No Chill Cubes

MashBag said:

Big gas space. No co2 cylinder required.

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But, but, but...
You know the current fad is for £££££ of dry hops and messing about with closed transfers otherwise it's too much oxygen and you ruin your expensive brew.

Hint: more traditional beer styles are available that are much less susceptible to oxidation

Let's do this in the right thread..

https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/clever-priming-sugar-required.105940/#post-1298504

I will answer it there.

For reference I have tried running my immersion chiller from a water butt and pump instead of the mains hose, but the pump just did not provide enough pressure for the job.

Hmm. Now wanting to be pedantic... But here's goes ... Do you mean pressure or flow?

Caramel Ox said:

For reference I have tried running my immersion chiller from a water butt and pump instead of the mains hose, but the pump just did not provide enough pressure for the job.

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Maybe get a larger pump? I used to do this in a previous house where I had a shed I used to brew in.

It wasn't a fancy pump. Just a water butt fountain pump that could produce a fountain about 40cm high.

The flow rate doesn't need to be mains pressure - just as long as can do a couple of litres a minute is good enough. If it's still struggling, lower the exit pipe down so that the pump has to fight gravity less. If you put the exit pipe into the water butt, you effectively have no head pressure at all so it's just about the flow rate

I do miss those old days of brewing in winter when the water butt has 250L of water at about 2°c. Chilled the brew really well!

Agentgonzo said:

It wasn't a fancy pump. Just a water butt fountain pump that could produce a fountain about 40cm high.

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All pumps are not equal, different designs and different setups do really different things.

Pressure = height generally
Flow = ammount

Pumps seam to feature a lot in my life, not just for beer.

Sorry all been helping a friend move, been a hectic few days

gavp1979 said:

I am not having a go, I was genuinely wondering how the OP had managed.

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To answer your question gav

MashBag said:

Run it on a bucket of ice and a pond pump.

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Like this

gavp1979 said:

But with the amount of water that an immersion chiller uses you would need a lot of bucket refills! After saving the first couple for cleaning you couldn't really reuse the water because it would be warm after going through the chiller so you would need to constantly get rid of them and without running water I wouldn't expect a sink to pour them into.

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Yeah... lol pretty much this too
It was messy and incredibly inconvenient. Had two buckets set up and two jerry cans of fresh water for the space I have, wildly inefficient to try to bounce between the two and then dispose of water that was too hit to use.
i had to run up and down the flights of stairs several times with these to dump and stick the shower hose in to refill with cold water and then bound back up stairs with them.

It was exhausting and became way more of a chore than a bit of fun for the night after work

It's why I started this thread lol
To get opinions on others experiences with no chill.

peebee said:

Don't actually need those "complicated" tee-pieces on the fillers: The "Y" splitter like on the "Hop Missile" (a Chinese rip-off of the Blichmann Hop Rocket) with two filler tubes does the same job - i.e. fill two or more cubes without interuption (I brew 45/65L batches). The air vents (blue pipes here) are needed because the cubes are filled while sealed. Needs a pump on the boiler (if it's an impeller pump the cubes simply stop filling when full ... they can't overflow).

The "Hop Missile" replaces the purpose of "whirlpool" and "steep" hops (which you can't use with no-chill cubes 'cos the cubes must be filled straight after the boil).

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I may send you a pm about this setup lol

Larse said:

You cooled to 40° and were probably very hands on by the sound of it. If you just let it cool naturally to around 50° and clean up while waiting, all you'd be left to clean would be the kettle. Might be an efficient way of doing it.

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Messy and inefficient, way more hands on than I would have liked to have been lol
see below though to further my answer to this however this is definitely going to be added to my arsenal.of things to do so thank you

foxy said:

Only use HDPE cubes if you really want to cube the wort. But I agree with what a couple of others have said: leave it in the kettle until the next day. The kettle is sanitised, so there are no worries there.

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I have a cube ordered as I like the longer term storage idea of it and allows me to clean the kettle the same night/day as the brew

MashBag said:

Half filled cornies are next.

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Was thinking about trying a corner as a Shank Tank style co2 generator like on brulosophy for transfer etc lol
co2 is pricey
Also going to add my entire water volumes for strike and sparge into my kettle.
bring it up to above my strike temp and pump my sparge volume into a Corney for use later in the brew. The rest will be left to cool to strike temp (or just to use if both at same temp lol)

peebee said:

Is this discussion about "no-chill" started to get decidedly "warm"? Or is it just me?

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Started to think this myself lol

peebee said:

The piccie of my no-chill cubes with "anti-bulge" plates attached and overly complicated fillers, ready to go, as promised earlier:

View attachment 104937

Don't actually need those "complicated" tee-pieces on the fillers: The "Y" splitter like on the "Hop Missile" (a Chinese rip-off of the Blichmann Hop Rocket) with two filler tubes does the same job - i.e. fill two or more cubes without interuption (I brew 45/65L batches). The air vents (blue pipes here) are needed because the cubes are filled while sealed. Needs a pump on the boiler (if it's an impeller pump the cubes simply stop filling when full ... they can't overflow).

The "Hop Missile" replaces the purpose of "whirlpool" and "steep" hops (which you can't use with no-chill cubes 'cos the cubes must be filled straight after the boil).



Now @MashBag's reminded me, I'm just off down the tablet Chemist for a resupply.

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The overnight temps where I live are just a bit over freezing. I let my wort temperature drop 5 degrees or so below boiling and then pour the boiled wort into a sanitized 6 gallon HDPE water jug, top the jug with CO2 and then close it and put it outside overnight. It cools down overnight so I can pitch the yeast the next morning.

aero-spaced-out said:

Yeah... lol pretty much this too
It was messy and incredibly inconvenient. Had two buckets set up and two jerry cans of fresh water for the space I have, wildly inefficient to try to bounce between the two and then dispose of water that was too hit to use.
i had to run up and down the flights of stairs several times with these to dump and stick the shower hose in to refill with cold water and then bound back up stairs with them.

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Sounds like you got a HIIT workout thrown in for free

aero-spaced-out said:

It was exhausting and became way more of a chore than a bit of fun for the night after work

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I can imagine it quickly loosing the appeal at least you tried it and have got a plan going forward

MashBag said:

Pumps seam to feature a lot in my life, not just for beer.

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size 9 pumps for feet

gavp1979 said:

Sounds like you got a HIIT workout thrown in for free

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My mash kept sticking too and with a 90 min mash time, I basically just spent the entirety of it stirring mash.
I was sore the following day lol

It did make me think about adding a bag into my kettle before my malt pipe to act as an extra bit of filtering as my pump nearly got blocked with some.of the remnants of my mash... happened last time where I still had some stuff left over after that must have slipped through the gaps in my malt pipe plate and kettle bottom plate...
just a thought though maybe for another time

aero-spaced-out said:

Also going to add my entire water volumes for strike and sparge into my kettle.

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Full volume mash is soo much easier. Been doing it for years. Sparging Smargin (sorry )

Cheers for the shark tank

Dark Arts said:

View attachment 105048size 9 pumps for feet

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Size nine, brown.

aero-spaced-out said:

My mash kept sticking too and with a 90 min mash time, I basically just spent the entirety of it stirring mash.
I was sore the following day lol

It did make me think about adding a bag into my kettle before my malt pipe to act as an extra bit of filtering as my pump nearly got blocked with some.of the remnants of my mash... happened last time where I still had some stuff left over after that must have slipped through the gaps in my malt pipe plate and kettle bottom plate...
just a thought though maybe for another time

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What unit are you using?

foxy said:

What unit are you using?

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Brewzilla 3.1.1 35L

First it's happened
Wasn't actually the worst in the world
My recipe estimated a SG of 1.041 based on 85% efficiency at 20°
When I checked mine and corrected for temp mine was 1.047 so definitely helped

MashBag said:

Full volume mash is soo much easier. Been doing it for years. Sparging Smargin (sorry )

Cheers for the shark tank

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Full volume mash... interesting
Never had crossed my mind to do this
Then again I am fairly new to the hobby so still a lot to learn and to develop on my own routine

aero-spaced-out said:

Full volume mash... interesting
Never had crossed my mind to do this
Then again I am fairly new to the hobby so still a lot to learn and to develop on my own routine

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Another option is to calculate the volume of liquid below and around the malt pipe and add that to your mash liquor. In my case it's ~4l, so if the initial water volume calculates out to (say) 15l, I add 19l. Never any issue with stuck or sticky mashes.

Larse said:

Another option is to calculate the volume of liquid below and around the malt pipe and add that to your mash liquor. In my case it's ~4l, so if the initial water volume calculates out to (say) 15l, I add 19l. Never any issue with stuck or sticky mashes.

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I'm unsure I follow what you mean... how does this help with the mash sticking if you don't mind explaining, please?

aero-spaced-out said:

I'm unsure I follow what you mean... how does this help with the mash sticking if you don't mind explaining, please?

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No problem.

Equipment may differ, but in my case, the malt pipe sits about 4cm above the base of the mash kettle. There's also a gap of about 1-2cm between the wall of the malt pipe and the wall of the mash kettle.

My thinking is that this is 'dead' space as the liquor in those areas is not in constant contact with the grains. So when you calculate the amount of water to use in the mash (say 3l per kg), up to (in my case) 4l of this will not actually be constantly involved in the mash. I believe that these calculations for mash water do not include this 'dead' space, since it is different from one mash kettle to another.

I came to this conclusion because like you I was encountering very sticky mashes and this became worse when I added a bazooka filter to my kettle which required raising the malt pipe a further 2cm to stop it resting on the filter.

Larse said:

No problem.

Equipment may differ, but in my case, the malt pipe sits about 4cm above the base of the mash kettle. There's also a gap of about 1-2cm between the wall of the malt pipe and the wall of the mash kettle.

My thinking is that this is 'dead' space as the liquor in those areas is not in constant contact with the grains. So when you calculate the amount of water to use in the mash (say 3l per kg), up to (in my case) 4l of this will not actually be constantly involved in the mash. I believe that these calculations for mash water do not include this 'dead' space, since it is different from one mash kettle to another.

I came to this conclusion because like you I was encountering very sticky mashes and this became worse when I added a bazooka filter to my kettle which required raising the malt pipe a further 2cm to stop it resting on the filter.

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Does your kettle have any form of recirculation on it?