Chilling all grain

[Toxicdonkey]

I have an immersion heater, however my water supply is miles away and its a faf. I also hate dipping things in I don't really need to, will it be ok to leave my brew to cool over night naturally or am I risking infection?

 

[Pezza24]

Your not going to get a definitive answer on this one I'm afraid. Lots of strong opinions on both sides of the argument.

For balance I brewed a Wheat Beer a few weeks ago and chucked it in the FV warm and pitched the yeast the next day and it's fine.

 

[foxy]

I have an immersion heater, however my water supply is miles away and its a faf. I also hate dipping things in I don't really need to, will it be ok to leave my brew to cool over night naturally or am I risking infection?

I have done it a number of times, spray some sanitiser around the lid then wrap in cling wrap. Though I have already cooled it, you will have alter the timing of your hop additions, there is a chart somewhere on the no chill threads in other forums.

From AHB.
All you do is:

1 - Put your recipe into your brew software as you normally do, write down the number of IBUs.

2 - Go to every hop addition entry and increase the time in the boil by 10-20 mins. The ibu figure will naturally go up.

3 - Now go to the entry for your main bittering addition, your start of boil hops. Reduce the amount of hops until the IBU figure matches the "old" figure from your recipe as it originally was.

4 - Brew the recipe as you originally would have. DONT actually change the time you boil the hops, leave them where they were! Just use the new amount for the bittering addition

 

[Toxicdonkey]

Your not going to get a definitive answer on this one I'm afraid. Lots of strong opinions on both sides of the argument.

For balance I brewed a Wheat Beer a few weeks ago and chucked it in the FV warm and pitched the yeast the next day and it's fine.

I have before, however I'm using a fermentasauras now and it will only handle temps up to 50 degrees.

 

[Pezza24]

Ah yeah I wouldn't want to melt one of those with boiling hot wort. What will you be leaving it in if your cooling overnight?

 

[Nicks90]

I did no chill for my first 50 AG brews and yes you need to be careful with your bittering additions.
But don't get overly worried, once it's at the end of the boil take the hops out (use a bag or hop spider) and let it settle for 20 minutes. drop your wort in to the fv and revel in the fact your fv is being sterilised by 95c liquid!
Leave overnight and then chuck in your yeast.
One thing, don't put steriliser or anything in your airlock or it'll get sucked in as the air and liquid cools. I just put a blob of cotton wool in the top of the airlock. Never had an issue

 

[Toxicdonkey]

Ah yeah I wouldn't want to melt one of those with boiling hot wort. What will you be leaving it in if your cooling overnight?

I was just going to leave itI’m my ACE all in one kettle.

 

[Drunkula]

https://brulosophy.com/2015/02/09/a-year-of-no-chill-lessons-from-a-secret-xbmt/
I've been syphoning the beer out of the kettle into a fermenter and then carrying that down to the water butt and dumping the whole thing in. Nowhere near as fast as real chilling but at least I get to pitch the same day. I wamm an egg up over the fermenter hole.

 

[Leard]

My understanding is that dark beers - no chill works. Hop forward and pale beers - it doesn't work.

This is the conclusion of the xBmt Brulosophy did.

I've yet to try it myself, but I've been considering because cooling is the worst part of my brew day. Involves lugging the kettle out into the garden where the hose is. And I hate the waste of water. I'm thinking of buying a plastic 25L jerry can that I can cool in overnight in my fridge, and then pouring directly into the fermenter when it's pitching temp.

 

[phillc]

For balance I brewed a Wheat Beer a few weeks ago and chucked it in the FV warm and pitched the yeast the next day and it's fine.

I normally chill wort with a plate cooler. However, yesterday I was brewing a Dunkelweizen when the thought struck me that perhaps I didn't need to chill so quickly.

What's the point of chilling wort quickly? There are probably a few, but as I understand it one is to lock in the aroma and oils from the hops. As wheat beers use very little hops (I only had 15g of Perle in my 25L batch yesterday), it seemed to me that worrying about hops wasn't worth it.

Ambient temperature outside yesterday was between 3 - 4 C. My wort went from 97C to 37C in about 3 hours. At that point I transferred to the fermenter, which remained outside for a further three hours until it hit 24C, which is when I moved it to the cellar and pitched the yeast.

Saved myself 60L or so of water, and a good amount of time with reduced cleaning.

 

[BradleyW]

I've just recently switched to no chill, mainly because our cold water just isn't cold enough, except maybe right now in mid winter, and so far no issues. It's my (very limited) understanding that the main period to worry about is when the wort is around 37°, body temperature in other words, so I figure as long as you don't leave the lid off and faff with it too much at that point you'll be ok. They didn't have these fancy chillers back 'int day did they and still made decent beer!

 

[Richard_H]

Currently a no chill brewer, doing all grain in an apartment means storage space is limited and so far there has been no issues. Follow the steps given by Foxy above and your good to go.

What I have noticed is the wort will get to around 40 degrees in about 7 hours when left indoors, it will then chill quicker if you then transfer it into your FV at this stage. The yeast can normally be pitched 8 hours later assuming its a steady 20 inside.

If your looking at a form of no chill beyond 24 hours then a method that is very popular in Australia and some parts of America where the ground water is warm is moving the wort to plastic cube containers and storing it for up to several weeks.