Wort Cooling, is it worth it?

[NShirtcliffe]

I read that wort cooling is needed for clarity and to prevent DMS off taste. As a chemist I know what DMS smells like.

As noobs we boiled our wort then put a lid on and went home to let it cool, pitched in the morning. That beer, 20 litres of German Red, is as clear as coors and has no DMS taste at all. We talked to a professional brewer and he does the same for 200 L batches and sells it in a bar. I had some, it has some haze but tastes fine. Maybe it is more important for light beers, our next 3 brews are black beers and taste fine (no way to measure haze in black beer). Does anybody have any bad experiences with this/comparisons of with and without cooling for clarity?

 

[progmac]

i have never managed to get a clear beer without wort cooling. i'm assuming you mean clear when cold.

 

[NShirtcliffe]

The beer I have is currently at 2 Centigrade and is clear. Cracking the seal makes it cloud up as most of the cold break is in the bottles and the gas brings it up, but had we racked to secondary, kegged or not stirred the priming sugar into the primary (noob error) this would probably not have happened.

 

[billl]

If you can get clear beer without cooling it properly, more power to you.

Even if you do get clear beer, that is just the tip of the iceberg on cooling though. The really important reason to cool is so that your wort doesn't hang out in prime bacteria growing temps for an extended period without any yeast to compete with them for space.

 

[david00001]

I was just reading about "hot-packing" wort on the home brewing wiki and maybe you would think it's interesting...

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/No_Chill_Method

 

[Homercidal]

Lots of people do No Chill brewing. The word is still out on total quality impact, but I have done this with a stout and it did great at competition. As far as I know, nobody has posted experiment results comparing the method with traditional chill methods. Some people do it to save time, and a lot do it due to lack of water or at least cold water.

I would still chill, personally, if time were not a problem. I've really only done it when it was getting very late and I was getting tired and once when my yeast needed a few more hours to build a starter.

 

[djt17]

I have "no chilled" my last 4 batches. As soon as the flame is turned off, I rack into a sanitized corny keg then pitch the next day. I am drinking a no chilled Blonde Ale; just as clear & tasty as the last time I made this using an immersion chiller. I like not wasting water (I have a shallow well) & the 45 min I save not standing there stirring the wort while chilling.

 

[NordeastBrewer77]

Yeah, hate to poop on your party but clear beer isn't the main reason we chill our wort. Although, a good cold break can aide in clarification of the final brew, their's also finings like Whirlfloc, gelatin, and isinglass that help brewers get clear beer. Simply boiling properly will drive off the DMS precursor. Like Billl said, getting your wort chilled and inoculated with brewers yeast quickly is to ensure that the wort doesn't get contaminated with wild yeast or bacteria.

FWIW, a beer with chill haze isn't clear. Saying "Look how clear my beer is w/o cooling my wort" while holding up a hazy glass (or one full of trub) kinda disproves your point.

 

[sidepart]

Using a wort chiller really just speeds up the process for me. I know plenty of people that let it sit or use a bathtub of ice. Personally, I prefer to get the stuff cooled down as quickly as possible to my fermentation temp and then get the yeast going.

 

[onipar]

I'm going to agree that the larger issue is with possible contamination of the wort.

I say possible because this is certainly one of these situations where if you were to not chill your wort ten times (just letting it sit in a bucket overnight for instance) 9 times out of ten you'll be fine.

In other words, letting the wort cool down on its own doesn't guarantee infection or contamination, it simply increases the possibility of it, which is why you'll get plenty of brewers saying, oh I've done this and it's been fine.

It's worth noting that there are certainly ways to decrease the chances of contamination while "no chill" brewing (someone mentioned "hot-packing"). That's another story. I think when most people hear you didn't chill, they assume the beer is sitting out, exposed, which obviously isn't always the case.

 

[RmikeVT]

First I am a fan of No Chill brewing, mostly because my current set up is garden hose to an immersion chiller and while I can get 6 gals of brew down to pitching temperature in 30-45 mins depending on temps, I feel awfully guilty about letting the water blast and run into the gutter for that time period. I live in a city and don't have the option to water my lawn or garden with the runoff water . While my preference would probably be to have a plate chiller hooked up to a sump pump that recirculates ice cold water, I'm not there yet, so No Chill offers a great way to conserve water, shorten your brew day and reduce clean up time. Oh yea and still make great beer.

EDIT: I got a little carried away and maybe gave too much info, so only read on if you care about my two No Chill experiences.

I started brewing in Feb and have cranked out 13 batches so far, the amber below was a full boil extract batch and the Stout was a 6 Gallon batch of All Grain Oatmeal stout. After, I drank the amber and realized No Chill could result in good beer coupled with the weather warming up (100 degrees this weekend) I will probably be doing a lot more No Chill over the summer.

I brewed a Hoppy Amber Ale back in March and at flame out I racked into a six gallon sanitized Winpack (http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.aspx?itemid=31615&catid=459) using my auto siphon which, by the way now has a 30 degree curve in it from placing in 212* water (DULT!!!). I thought for sure no chill was a huge mistake and ruined my beer yadda yadda yadda. Turns out it was one of the best brews I've made and amber clear after it sat in the keggerator for a few days (I used Irish Moss in the boil). I did bump my Hop Schedule forward 15 minutes -- do some research on no chill brewing and you can find what some do to adjust their hop schedule, there is some science but most is anecdotal info out there.

This past weekend I decided to brew an AG Oatmeal Stout and knowing the hop schedule was relatively simple and wanting to knock 45 minutes off my brew day I decided to go back to the winpack. This time I siphoned with silicon tubing. I sanitized the winpack, dumped in wort at flame out, put lid on tight, shook around to coat all surfaces to kill any remaining bugs and toss in basement until it cools to room temp (24 hours). I then rack into my fermentation container (bucket in this case, although some folks will ferment in their winpack), aerate with O2, pitch yeast, and dropped in the swamp cooler. I took a gravity reading yesterday 1.064 down to 1.020 in 56 hours and still pluggin along, tastes great.

If you do some reading you will find Aussie's and folks in the U.S. that face water restriction all have successful results with No Chill. Some folks using No Chill containers have even let the wort sit for a week or a month and then pitched yeast and had good results.

 

[djt17]

Lots of people do it with no problems, providing you place the wort into a sealed container while still hot.
http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=49762
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/exploring-no-chill-brewing-117111/