Bitter water for no boil brewing

[Argyll Gargoyle]

I want to try no-boil brewing to shorten my brew day for days when I don’t have a lot of time. From what I’ve read, you don’t really need to boil to eliminate dms unless you are using Pilsen. So that just leaves bittering hops as the main reason for a 60 min boil.

The plan: a day or two before brew day, boil 2-3 gallons of water with bittering hops. Let this water cool, and throw it in the fridge before going to bed. This doesn’t take too long because there is no sanitization needed, and I can boil on the stove top.

On brew day, brew a reduced volume and top off using the cold bittered water. In my case, I’ll do 2 gallons on the stovetop with extract, steeping grains as the water heats, and throw the flavor and aroma hops in at appropriate times. This should only take about 20-25 min. I‘ll dump my 2 gal of wort into the fermenter along with my 3 gal of cold bitter makeup water - the resulting mix should be around 100F. Just needs to cool a bit more and I can pitch yeast. Maybe I should freeze the bitter water so that I’ll be able to pitch immediately after mixing in the fermenter

Questions: 1. Will boiling hops in water (bittering only) taste different than a normal boil?
2. How long will my bitter water keep? If I froze milk jugs full of bitter water, could I just keep these on hand for weeks or months?

What do folks think about this idea? I think I might try it

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

The idea is on my list of things to experiment with.

In the book Brewing Engineering (chapter 14: Efficient Brewing), the author (Steven Deeds, Woodland Brewing Research) takes a takes a similar approach (boil hops in water in advance, use DME on brew day, ...).

 

[Toxxyc]

I've done something similar before. Boiled my hops in my sparge water, let it cool. After the mash I sparged with the hop tea, let the wort cool to pitch temp and pitched. It was a seriously cloudy beer (because no boil), but it worked and it didn't taste bad at all. I won't do it again (because it's same work, for me), but it works.