As it happens after 94 AG brews, I had my first go at
some sort of no chill brew the other night for pretty much all the reasons already mentioned, even though there isn't a hosepipe ban in my area yet.
The way I did it was after whirlpooling when it was already down to 85degC I simply switched off and the kettle outside overnight - the lid can be clamped on and I left the pump in place which I figured was enough to stop bugs crawling up the tap or in through the hole in the lid.
It got down to 35degC by the next morning so I drained the wort to a sanitised FV pretty much as usual and then left it in the brew fridge to chill down to 20degC before pitching.
But reading through this thread it seems like there are a few other options - my buckets are marked with "PP" and "5" => Polypropylene, which Google tells me is only stable up to about 82degC:
- But presumably I could let the wort cool to say 80degC (or sit the FV in a trug of cool water) and then drain to the FV?
- Don't you need to be careful about hot side aeration, or is this not a thing these days?
- Do I understand correctly that at least some of you folks are putting an FV of hot wort directly into your brew fridge? My concern about this is whether such relatively high temperatures might overload the fridge???
Cheers,
Matt