to cut the kettle - honestly I should probably just save up the money for one with a ball valve rather than trying to retrofit.

Next might be to cool in a water bath until it's manageable but still hot, and then pour...

Or you could also get a stainless racking cane and make a T-siphon using hi-temp tubing:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=25774&highlight=siphon

I would use the ice bath if it were time-effective but it simply isn't. Maybe when I could just put the thing into a snow bank to cool, but I had a hard enough time getting a 2-gallon batch to cool down under 40 minutes. I can't imagine how long it would take in my sink to try and cool down 4+ gallons

The stainless racking cane sounds like the best idea with my current set up, to be honest! Thanks for the suggestions!!

 

[jtratcliff]

Unfortunately I don't have a way to cut the kettle

http://www.harborfreight.com/3-piece-titanium-nitride-coated-high-speed-steel-step-drills-91616.html

A step bit and some oil... all you need!