Cooling without a chiller?

Make grain beers with the absolute minimum of equipment. Discuss here.
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LlewBru
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Cooling without a chiller?

Post by LlewBru » Fri Aug 12, 2011 3:02 pm

Hi all,
I have finally made my first BIAB (Ithink it is called that anyway :? ). I dont have a chiller but thought if I put about 3 litres of cold water (about 10'C) in the FV then dumped my boil into it, topping up quickly with the rest of the cold water then that would result in the required cooling. Would you think that this is OK? I have read some post on Hot & Cold Breaks & am more confused now than before as to the importance of them? 8-[
Llew
Cheers!!

Invalid Stout

Re: Cooling without a chiller?

Post by Invalid Stout » Fri Aug 12, 2011 10:18 pm

You can also just let it cool overnight before pitching the yeast. Rapid cooling may/will produce a clearer beer but if you don't care about that it's not really important.

Bribie

Re: Cooling without a chiller?

Post by Bribie » Sun Aug 14, 2011 2:03 am

A very popular cooling method in Australia (and it would work even better in the UK most of the year) is to get a food grade plastic water carrier "cube", depending on the size of your batch, from a camping store or a hardware warehouse. Wash and sterilize well and run your boiling wort right into it to fill it almost to the top, tip it onto its side to sterilize any headspace, seal up and leave till cool, which should be overnight generally.
Like making jam or chutney you end up with a package that you can actually store for up to a year but most guys pitch as soon as possible. I just went on a 2 week holiday and left a cube of Irish Red wort sitting in the garage, pitched it on return. I've done over 200 brews using this method and never had one go "off" in a cube, in fact one of my cubes is old faithful #1 from 2008 (the cube not the contents haha).

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In fact as I've posted elsewhere a few Aussie craft breweries do cubed wort on an industrial scale for you to brew at home and they have a shelf life of up to 18 months.

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PS get yourself a pair of heavy duty industrial gloves :) and beware children and small pets

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Jim
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Re: Cooling without a chiller?

Post by Jim » Sun Aug 14, 2011 8:49 am

I used to cool my wort by putting the FV in a bath full of cold water. It was slow, but it worked.
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gnutz2

Re: Cooling without a chiller?

Post by gnutz2 » Sun Aug 14, 2011 8:51 am

Bribie wrote:In fact as I've posted elsewhere a few Aussie craft breweries do cubed wort on an industrial scale for you to brew at home and they have a shelf life of up to 18 months.

Image
This has to be the lazyest way of brewing ever :roll: i like it!

Its like the nearest thing to to beer ive seen without paying taxes, genius, just a yeast pitch away from great beer.

Especially good if your crap at brewing #-o

How much do they cost?

Bribie

Re: Cooling without a chiller?

Post by Bribie » Mon Aug 15, 2011 2:11 am

About 30 GBP for the 20L kits which works out at around 80p a pint if my limited arithmetic is correct :? Of course you could crank out similar brews for half the cost or less but do all the hard work. One advantage is that you end up with a 20L "cube" which is useful for all sorts of things around the brewery including using it as a cooling cube.

http://www.craftbrewer.com.au/shop/default.asp?CID=88

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potatoes
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Re: Cooling without a chiller?

Post by potatoes » Mon Aug 15, 2011 11:06 am

Just a question, I always thought that aerating hot wort was a bad idea. You should always chill wort, then aerate. Is this correct? Don't these methods aerate the hot wort?

stux

Re: Cooling without a chiller?

Post by stux » Mon Aug 15, 2011 4:39 pm

There's a great deal of experience which lends many to suspect HSA is a myth at the Homebrew scale

Bribie

Re: Cooling without a chiller?

Post by Bribie » Tue Aug 16, 2011 4:35 am

I think that Hot Side Aeration isn't a real problem for the type of brewing that we do, but could well be a concern for commercial breweries who package beer to be stored for months in warehouses etc where any compounds produced by oxidising some of the wort could result in staling of the beer in the long term. However as far as I know, most traditional breweries sloshed and poured their hot wort around with gay abandon :twisted: and even fine continental breweries such as Urquell ran boiling wort into "coolships" where it was deliberately exposed to the air to cool the wort. AFAIK Hook Norton still have a coolship in their attic.

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potatoes
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Re: Cooling without a chiller?

Post by potatoes » Tue Aug 16, 2011 4:27 pm

Interesting! I wont be so anxious about hot aeration. I might buy myself a boiler and a food grade plastic water carrier. Cheers guys,

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LlewBru
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Re: Cooling without a chiller?

Post by LlewBru » Sun Aug 21, 2011 11:43 am

Thanks for all the replies guy's, sorry about the late 'thanks' - got a touch distracted by other things! As it turned out the beer ended up quite yech! :cry: Smells great, quite lively but has a rather fruity, fizzy-drink kinda taste! Mouthfeel is quite good but I reckon I'm giong to bin the works apart from a few bottles for cooking! I blew the whole process somwhere but I am not sure where. Think I will go back to the way I did things before.... :-k
Llew
:beer:
Cheers!!

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