No Chill in Bucket into Fridge?

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ircbrewing

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Hey guys...I have a wort chiller but its not the most efficient because my kettle is so big. I have a 15 gallon kettle. I almost need two chillers to effectively cover the volume of wort. So...2 weeks ago on my golden blonde ale, I had to leave to go do errands before chilling so I just brought the kettle inside to my stove and put the lid on it (sanitized) and left it for a few hours. When I return it was still like 115 degrees so I chilled it the rest of the way with the chiller.

But just putting the lid on the kettle and walking away was nice. And my beer had no ill effects since the lid was on and nothing could get in.

I have a thougt though. I just got a kegerator so my previous standalone fridge where I put my kegs before is now going to be my fermentation cooler. Yay! The fridge can be set anywhere from 32 degrees up to 70 degrees.

What if I take my wort, from the kettle after boil straight to a bucket, slap a lid on it with airlock and put in the fermentation fridge at lowest temp for a few hours? I gotta figure it wouldnt take long with ambient 32 degree temp to get to pitch temp. Can the buckets handle 212 degree wort?

Thanks in advance. Chilling is the worst part of the process for me because it takes me an hour plus to chill with my current chiller and pump.
 
Generally speaking, I wouldn't want to put hot wort directly from the boil into my plastic fermenters. Even though they are food grade, I spent some good money on my brew cubes.

That said, I will get my wort as cool as my ground water will allow (usually to about 90 or slightly below) and then transfer from the BK to fermenter -- after a thorough cleaning and sanitation including 170 degree water from my HLT, PBW, and starsan. After that, I cool to fermentation temp in my fermentation fridge and pitch my starter, or dry yeast. Whichever I'm in the mood for.
 
I think buckets get pretty soft at near boiling temps... I think they are only rated for 180f or so... They survive 212 but I'm not sure at what cost to the integrity of the bucket.

Just leave it in the kettle. Plenty of folks do the overnight version of "no-chill" right in the kettle.
 
I use the 6 gal Winnpak containters from US Plastics for no chill. They work great when I have frozen hoses or want to start my fermentation at a later date. I have uses the same cubes for 10 years so I know they can handle the heat.
 
Just for funsies, I took a 5 gallon, single-walled steel stockpot full of wort and cooled it below boiling temps. The warm wort was put aside while I cleaned out a 7 cubic foot freezer with heavy frost to help with the cooling. At the time, I was using no immersion chiller.
I put the stockpot inside my freezer and checked about an hour or two later. I still had hot wort and an obviously frost-free freezer that took quite a while to ramp back up to good chilling temps. Wort turned out unharmed and just fine, but taught me a nice physics lesson about heat exchange and thermal mass regarding small capacity freezers.
 
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Hey guys...I have a wort chiller but its not the most efficient because my kettle is so big. I have a 15 gallon kettle. I almost need two chillers to effectively cover the volume of wort. So...2 weeks ago on my golden blonde ale, I had to leave to go do errands before chilling so I just brought the kettle inside to my stove and put the lid on it (sanitized) and left it for a few hours. When I return it was still like 115 degrees so I chilled it the rest of the way with the chiller.

But just putting the lid on the kettle and walking away was nice. And my beer had no ill effects since the lid was on and nothing could get in.

I have a thougt though. I just got a kegerator so my previous standalone fridge where I put my kegs before is now going to be my fermentation cooler. Yay! The fridge can be set anywhere from 32 degrees up to 70 degrees.

What if I take my wort, from the kettle after boil straight to a bucket, slap a lid on it with airlock and put in the fermentation fridge at lowest temp for a few hours? I gotta figure it wouldnt take long with ambient 32 degree temp to get to pitch temp. Can the buckets handle 212 degree wort?

Thanks in advance. Chilling is the worst part of the process for me because it takes me an hour plus to chill with my current chiller and pump.

I've done it and the buckets hold up just fine. I don't have a chiller or a kegerator so in winter I just set the buckets outside on my deck. With -20 temperature it still takes quite a while to cool to pitching temp, perhaps 4 to 6 hours. That slow cooling really messes with any "flavor" or "aroma" hop additions as the hops keep on adding bitterness until the wort gets below isomerization temps.
 
One thing I've seen regarding no-chill brewing is the increase of perceived bitterness as the wort cools more slowly. What is the temperature threshold where increased bitterness decreases significantly?
I'm not sure myself...it's one of the issues I'm curious about figuring out.
 
One thing I've seen regarding no-chill brewing is the increase of perceived bitterness as the wort cools more slowly. What is the temperature threshold where increased bitterness decreases significantly?
I'm not sure myself...it's one of the issues I'm curious about figuring out.

I've seen 170F. mentioned as the threshold.
 
I you search, you can find he ad-hoc hops schedule chart that @The_Pol put together for no-chill... It's roughly shift all hops addition by 20 minutes... i.e. the normal 60 minute addition is shifted to 40mins., etc.... All normal additions less than 20m get shifted to flame out. Flame out additions get shifted to dry hop...

If I recall it correctly...

I've used both the shifted additions and just regular no-special adjustment for hops and gotten good results both ways... I'm not a hop head, though, so I'm not usually dealing with a ton of hops anyway. YMMV.
 
I've done it and the buckets hold up just fine.

Don't they get kinda soft and pliable?

The one time I put near-boiling liquid in bucket it got really soft. I figured that repeated softening couldn't be good...

But I just looked it up... Looks HDPE is just fine for boiling:

http://fivegallonideas.com/plastic-type/

But not Polypropelene or LDPE
 
I would suggest cooling down as much as possible with ground water first. If you are continually placing large volumes of near boiling liquid in the fridge, it will put a lot of strain on the compressor and shorten its life or freeze up the coils (again shortens the life).
 
Hey guys...I have a wort chiller but its not the most efficient because my kettle is so big. I have a 15 gallon kettle. I almost need two chillers to effectively cover the volume of wort. So...2 weeks ago on my golden blonde ale, I had to leave to go do errands before chilling so I just brought the kettle inside to my stove and put the lid on it (sanitized) and left it for a few hours. When I return it was still like 115 degrees so I chilled it the rest of the way with the chiller.

But just putting the lid on the kettle and walking away was nice. And my beer had no ill effects since the lid was on and nothing could get in.

I have a thougt though. I just got a kegerator so my previous standalone fridge where I put my kegs before is now going to be my fermentation cooler. Yay! The fridge can be set anywhere from 32 degrees up to 70 degrees.

What if I take my wort, from the kettle after boil straight to a bucket, slap a lid on it with airlock and put in the fermentation fridge at lowest temp for a few hours? I gotta figure it wouldnt take long with ambient 32 degree temp to get to pitch temp. Can the buckets handle 212 degree wort?

Thanks in advance. Chilling is the worst part of the process for me because it takes me an hour plus to chill with my current chiller and pump.

You don´t have to chill that long to achieve temperatures OK for Better Bottles, Regular Water Jugs or Buckets.

Once in them, you could put in freezer or fridge and wait, but as stated previously, considerations to increase in bitterness and loss of Hop aroma and flavor due to longer times at temperatures at which the substances that impart them volatilize...
Not much of a deal if you just want to make beer, but if you are looking for an specific recipe flavor, like in a Clone or looking fofrward to nail a style for competition purposes, then, you may want to adjust Ho Additions as suggested.
Hope this is useful for your purposes.
Chanoc.
 
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