After a long 2 hour brew day, I’m a big fan of being done brewing. I like to brew frequently, I have a family, and I have other stuff to do. Which means that, after the boil, I’m a big fan of not chilling the beer down to room temperature. Conventional wisdom says you have to chill the unfermented beer really fast, then add yeast. I used to do that. For almost all my 60+ batches, I would chill the unfermented beer in my bathtub, which involves adding ice and cold water (the ice was from my fridge). This was effective but, in my opinion, not very sanitary or fun. Alternatively, most people buy a special ‘immersion wort chiller,’ which is a copper coil that runs cold water through the beer constantly, cooling it down fairly fast. You can hook it up to an outside spigot, garden hose, or kitchen faucet. Of course there are more expensive, complex systems that I won’t get into. More time, more cleaning.

However, is this really necessary to make good beer? There is an entire world of homebrewers who don’t chill at all – they live in Australia and put beer into weird plastic cubes. I like the lazy approach, minus the weird cube. So, after boiling with hops, I simply put the hot unfermented beer into my freezing fermentation chamber, put lid on pot, set the temp to 70 degrees, and wait. In the winter, I’ve noticed it takes about 24 hours or so (last batch was 18 hours). Then I put the yeast in, sit back and relax for 5 days while it makes alcohol. So far, so good.

Infection is the main reason that people chill fast, no doubt about it.  The most critical period of the beer is after the boil but before the fermentation. It’s a race to produce alcohol. Alcohol helps prevent infection. As for me, I’m not too worried about infection. I do clean the fermentation chamber with Clorox wipes. It’s closed and sealed. I feel like infection is possible but highly unlikely, although I don’t have numbers to back it up. This is something I will experiment with until I get an infection or notice a quality difference.

Another issue is bitterness from hops. If you don’t chill, the hops will continue to impart bitterness on your beer for several hours. Something to think about.

As I was waiting for the mash water to get up to 155 degrees, I sat there looking at the 15 pounds of grains I had just bought, sitting in a large plastic bag. Then I looked at my empty Brew in a Bag bag. I thought: wouldn’t it be nice and convenient to just fill it beforehand and dump it? The internet says it won’t work. Took a sip of whiskey. Fuck it. I’m doing it.

So I did. And, to my surprise, it worked. I was amazed that, for some reason, there was no dough balls. I simply dunked, stirred, and put the top on. In fact, it worked better than what I was used to.

Normally, I slowly and awkwardly pour the grains in with one arm while stirring with the other. At my homebrew store, they come in a large plastic bag, so it’s a balancing act. Not only have I spilled grains on several occasions, but it takes a while. Plus, I sometimes got dough balls!

I can only guess that the large amount of water in my pot allows this to happen smoothly. For this batch, I was adding about 15 pounds of grain to 8 gallons of water. In other words, with all grain no sparge Brew in a Bag, you have a large water to grain ratio, a thin mash.

Needless to say, I will be using this technique from now on. BIAB wins again!

update: at the 17 or 18 pound mark, I have gotten dough balls. For example, I made a big IPA the other day and got them. Not a big deal.

It’s fairly simple, stress free, and fast, although I’m always looking for the easier, faster, and simpler way. Let’s begin. First, if I am using reused yeast, I get it out of the fridge right away to warm up. You don’t want to pitch cold yeast into unfermented beer.

Trappist Yeast

This will wake the yeast, preparing it for action. You’ll notice the jar is filled with half yeast, half beer (how I collect it). For this batch. a Belgian Tripel, I will use about half of what you see.

I grab my pot, fill it with 6 gallons of water, heat to 150F, and add the barley.

mashing (barley soaked in hot water)

Soaking barley in hot water is called mashing. I usually mash at 155F but the lower temperature will make this beer a little more fermentable and dry, which is perfect for this beer. Anyway, put the cover on and wait an hour (actually, I stir occasionally just to make sure all the barley is getting wet…I probably don’t have to do that). Continue reading →

If you carbonate using bottles, and especially if you bottle directly from the fermenter (like me), then you will be very excited to hear about this. Confusingly, the box calls them “Dots” but they are sugar cubes – pure cane sugar, to be exact – and they fit perfectly into bottles. And they are cheap, and available at the grocery store (no more special trips to the homebrew store). I used two cubes per 22 oz bottle and they came out nicely carbed. They took about two weeks, although one batch only took one week. I have carbed three batches with them: a Red IPA, Brown, and Jalapeno Ale. All were good.

Price wise, this is a game changer, a major improvement from what I was using. Carb Drops were sort of the Achilles heel of One Pot Brewing; although convenient, too expensive considering the fact they are just….sugar. They were costing me about 4 dollars per batch (50 beers). Domino Sugar Cubes, on the other hand, cost about 50 cents per batch! In other words, one box will make around 100 22oz bottles, about 3.8 batches of beer.

I will continue to use these on all future batches.