As someone who lives in a hot climate where droughts occur regularly and where the groundwater is 80+ degrees in the summer, I’ve been doing mostly no-chill brewing (letting the hot wort passively chill in an HDPE cube overnight then pitching the next day) to reduce my brewing water usage.
I’ve been really happy with the results, and I’m finally beginning to nail hoppy styles. Anyone else have no-chill experience who’d like to compare notes?
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I’ve been no chil brewing for about 5 batches now and have noticed no ill effects. In fact, I’ve made some of my best beers. The only thing I don’t like is that cleaning the cube is a bit of a pain in the ass, and I don’t have any surplus hot water to clean my pump and kettle with. I think I definitely end up using a lot less water overall though which makes me feel good. Water is cheap and plentiful where I am so that isn’t a huge deal, though I do like the saved time during brew day. I’m trying to make my IPAs more bitter anyway so that part doesn’t bother me.
I haven’t tried no-chilling yet but am thinking of converting! Did you have to make any changes to your hop schedule?
Oh yeah. Some commonly offered advice is to move your hop additions 20 mins back (your usually 60 min go in at 40 mins, your 40 mins at 20, etc). This works, but I found this resulted in too much bitterness and little aroma/flavor for hoppy styles.
I had a fellow home brewer recommend just putting every hop addition, save the bittering charge, directly into the cube and racking the wort on top of it. That’s worked really well for me.
Your 60 minute addition isn’t going to get any more bitterness compared to adding it at 40 mins. I’d use a 60 min addition for bittering and throw the rest in at flameout, like an extended whirlpool.
Is that so? I opened up my IBU calculator and the difference between 40 and 60 is indeed minimal but definitely noticeable for very bitter styles.
Yes to the extended in-cube “whirlpool,” it’s been working well for me recently.
IBU production slows down over time. There will be some increase from 60 mins to 120 but the effect will be a lot less than say 40 to 60. Not saying there isn’t a difference, but that it won’t be that great.
See this paper for graphs of IBU production over time of the boil. You will see that almost all of the IBU production is in the first 10-15 mins, then it slows right down.
Obviously your taste is the ultimate decider however. If you find too much bitterness then shorten the boil addition, of course. I always add a 60 minute addition, even if it’s very small (5g for a 25L batch will do).
I think I’m going to try it for my next batch. Tapwater is over 80f here in the summer and we are always in or on the edge of drought.
I’m going to try fermenting in a corny keg, I don’t have a spunding valve yet but I’d like to get one and try pressurized and no oxygen fermentation.
Didn’t know this was a thing, are there any downsides to doing it this way?
Yes, primarily hop timing. You can’t use your usual hop schedule with a no-chill setup because the wort stays near-boiling for much longer, extracting more alpha acids over time. It’s also hard to get aroma/flavor out of boil additions for the same reason, so many no-chillers just add their late hops directly to the cube as a sort of knockout addition.
There’s also a theoretically increased risk of infection cuz you wait longer to pitch, but the boiling wort sanitizes the cube anyway and I’ve never heard of anyone having a bad fermentation because of it.
I see, how about chill haze? I personally don’t consider that a problem but people say slow cooling can cause that.
I’ve made some very clear beers with no chill with no whirlflock/Irish moss. I don’t notice much of a difference.
Oh excellent, thank you very much!
What is this HDPE cube of which you speak? I haven’t brewed since I moved to the desert myself and now I’m very interested.
Some people also call them Jerry cans. Here’s an example on Amazon. I think they were originally made for water storage. cube
Right on! Thanks!
I’ve done it lazily a couple times. It works out really well. Just set the kettle in the garage with a lid on it overnight.
Use a hop sock or something so your hops aren’t in there the whole time. You will still get extra hop action, but it won’t be as severe.
Also, put the lid on about 5 minutes before your boil is done to steam sanitize the underside.
