Plate chiller technique hosing my beer?

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Ricand

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I love my 40 plate chiller, but I think I might be using it wrong and screwing up my beer. The thought occurred to me when we made an orange wheat again and it didn't have the orange flavor the previous one had, just some orange peel bitterness. We did an FO addition of peel on both of them, the only difference was the IC vs Plate chiller. If you think about it, the IC starts chilling the entire wort almost immediately. The plate chiller leaves the wort, hops and peel in the kettle at near boiling temperature for the duration of the transfer. In my case about 20 minutes. So FO additions or any late hop additions are closer to 20 minute additions. I just did an IPA that didn't have much fresh hop flavor as well and was way over bitter, again with the plate chiller.

So my new technique will recirculate the plate chilled wort until the whole kettle is close to pitching temps and then just pump it into the conical. It actually won't change the time all that much, since I'll be pumping much faster during this process.

Has anyone else experienced this problem? Is there a flaw in my logic that I'm not seeing? I searched this forum and couldn't find anyone else discussing this issue.
 
FO additions are subject to a lot of variation on technique. I've finally come to realize that I was doing mine in a less than effective manner which happens to be what you were doing.

So, let the wort sit for 10 minutes or so to cool down, then add FO and either let it steep, use a hop back or recirculate with plate chiller for as long as you think needed. My last brew I let the wort cool for 5-10, steeped 10 minutes with a recirculation through the chiller. The plate chiller worked better because it wasn't fighting 200F wort.
 
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