How long does your Immersion cooler take to work

[BenB]

I've been struggling with a distinct lack of hop aroma / flavour in my beers. I get plenty of bitterness but despite mucking around with water profiles I rarely get much in the way of initial hop flavour- the beer just tastes very malty mellow initially with a bitter finish - a bit more hoppy zing in the initial taste would be a good thing. I wonder if the problem could be my IC cooler is taking too long to chill the beer by which time I've lost most of the volatile (non alpha) acids..... I have an instinctive fear of plate chillers and counterflow coolers due to risk of contamination but....

So.... how long does your immersion cooler take to chill a 23 litre batch??

[guypettigrew]

About two minutes maximum to get the wort from 100C to 80C, then the flame out hops are added for 25 minutes.

Then about 15 minutes to get down to about 25C, when the wort is left for 20 minutes to settle before being run out of the boiler.

Mind you. a lot of stirring is involved. Very hard work! The upside of all the stirring, though, is it nicely aerates the wort ready for pitching.

Guy

[BenB]

Yup. I think I need to start stirring or install a recirculation pump. I tend to be lazy and just set the tap running and go and get a cuppa. Probably why it's taking so flipping long to cool the wort.

[guypettigrew]

Correct! Not stirring will hugely increase the time the wort takes to cool.

A recirculation pump is a fine idea, but I don't bother because I'm worried it might compact the hops and trub onto the hop filter. Stir for a couple of minutes, stop for a sup of beer, stir again. Repeat this for 15 minutes and you'll have a nice cool wort with a super good cold break.

Guy

[sbond10]

I wonder if buying a cheap food mixer and shoving it on the side would move the wort suffieciently during cooling

[chefgage]

When i used to use one it took ages, about an hour. This was before i started stiring it. It then took about 30mins to get to about 25'c. At that point i would transfer to the fermenting vesesel (after giving it a good stir to create a whirlpool and then leave for 10 mins) after which the temp would have dropped to pitching temp.

Whilst stiiring i would have a big spoon in one hand and a beer in the other

I dont bother with he ic at the moment as i am using no chill cubes.

[tickle]

when I do mine I use my wife's electric whisk at the same time and it take about 15-20 mins to cool down from boiling point

[Jambo]

One thing for sure is it's a lot quicker at this time of year!

BenB when do you add your 0 min hops, do you cool to 80 deg first?

[jaroporter]

my IC used to put so much time (easily an hour or more if unattended) and effort on the end of a brewday i just stopped using it, but i never had a problem making hoppy beer with it

if you don't mind standing there and stirring then that'll save you time, but don't forget that many commercial breweries have such vast amounts of wort that their flameout/whirlpool hops will be at higher temperatures in the wort for easily an hour, so it's certainly not a problem for them - think the key is brewing to your kit. for example, i nochill now, so if i was to brew your ipa i bet i'd have to make big changes to the hop bill to get the hopkick you intended, i know i have for mine..

[simon12]

Some people do no chill (leaving it overnight to cool in a sealed container)and I never read a post saying they have the issue you do, so I don't think the chilling is the problem.

[BenB]

I might be wrong but I thought the idea with no chill is that you stick it in the nochill cube and this prevents the volatile non alphas evaporating? You still get some extra isomerisation of alpha acids (IE extra bitterness) but the aroma and hop flavours are maintained. Might be wrong- just my understanding of it.

I may well be barking up the wrong tree here

[Kev888]

I've had various wort coolers over the years (and different batch sizes), their performance has varied between about 15mins and 90mins to cool the whole batch to pitching temperature. There is also a difference between the way kettle coolers (like ICs) and inline coolers (like CFCs) chill; an IC may take ages to cool the whole batch but not very long to bring it all below 80C, whilst a CFC may be quicker overall but leave the majority of the wort >80c for longer. And as has been mentioned, 'no-chill' is different again.

Additionally people like to allow different amounts of time for hops to settle, in some cases as part as a whirlpooling process, before running off the wort. With in-line coolers that delays cooling, with ICs it conflicts with stirring (which people already mentioned they approach differently). All these things go to show why two people may get quite different results from late hop additions, unless they adjust arbitrary recipe timings to suit their own process.

If you feel that your wort is hot for too long after the later hop additions, then move them to later in the boil, at or after flame-out and/or to <80c steeping. For maximum aroma, dry-hopping is the way to go IMO, and isn't troubled by the earlier wort cooling duration and inconsistencies.

(there have been cases of people just using too few hops, and/or confusing hop bitterness with astringency from problems elsewhere, but I'm guessing that isn't so here).

[chefgage]

I might be wrong but I thought the idea with no chill is that you stick it in the nochill cube and this prevents the volatile non alphas evaporating? You still get some extra isomerisation of alpha acids (IE extra bitterness) but the aroma and hop flavours are maintained. Might be wrong- just my understanding of it.

I may well be barking up the wrong tree here

Not that I have done lots and lots of brews but i have not noticed a big difference (not much at all if im honest) between the bitterness/aroma when using the IC or doing no chill.

I still get the bitterness and flavour/aroma that that i would expect from the design using beersmith