Boiling hot wort in glass carboy...

I know what most of you are thinking; "NO WAY!" "That's just crazy!" etc...

...but before you prejudge, please read through.

WARNING: This technique is for experienced brewers possessing intuition and common sense abilities. Ideally you should use a Pyrex carboy or have your glass carboy annealed.

Pros:
(1) The hot wort will stay sterile during the transfer from kettle, thus reducing the chance of having an infected wort in the primary.
(2) No need for wort chillers and the inherent costs and problems they can cause.

Cons: None, based on my experience. (If performed correctly)

**However, if technique isn't performed properly, you potentially WILL have catastrophic results. (Injury from broken glass, skin burns, a big mess to clean up, and worst of all, a complete loss of your brew wort. etc...)

That being said, this is how it's done...

(1) Clean/sanitize carboy, and boil/cook wort (212 deg. F) as usual.

(2) Place sanitized carboy in cold oven. (move metal racks to accommodate glass carboy)

(3) Turn oven on to 220 deg. F (No more, no less!)

The idea is to have the wort and the carboy at the same temp when they come in contact with each other.

(4) While oven is heating up; place large plastic garbage bag on floor in front of oven door, and place a folded towel on said garbage bag. (Bag is there to catch any drips from transfer. Towel acts as a thermal barrier to protect the carboy/floor and keeps the bag from melting to the bottom of the carboy.)

With wort at a full boil (212 deg. F) and oven at exactly 220 deg. F for a minimum 10 minutes, proceed to next step...

(5) Using oven-mits/leather gloves, extract glass carboy from oven and place on towel/bag. Then, quickly insert funnel into bung hole and begin poring boiling wort into funnel all within seconds of placing carboy on towel. (Wear protective clothing and be careful not to burn yourself!)

**This is best accomplished if you have a friend there to jockey the funnel and keep it aimed straight down.

(6) Add additional boiling water/sparge water to achieve desired volume. (Make sure funnel is still being directed straight down to minimize thermal shock of a hot liquid hitting sides of carboy.)

(7) Take a sanitized bung plug with hole in it and place a cotton cotton ball soaked in Grain alcohol or vodka in hole of bung plug. This will keep bacteria and or yeast from entering your carboy as it cools. (Don't use a solid bung plug, due to risk of implosion.).

(8) Allow carboy to cool, and pitch yeast. Be sure you don't place carboy in/on a substance/surface that will cool carboy too quickly. (Cold water, ice, snow, steel etc...)

This was performed with 2.5 gallons of wort in a 3 gallon glass carboy. This technique may not be possible with higher wort volumes and larger carboys.

You should make a "Cold-Run" to practice steps/techniques and to build confidence prior to utilizing hot materials.

 

Sounds like some extra work IMO.... Why not just go to buckets and not worry about the shattering glass?

 

That is the silliest thing I've ever seen. Why take all the risk inherent in the system?

 

Interesting!

Or you could just get one of those plastic gas cans the Aussies supposedly use (BYO), no preheating required.


EDIT* I thought the OP gave sufficient warning* Do it or don't, but at least he shared what he had found.

 

Ok, I'm a fan of glass but this just sounds.... risky. Some glass fermenters are poorly enough made that hitting them with hot tap water has made them shatter. I'd imagine that even with the preheating step a low enough ambient temperature could cause a catastrophic failure because of extreme temperature gradients.

Why not use a HDPE or stainless (keg) fermenter if sterilization is nescessary?

 

Have you actually tried this yet???

My guess is that when the cooling wort contracts it will either suck in the bung you stuck into the carboy at step 7 or shatter the carboy (if the bung doesn't give first).

From what I've read about No-chill brewing....the cooling wort will really pull in the sides of those "cubes" they use. I can't imagine the walls of a glass carboy will tolerate those kinds of pressure.


Bad idea if you ask me.

 

Glass is not designed to take this abuse unless it is Pyrex or similar.
There are equally suitable sanitation methods that are not what I would consider a danger level of 8.
I understand you have included warnings but this is a horrible idea on every level.

 

Also, the suckback (rubber bung?) would be fairly severe as the thing cooled.

 

Thread is useless without resultant pictures of success or failures!

Carboys are not designed for these types of stresses. I doubt the manufacturers even test the for industry standards, especially with the number of posts on here about cracking, breaking, or shattering. Most of these posts were about people doing their normal routine when the breakage occurred.

I am glad you posted dire warnings, but how many people actually heed them? Check Failblog.org for numerous examples of people ignoring common sense.

 

Buckets are fine, but personally I don't cook anything in plastic. Plastic potentially holds off-flavors and odors more readily than glass; plus, you can't heat sterilize a plastic bucket. And as a bonus, I like to visually monitor my wort and watch the "Sea-Monkeys" swimming around in the primary.

 

No risk, when care is taken in the process.

...I agree, this is not going to be everybody's "cup of tea". It's just what I like to do.

 

All you're doing is taking No-Chill brewing and making it more dangerous.

 

Yes, this is a regular part of my brewing routine. Though a vacuum is present when removing the bung, I've never had a carboy implode.

Your fears can also be allayed by using a blow-off tube assembly with water/vodka in the tube. just make sure the water/vodka in the tube never goes high enough to get sucked into the wort. It should act like a P-trap in a sink.

 

No risk? Are you kidding? Even with your precedure, these carboys are being stressed more than typical. I realize you have come up with a procedure to reduce any shock, but the glass is still not designed for this. Not every glass is oven safe.

Plenty of accidents happen with glass carboys (I happen to be a fan of both plastic & glass carboys). When this fails, it now has boiling hot wort in it. That is more risk even if you don't buy that your procedure stresses the glass.

 

As a growing fan of no-chill brewing, I do appreciate the idea, although it's not what I would choose. How do you handle aeration? Obviously, you have to aerate after the wort's cool, at which point your 'sterile' wort isn't sterile anymore, just sanitary at best.

Of course you can heat-sterilize a plastic container. Winpaks (closed-head pails like this one from US Plastics) are FDA-compliant (e.g. food-safe), HDPE, and can handle being filled with boiling liquid. Fill it all the way full, and bingo! Pasteurized, if not sterilized. Plus, you don't have to preheat the plastic to handle the thermal shock.

I'm not going to nay-say your method. I like the ingenuity. I just think it adds an extra step to no-chill brewing over using a winpak or similar container.

 

Next batch I will have someone photograph me pouring the steaming wort directly into the carboy.

 

Agreed, but any glass can be safely heated slowly.

Keep in mind, glass is made by heating it to a liquid.

 

When pouring the wort, the carboy is open and has head-space. After the carboy is cool enough to add the yeast, I vigorously shake the carboy prior to and after I pitch the yeast. Signs of fermentation always ensue less than 12 hours after I pitch the yeast.

 

Just plain Dumb....

 

If you reconize this I will leave it as "not my cup of tea". Please be very careful when you move it to a place to cool on step #7. It might be best to let it sit where you fill her untill chilled.

Regards, Jeff

 

If I told you, 100 years ago, that someday hundreds of people are going to climb into an aluminum tube and travel thousands of feet in the air from one coast to the other in less than a day's time at hundreds of miles per hour, you might have said the same then too.

 

It's not the heating that I'm worried about- it's the uneven cooling once you have the wort in the carboy. Drafts, uneven glass thickness.. these things aren't made to exacting standards. I'm betting that when you end up with a problem, it's going to be a cracked carboy during cooling.

 

I can agree that there is no risk when following the instructions, but they are all UNNECESSARY.

Cool your wort and sanitize the carboy and done...

 

Whatever I think of the method is immaterial, so I'm just going to point out that your primary "Pro" is not true. Wet sterilization requires 30 minutes at ~250F, far beyond what you're getting with this procedure. You may be getting to the point of disinfection, but even that is a stretch for the short amount of time it would spend at boiling temperatures.

 

+1. No risk? Uhhhh, no.

1.) Just removing the carboy from the oven into ambient temperature air could be enough thermal shock to break some carboys.

2.) You're filling a breakable vessel with boiling fluid. No risk, there, right? If you accidentally clank something off that carboy...Yay! 3rd degree burns for everyone!!!

3.) Hopefully, you're not moving it while it's still hot.

4.) If you completely bung off the carboy, as the liquid cools, the pressure drops significantly. Presumably the vapor in the headspace is almost totally water, and when water goes from boiling to room temperature the vapor pressure drops from atmospheric pressure to about 0.3 atmospheres. That's a 10psi pressure differential. Anyone out there willing to pressurize their carboy to 10psi?


Sorry to rain on the parade, but this is just a plain horrible idea. If you don't like plastic buy a stainless vessel for no-chill. Don't try to make a carboy do something it shouldn't be doing.

 

Extra risk of shattering a carboy for a Sterile environment that is not needed. It only needs to be sanitized. The weirdest part to me is that you sanitize it before putting it in the oven, therefore this is a completely unnecessary step.

But to each there own.

 

The concern is valid. My technique, however, implies that you are in a kitchen like room at normal room temperature (72 deg. F) and you're filling the carboy with all your hot fluids within a very short period of time.

I have pushed the envelope pretty far, though. The last batch I made, I carried it right outside with leather gloves after filling it with wort. I placed it on a teak table in 20 deg. F and only covered it with the original cardboard container that the carboy was ship in. The whole bottom was exposed for the entire cooling process. The bonus of the cardboard was that it kept sunlight off my brew.

Call it carboy-roulette, but I have successfully heated my two carboys approximately 50 times each this way and have never had failure.

Try it for yourself in steps.

(1) Just heat your carboy to 220 deg.F (no wort) and let it cool.

If successful...

(2) Heat it and add just a little boiling water. (no wort)

If successful...

(3) Go for the "Full-Monte" (With wort)

Use the bung plug on any or all of these steps.

 

I think this has been covered. He says it's fine, everyone else says don't do it. Let him do what he wants, and just hope no one innocent gets hurt.

 

not worth the extra effort and possible accident IMHO. In brewing all that is needed is that your equipment be clean and sanitized anything over is really pointless. And you really aren't sterilizing it anyway as been said before.

 

A true autoclave process is what you describe. To your point, though I don't state this in my description, I do heat mine to 250 deg. F for 30 minutes then reduce heat to 220 deg. F during the boil process prior to filling. I didn't say this in the original description because I didn't want to confuse people more by adding temperature adjustments through the process. I'm confident that the temperatures achieved are sufficient to kills any/all the Staphylococcus and other bacteria that are in a "normal" kitchen.

 

'fraid not. You're heating it to 250F in a dry environment. Sterilization with that setup would take ~12 hours. You aren't even coming close to killing bacterial spores.

 

True, but since I have already made the solution for other sanitizing purposes, what can it hurt?

I also like the idea of some of the water inside my carboy turning to steam to ensure my desired results.

Note how many threads there are asking "Is my brew infected", "What sanitizing solution is best?", "I don't know if my primary was sanitized"...

I never have to concern myself with those questions, because there is never a doubt.

 

I'm a fan of no chill and I practice no-chill brewing. The only new posible pro presented by the OP is heat sterilizing the carboy. There is inherent dange in moving and handling hot glass.
My take on this: It is FAR FAR simpler & safer put a tight lid on the boil pot at flame-out and walk away; let it cool naturally. Then, when it is cool, transfer to a starsanned carboy, pitch, and airlock.

A $2 lid pot lid makes the rest of the idea obsolete.

Those are my thoughts.

 

Sorry man, I'm glad it worked for you this time, but this seems like an operation where the benefits are negligible and the costs of failure are high.

I can sanitize my carboy for pennies. Iodophor is cheap.

Even a simple mistake or equipment failure is catastrophic with the OP's method. Broken glass at ~190-200F and wort are going to burn your flesh off and also slice it to pieces. It's like a grenade going off in your kitchen.

1000 batches lost because you took a poop in your carboy (will a batch get ruined if I **** in it?) are still cheaper than the resulting hospital bills for the above mentioned scenario.

If you like the no-chill method and like to heat your fermenter, get a plastic one that is designed for heating, or a stainless steel one. Either way, you wont have the danger of your fermenter being destroyed and causing massive damage to your physical self. I'm not joking around at all, this could maim you for life if it failed.

 

In your efforts to be a contrarian, I think you're missing the point. The purpose of this procedure isn't to turn my carboy into a surgical tool. I am merely preserving the "sterility" of my wort by not using wort chillers and soaks and baths and other methods that could create an infected batch...

What can I say, I don't like to eat fillet Mignon on a paper plate.

PS: The residual water in the carboy that turns to steam is more than what I need to kill what might be in my carboy.

 

No, my point is that you're not getting sterilization, so what your lengthy and potentially dangerous procedure produces isn't necessarily any better than what can be accomplished in 30 seconds with StarSan. Unless you're putting the carboy (or your entire oven) under pressure, that residual water/steam in the carboy isn't going to do much good at all, as it would just leak out of the oven as it expands, well before reaching the necessary temps.

 

Glad it works for you! I'd be afraid of stressing the carboy but if you've done it 50 times each then you are probably fine with those carboys. Not something I feel the need to do, but it's your beer

 

Thank you, Conpewter, for taking the time to read through and not leaving harsh criticisms.

:rockin:

 

Keep the discussion civil please.

 

Sorry, Just trying to keep someone from giving noobs a potentially life threatening idea. Won't happen again.