thughes: If you use your grain bag as a hop sock, you avoid this as it's so large. A lot of hop socks are quite small and I think that is where this theory comes from.

Squared: Good on you! Just tried to find the article but I don't think it is online .

Good on you Squared . Apologies to you and the others that I haven't replied earlier. The new year took away my focus on this and since then, any free time I get, BIABrewer hijacks me to help on the BIABacus . I'm putting my foot down this week though. Easter's next weekend and I am finally going to take some time off to brew some beer .

I'm going to do 4 double batches. Probably a cream ale, a 'bitter and twisted' blonde ale, an APA and an English IPA.

I think I'll keep things as simple as possible whilst trying to test out sparging as well as the no-chill thing. I'll brew over two days, with two double batches each day.

1. I'll use my BIAB bag as a hop bag on all the brews. (Thughes, there should be no hop utilisation loss if you use your BIAB bag as a hop sock as the hops aren't restricted.)

2. I'll put as much water as possible in one batch and any top up needed, I'll do before the boil. On the other batch, I'll hold back about 15 litres of the total water needed. On one day, I'll do a dunk sparge and the next day I might try a 'fly-sparge' of the 15 L. (Wonder how I can check the gravity of the last runnings on these?)

3. Pull and squeeze the hop bag at 5 minutes post-boil. (Maybe, just as a matter of interest, see if I can measure the volume change pre and post hop bag pull?)

4. No-chill with a syphon to cube while moving the syphon up and down to avoid layering. Not sure how to juggle that one while having a beer at the same time? (Still not really sure of what to do on this step as I'd like this step to be easy.)

5. Chill with immersion chiller immediately after cube transfer. (Really don't want to use the plate chiller as it's a PITA.)

So, I have less than a week to buy 4 cubes. Anyone in Ozland know where I can get the blue 25L cubes as the bungs in these are not drilled out and I still have one of these I haven't drilled. All the others I saw today had the bung part pre-drilled. I'm storing the cubes in a carpeted room so would like to have leak possibilities kept to a minimum.


PP

Ended up doing 6 double batches over the last three days.

Basically, I pulled the hop bag 5 minutes post-boil and filled the cube 20 minutes later. The remainder I chilled and is fermenting now.

Brews were an English IPA, an APA, a Cream Ale, a 'Bitter and Twisted' Blonde Ale, a Munich Helles and a Dortmunder Export.

Because I did 6 brews instead of 4, I'm not gong to be able to ferment any of the brews in tandem sorry .

The only beer I didn't brew is the one I know best. I'll do that one next and ferment it side by side (with chill delay) and see what happens.

Next time ,
PP

Pat,
how did you chill? with an immersion chiller, counter flow or plate chiller?
did the chilled half end up having more trub?


EDIT: sorry, just read the above posts. questions answered. thanks.

I did my own side by side chill/no-chill brew on Friday. 20 liters of an American Amber.
Used a hop bag which is something i usually don't do.
after the boil was done, i Whirlpooled for around 5 minutes and let the wort stand for another 5-10 minutes.
i than ran half the wort via a plate chiller into fermenter #1. i only managed to drop the temp to 34C (i had no clue that i should run the wort through the chiller s-l-o-w-l-y). i pitched 5gr of re hydrated US05.
i than proceeded to run the second half into my cube. 30 hours later i transferred the no chilled half to fermenter #2 at 23.5C and pitched the other 5gr of re hydrated US05.
both are fermenting at 17.5C right now.

Great stuff shib .

Did you pull the hop bag out or leave it in there? Also, did you pitch that first batch at 34c and the second at 23.5 C?

i did not pull out the hop bag. it was left in the wort as the kettle was draining.
i did pitch the yeast at 34C and at 23.5C

Ah, that might throw the experiment a bit shib unless you were able to get it down to 17.5 really quickly. Unfortunately at those high temps, the yeast can throw some funny flavours really quickly.

You'd have the same problem as we do here - hot tap water. I often can't get the chill below 30C plus so I put my fermentor in the fridge and let it fall to pitching temp before I aerate and then pitch. I've never scored an infection waiting this time but am careful with my transfers.

Aces High is coming over in a few weeks to do one of these side by side no-chills and we'll ferment them as soon as they get to pitching temp unlike the brews I did previously in the thread. Looking forward to tasting the results.

On the last ones I did, I pulled the hop bag 5 minutes after the boil on the 'hope' that it would even things out but who knows ?

It will be interesting with your brews to see what difference you can taste on the non-hop side of things as well. What yeast was it btw?

PistolPatch wrote: What yeast was it btw?

US-05

I think US-05 gives you some bananas if it stays too long above 25 C. I remember pitching it high once years ago and I'm pretty sure that is what I got. Bananas are very good for you though .

pat,
you crack me up.
however, the plot thickens...
i checked on fermenter #1 in the fridge a few hours after pitching. it was down from 34 to around 22 in about 5-6 hours so i was happy. however, when i opened the fridge to put in fermenter #2, i realized that the fridge had been plogged in to the wall and not the temp controller. fermenter #1 was now at ~10C. but bubbling nicely.
right now, over 48 hours from pitching #1 and around 20 hours from pitching #2 both are at a steady 17.8C and bubbling.

So everything's perfectly balanced then .

That's good you got the first one down so quickly . Unless of course, yo do like bananas .

i don't think it makes any difference. at least not in my kettle.

so, two weeks after fermentation began i transferred both half batches to kegs. i was very careful to take good measurements and both are at the same post fermentation gravity (duh...).
i tasted the hydrometer samples. may be a very very slight difference in the hop flavor. the no-chilled half has an ever slight hoppier flavor. will taste again after carbonation.

Looking forward to hearing how it all ends up shib .

AcesHigh and I have decided to brew an IPA instead of an APA this weekend for the side by side. Not sure if this is a good idea or not as one mouthful of an IPA and I can never taste anything else so not sure how I'll go at compaaring the two .

In case you missed it? Shibolet and I did a no-chill verses Immersion chill last Spring. Listen on the web or just download it and listen on your way to work!

July 5, 2012 - No Chill Experiment
Home brewers Bob Stempski and Noam Shalev compare beers brewed with traditional chilling techniques with no-chill batches.

http://traffic.libsyn.com/basicbrewing/ ... lexp02.mp3 MP3 file!

http://www.basicbrewing.com/index.php?page=radio

We did do this experiment rich. I think we had a few topics on the subject floating around at the time. The results (people's opinions) on the two beers we brewed can be found in this post.

Some other threads that talk more on this subject are here and here.

It's hard to draw any solid conclusions on such a small number of brews especially as most of the experiments done weren't real side by sides (different systems and hop schedules). Also the styles of beer brewed have been pretty limited. It's a hard thing to experiment with as if you do two full-sized batches side by side, you end up with a lot of the same beer at the same time. If you do small side by side batches, that poses other problems such as accurate weighing and consistency etc of such a small grain and hop bill.

I've still got 5 cubes of beer I brewed here back in Easter. The other half of these brews were chilled and fermented straight away and are either finished or about finished. The problem is when I ferment the no-chilled lot, I'm not going to really learn anything because of the time separation. All I'll learn is whether I like the beers or not. If they do stand out in some way though, is this because they were no-chilled or because they have been sitting in a cube for 9 months? Impossible to tell.

Hi PP

I have been reading this thread and followed all the links but can't seem to find the results of your tasting day, can you help?

I am trying to find an answer to whether NC affects the hop profile. I have heard that as the wort remains hot for longer that the bitterness will increase if you NC? I was hoping this thread may help answer that hence the desire to read the tasting results.

I will look elsewhere as well but appreciate it if u can point me in the right direction.

Thanks

Homemade, so sorry it has taken me a few days to reply. I think the results from that particular trial can be found in this post. You'll see that there is nothing definitive.

In some thread, somewhere here, is a post related to this whole subject where I talked about how chill time can commence quite some time after flame-out depending on the brewer. On the weekend, just before you posted above, I finally got some straight answers on this form a pro brewer. The next post I do today will be on this but I haven't found the right thread yet. This might be the thread I am chasing or, if not, I am hoping it may be one of the ones you linked. I better go and do some reading .