PistolPatch wrote:Hi there kzimmer - great question
,
I'm going to try and give an answer from a different point of view. Here's the short answer...
PP,
This sounds like some of the medical explanations I've heard at meetings. "It all depends . . . " I think it's a big secret; some people know the answers but don't want to tell everything lest everyone's beer be of the same quality. Everyone at the church loves Mrs. Smith's Oatmeal cookies. She shares the recipe, but always leaves out some little secret ingredient - the one that makes hers so much better than the others. Sure, her shared recipe makes great cookies, but no one can get theirs quite like hers and no one knows why. Just kidding, BTW
PistolPatch wrote:There are many ways to chill a brew...
3. Slow Chill - Let the brew cool naturally and pitch when cool enough.
4. No-Chill - Pitch hot into an air-tight vessel and delay pitching for days/weeks/months.
I'm not seeing the difference between #3 and #4. I thought No-Chill was simply not artificially chilling your wort (either by IC, CFC, Ice bath, etc. Most folks transfer from the kettle into a HDPE container (Aquatainer, Cube, Winpack, etc). The time frame wasn't the deciding factor. Usually, the wort has cooled by the next day to pitch the yeast. Whether or not one pitched directly into the NC container or transferred to a fermentation vessel didn't change the terminology.
See, I'm splitting hairs over minutia, just like a doctor. 
I thought that the idea of storing the wort for an extended period was an extrapolation of the NC method - and one that requires strict attention to sanitation.
Anyway, when I think of No-Chill, I'm thinking that one shuts off the heat. Wilserbrewer on HBT simply covers his kettle and pitches directly into his kettle in the morning. I'm not brave enough to do that yet. I imagine that I would shut off the heat, then sanitize the NC container (my blue aquatainer), then transfer the hot wort into it, tighten the lid, then rotate it around to get hot wort in contact with all inside surfaces, then set the container up to cool overnight.
PistolPatch wrote:<snip>
For example, we did a side by side at my place a few months ago between methods 2 and 3 above on a hoppy beer and found no difference. A side by side between 1, 2 and 3 on both a hoppy and non-hoppy beer would be very interesting but would only be the start of exploring this area. Many controlled brews need to be done.
So, for now, I reckon there is no easy answer. . . <snip>
Atm though, we really have nothing because there is no way of Brewer A telling Brewer B, "This is the way I chilled and how I went about it."
Does that make some sense?
PP
It makes sense. I do agree that there are too many variables involved to give a "definitive" answer. I was simply looking to hear about the experience others might have with this. Have you NCers altered your hop additions? If so, I'd like to hear about what you did. If not, and you didn't find enough of a difference in your beer to worry about it, that would be helpful to know.
PistolPatch wrote:P.S. Don't get hung up on this. Just brew the beer. I've done all sorts of chilling methods and have never been disappointed in the resulting beer. Atm, we can intellectualise and calculate all we like but without an underlying structure and terminology, doing so is pretty much a waste of time.
Alright. You and thughes are telling me to get off my (_!_) and brew something!!! I want to brew the Punkin Ale recipe I referenced earlier. True, this isn't the same as me calculating doses of drug for a 10 lb baby. I guess it's the way I think. I don't want to screw up a beer. I spend several hours brewing it, and I won't know if it's any good for 4-6 weeks. If it's not good, I don't know enough to know what got screwed up: the process, the ingredients, etc.
To recapitulate a bit, one technique I read was that one often turns off the heat, then takes about 10 minutes getting ready to transfer the hot wort. The guy who made up that chart had determined that the NC process was the equivalent to extending the boil for 20 minutes - from a bitterness standpoint insofar as hops are concerned.
So, for the "Punkin Ale" that calls for the following additions:
1oz Hallertaur at 60 min.
1.5 Tbsp McCormicks Pumpkin Pie Spice at 10 min
1oz Hallertaur at 5 min.
Does it seem reasonable to move the 60 minute addition to 40 minutes. For what the Spice does, there's probably no harm in adding it at flameout. I've seen disagreement on what to do with the 5 minute addition. If that's for aroma, some have said that adding it to the NC container (wort to be racked off the next day) should be fine. The rationale was that, in a closed container, the aroma won't be boiled away even though the temp will remain high for a longer period of time.
Thanks, again, for your lengthy explanation. I guess I can always taste it when I rack to secondary. If it needs a little more hops, I can add a hop tea.
Regards,
Keith
No-Chill Hop Schedule
