I’ve never really known what recirculating means. Is this just taking a mash paddle and stirring it in the opposite direction of the coils? Wait, that’s whirlpooling. My wort is sitting in the boil kettle during chilling. How do I recirculate without buying/building more gear?
This twist in my process came from me wanting to simplify process and equipment. I read a lot about no-chill brewing, and thought I might try it. Then a guy over @ HB Chatter was telling me about this ‘partial chill’ method, and that he got great results. I do have to say that clarity has not been a problem with this method, and it allows me to pitch cold, especially for lagers.
The people that claim HSA is a myth (and I listened to the Brew Strong episode where Dr. Charlie Bamforth) discusses it) are partially correct. Typically for homebrewers, the ‘hot side’ process ends at flameout. The boil will drive off most of the compounds that form as a result of oxygenating/aerating hot wort. However, with my partial chill-process, my ‘hot side’ goes a little longer, and there is POST BOIL activity on the hot side….so I probably need to be a little more careful about aerating since it is post boil….AND since it is above 80 degrees and aldehydes can still form.
The reality is, it’s a pretty simple fix in hooking up a sanitized hose to the valve to transfer from the kettle to the fermenter.
@jeffy, this beer was bottled barely a week before my sampling. So it could just be ‘green beer’. But the flavor is something I recognize in old and young beer of mine.
@ Redbeerman, really not hating on plate chillers, but in my little rowhouse, it almost seems to be more trouble than its worth. My IC will chill it in 20 minutes or so, and for the hassle of sanitizing the chiller and pump, hooking it all up, only to have my wort drip out a bit too warm and have to adjust flow, I will just stick to the
Finally, HEEEERE IS THE WEIRD THING…I just pulled a pint of my Oktoberfest last night, which has been conditioning in the keg for about 4 weeks. This flavor is not present. (FYI, I only keg occasionally since I don’t have a dedicated serving fridge, but have 2 kegs and a CO2 tank)….And the beer was done with my weird partial chill method and vigorous dumping. Maybe I could be getting oxidation at bottling?
Bottling process is this:
-rack to bottling bucket, figure out final volume of beer
-calculate desired volumes CO2, dissolve appropriate weight of corn sugar in water, ADD THIS to the beer in the bottling bucket (I try to do it gently, but there is some splashing…I do it this way because I can’t be totally sure of final volume in the primary fermenter, as I will leave trub, etc. behind).
-bottles: fill each with a few grains of oxy clean and water, let sit for a few hours or overnight; spray each with carboy/bottle sprayer/blaster thingy, spray each with star san, let sit for another 10-15 minutes, drain
-fill with bottling cane
I don’t CO2 purge the bottles.