Kettle cooling

[ScottieP]

Hi Peeps

What are people thoughts with recirculating the wort through the heat exchanger and back into the kettle at the end of the boil to lower the wort temp before adding hops to steep for a while, i like to let them steep at 80C, just throwing them in at the end of the boil and steeping doesn't give me the results i am after, were as steeping at 80C does. I am just concerned about recirculating back into the kettle, am i likely to develop off flavours using this process?

Thanks again for anyone who takes the time to give advice and reply, this board is a great help !!

Cheers

Scott

[drewseslu]

A homebrewing friend of mine would cool his wort to 85C and then add 'mid chill hops', his beers were consistent, clean, and the beers that used this technique had a bright hoppy bouquet and juicy hop flavor.
I just use a hopback and get similar results.

[ScottieP]

A homebrewing friend of mine would cool his wort to 85C and then add 'mid chill hops', his beers were consistent, clean, and the beers that used this technique had a bright hoppy bouquet and juicy hop flavor.
I just use a hopback and get similar results.

would love to have a hopback!! its on the long list of improvements, our kit is very basic at the moment so im trying as hard as i can to get maximum flavour into the beers, have used the mash tun as a hopback with some brews in the past, works well but makes for a very full on brew day!

[drewseslu]

What's your batch size? There are some reasonably priced vessels out there needing minor modification for use as a hopback.

[ScottieP]

What's your batch size? There are some reasonably priced vessels out there needing minor modification for use as a hopback.

8BBL brew length, we are uk based if that helps

[BDL]

Hi Peeps

What are people thoughts with recirculating the wort through the heat exchanger and back into the kettle at the end of the boil to lower the wort temp before adding hops to steep for a while, i like to let them steep at 80C, just throwing them in at the end of the boil and steeping doesn't give me the results i am after, were as steeping at 80C does. I am just concerned about recirculating back into the kettle, am i likely to develop off flavours using this process?

Thanks again for anyone who takes the time to give advice and reply, this board is a great help !!

Cheers

Scott

so long as the wort returning to the kettle isn't splashing and absorbing O2 (hot side aeration... bad bad bad) and you start the recirculation a few minutes before starting to chill to allow for the loop to be hot sanitized, then there is no reason you couldn't do that. However I think that drewseslu is right that a hop back is the more manageable option.

[ScottieP]

so long as the wort returning to the kettle isn't splashing and absorbing O2 (hot side aeration... bad bad bad) and you start the recirculation a few minutes before starting to chill to allow for the loop to be hot sanitized, then there is no reason you couldn't do that. However I think that drewseslu is right that a hop back is the more manageable option.

Hey thanks for the reply, thats what ive been doing lately is running the pub until boiling hot wort comes out the transfer pipe then recir into kettle for a while then turn the chill on, have been getting good flavour from this but want more now lol

[Junkyard]

Hi Peeps

What are people thoughts with recirculating the wort through the heat exchanger and back into the kettle at the end of the boil to lower the wort temp before adding hops to steep for a while, i like to let them steep at 80C, just throwing them in at the end of the boil and steeping doesn't give me the results i am after, were as steeping at 80C does. I am just concerned about recirculating back into the kettle, am i likely to develop off flavours using this process?

Thanks again for anyone who takes the time to give advice and reply, this board is a great help !!

Cheers

Scott

We kettle cool every batch all the way down to about 120-100 degrees in the kettle. There's absolutely no off flavors I've noticed. In fact I would go as far as to say that kettle cooling significantly increases the hop flavor you can achieve. If it's a hoppy beer I usually add 1/2 my knockout hops at flameout and 1/2 at 180 or so. While I'm still above 170 I periodically stir the whole kettle to get all the hops suspended in a whirlpool, obviously that isn't as feasible unless you have an open top kettle but if you have a good pump to do a strong whirlpool in a dome top kettle that should do just as well.

[ScottieP]

We kettle cool every batch all the way down to about 120-100 degrees in the kettle. There's absolutely no off flavors I've noticed. In fact I would go as far as to say that kettle cooling significantly increases the hop flavor you can achieve. If it's a hoppy beer I usually add 1/2 my knockout hops at flameout and 1/2 at 180 or so. While I'm still above 170 I periodically stir the whole kettle to get all the hops suspended in a whirlpool, obviously that isn't as feasible unless you have an open top kettle but if you have a good pump to do a strong whirlpool in a dome top kettle that should do just as well.

Cheers Junkyard

This is good to hear and gives me confidence to carry on with this part of the process, actually splitting the flameout additions in half sounds like a good idea too, another thing that frustrates me is how much of that hop flavour seems to be eaten up by fermentation, the fv's fill the brewery with lovely smells but id rather they stayed in the beer