We recently started a nano in South East Asia (1-barrel brewery with three, one barrel fermenters) and 6 brews in things are largely going well. I’ll write another post on our experiences soon, it has been an education setting up an operation in a country which has zero brewing supplies.
One thing which is giving is constant grief is the temperature of our groundwater. I’ve just measured the tap temperatures and they’re registering as 29C (outside tap) and 28C (Inside tap). This is unsurprisingly making chilling our wort a complete headache. I’ve read countless posts on various techniques to get the temperature down but while some of them may work on a 5 gallon batch, cooling at this scale is something else. We’ve tried copper tubing in an ice bath (36 feet dropped the temperature a couple of degrees but nowhere near enough) and running the chilling water through a trough filled with ice bottles (periodically dropped the wort temperature to around 28C but the ice melts far too quickly to make it feasible solution). Thus far we have had to make do with cooling the wort as far as it will go (generally early 30’s at the moment but this wastes a huge amount of water) then cooling down to 22C in the fermentation chamber (3-birth refrigerator) and pitching the following day.
This has resulted in good beers so far (the stout and British Bitter in particular have been superb) but I suspect the poor chilling is one of the factors in our hazy end product (not to mention any further risk of infection during the waiting time). After 4 weeks at crash temps (3C) they’re presentable but still very hazy. We’re not looking for crystal clear (our customers say they actually like the slight haze) but we would really like to get our production times down. Gelatin has had no observable effect on any of the beers we’ve tried it on. It’s not chill haze (appears even when warm) and it’s not starch haze (I periodically conduct starch tests following the mash to confirm full conversion).
So, a couple of questions;
Is there anything at all we can do to significantly drop our water temperatures pre-chill? We have a counterflow chiller and a chest freezer at our disposal. I’m considering putting a copper pre-chilling coil in a bucket of saline water and freezing the whole thing. Would this sufficiently drop our water temperature?
Is there anything else we can be doing to avoid cloudiness or drop our beers quicker? I’ve put wort samples in the fridge before the yeast is cast and once chilled the wort appears crystal clear with large amounts of jello-like suspended clumps (I’m presuming cold break material). We use a counterflow chiller so this currently ends up in the fermenter.
Thanks in advance!
One thing which is giving is constant grief is the temperature of our groundwater. I’ve just measured the tap temperatures and they’re registering as 29C (outside tap) and 28C (Inside tap). This is unsurprisingly making chilling our wort a complete headache. I’ve read countless posts on various techniques to get the temperature down but while some of them may work on a 5 gallon batch, cooling at this scale is something else. We’ve tried copper tubing in an ice bath (36 feet dropped the temperature a couple of degrees but nowhere near enough) and running the chilling water through a trough filled with ice bottles (periodically dropped the wort temperature to around 28C but the ice melts far too quickly to make it feasible solution). Thus far we have had to make do with cooling the wort as far as it will go (generally early 30’s at the moment but this wastes a huge amount of water) then cooling down to 22C in the fermentation chamber (3-birth refrigerator) and pitching the following day.
This has resulted in good beers so far (the stout and British Bitter in particular have been superb) but I suspect the poor chilling is one of the factors in our hazy end product (not to mention any further risk of infection during the waiting time). After 4 weeks at crash temps (3C) they’re presentable but still very hazy. We’re not looking for crystal clear (our customers say they actually like the slight haze) but we would really like to get our production times down. Gelatin has had no observable effect on any of the beers we’ve tried it on. It’s not chill haze (appears even when warm) and it’s not starch haze (I periodically conduct starch tests following the mash to confirm full conversion).
So, a couple of questions;
Is there anything at all we can do to significantly drop our water temperatures pre-chill? We have a counterflow chiller and a chest freezer at our disposal. I’m considering putting a copper pre-chilling coil in a bucket of saline water and freezing the whole thing. Would this sufficiently drop our water temperature?
Is there anything else we can be doing to avoid cloudiness or drop our beers quicker? I’ve put wort samples in the fridge before the yeast is cast and once chilled the wort appears crystal clear with large amounts of jello-like suspended clumps (I’m presuming cold break material). We use a counterflow chiller so this currently ends up in the fermenter.
Thanks in advance!
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