Wort chilling

Hi,

Just wondered, does anybody leave their wort to chill down to pitching temperature naturally rather than use a heat exchanger etc.

Providing the fv is cleaned and sanitised. Is their any risks with doing it?

Absolutely! It's called the "No-Chill" method and if memory serves was pioneered in Australia as a means of water conservation. The guys over at Basic Brewing have done maybe a dozen or more no-chill brews over the past year or so. Here is just one...

https://youtu.be/PyGAuSPSec4

Kevin58,

Thankyou so much for your reply. Really helpful.

Any idea how I plug in a no chill method I to BeerSmith in terms of hop utilisation

Edit your equipment profile and in the bottom section is the information for whirlpool/steeping settings.  You want to estimate the time it takes for your wort to cool down to below 170F and plug that in for whirlpool time.  Make sure that the box for 'estimate boil hop util in whirlpool' is checked.  This will make sure that hte program takes into account the additional isomerization of your boil hops in the no-chill cooling period.

I would recommend that you change the name of your equipment profile to reflect that it is for no-chill brewing so that you don't accidentally use it on a standard brew and end up way under your expected bitterness.

Hi,

But if I am transferring to the FV straight after the boil then surely I don?t need to account for this as the hops will be left in the boil kettle?

That sound about right?

The hop alpha acids which have been extracted from the hops do transfer with the wort and that is the component which isomerizes to give the biggest impact on bitterness.