For a long time, Brewers have been doing No-Chill where they use the wort within a week. Most brewers do not store that wort for months and then use it. How many brewers use NoChill? Thousands? Tens of thousands? But how many save their wort for months? Probably very very few.
Is it in the hundreds around the world? Less? Maybe we've read about a guy who knows someone who did this once. But how many batches are stored for months before being used? Maybe its 100? Or less? Thats not that large a sample size, especially if home brewing has been increasing in popularity and you can't extrapolate backwards using todays numbers.
Maybe the batch was infected with something else causing it to be dumped. Or it was bulging and discarded. We dont have the data.
Lets say the risk of Botulism in long term storage is 1 / 1,000,000
Very unlikely to happen, right? And it could even be lower.
If you brew with it, will you be willing to have the first beer and wait a week before sharing, just in case?
If it's easily preventable, by adding however many milliliters of Phosphoric Acid, then later on several grams of pickling lime, is that worth the effort (5 minutes) and minimal expense?
Adding the acid may also prevent spoilage if there are other more common bacteria, such as Acetobacter (which would have a hard time due to low O2 levels in any case). Mold and Bacteria in general don't like a low pH. Lacto will be ok, as will some other nasty bacteria, but in general, this acidification may help prevent the stored wort from going bad.
And if the risk is greater than 1 in a million, (say 1 in 100,000) then it becomes even more worthwhile.
I know the "just because it hasn't happened doesn't mean it can't happen" argument is sound, but brewers have been doing this for a long time, including long-term storage, and I can't find any references to actual cases of botulism poisoning. If such cases existed, I'm sure the victim (or their next of kin) would hop onto the forums to loudly proclaim that no-chilling made them sick/killed their loved one. Even poking around the Aussie Home Brewer board with the people who supposedly "invented" the technique I haven't found any actual reported cases.
It's your beer, and the method you're suggesting could certainly be a viable option, and it's always fun to experiment, but based on the practical data presented on this and other sites, it really seems like the risks are fairly minimal.
That said, I think the effects and risks of long-term storage of both straight no-chill and your method would make for a great study for the AHA Research and Education Fund, and could potentially put this debate to rest. Anyone wanna write a proposal?
