cooling wort with sanitary ice

I just had a though...

What if, in order to cool my wort faster, i boiled water for 15 minutes, then froze it and dumped the ice block into the hot wort. Boiling would sanitize, and it would also pull out all of the oxygen (this is how clear ice cubes are made). I could freeze it in a sanitary tupperware container and have a nice sized block to put into my hot wort. This would only work for extract and partial mash brewers, AG brews don't want the extra water. I do have a wort chiller, it's just a pain to sanitize and clean. Thoughts?

Do it.


EDIT: I missed the last sentence. Forget what I said

If you think that's easier than using a chiller, go for it.

Sanitize your wort chiller by dropping it in your boil kettle for 10 minutes. Cleaning is a post boil brush off and hose rinse. Takes longer to boil water, cool it and freeze it IMHO.

if i throw the wort chiller into the pot will it not bring my boil to a sudden halt?

WVBeerBaron said:

if i throw the wort chiller into the pot will it not bring my boil to a sudden halt?

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Then it will start boiling again. It's no big deal

WVBeerBaron said:

if i throw the wort chiller into the pot will it not bring my boil to a sudden halt?

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You won't have any cold water running through it, so it might have a minor effect on the boil, but the copper will heat up really quickly.

Using the chiller is such a better idea.

Yeah, I find that adding the chiller to the boil actually doesn't drop the temp that much. I've always tossed it in, and called it good.

Give the chiller a bit of a wipedown with distilled vinegar when you pull it out, and set it aside until the next brew day.

khiddy said:

Give the chiller a bit of a wipedown with distilled vinegar when you pull it out, and set it aside until the next brew day.

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I actualy scrub mine with PBW. Same goes for the brewpot. I was told that stale hop oils can stick to the brew equipment and make the next batch taste oxidized.

thanks for the help! i'll try to put the chill slowly into the boil this weekend and see how that works.

Khiddy - that "up the kriek" recipe sounds interesting. i've been looking for a good, sweet, kriek-style beer without going to all the trouble of lambic fermenting. have you done this before?

I put my chiller on the rim on my keggle and have it sit there for a while (steam heats it) Then I just dunk it in when I am ready to chill.
as you can see Im quite the artist

You must be a artist!

+1 on the wort chiller and the vinegar wipe down afterwards.

I want to frame the artwork from lowlife......that's awesome!

refrigerators are one of the most bacteria laden places in the home... i wouldn't do it.

just picked up my wort chiller going to christen her this weekend!

I don't worry about losing the boil when I put my chiller in because I put it in right at flameout.

About 5 minutes before flameout I hose the dust off my chiller and give it a spray from my Star-San sprayer for good measure. Then at 0 minutes I drop it in the boil, which stops the boil. Then I shut the gas off. I leave it alone for 3-5 minutes while I do some other things.

If 5 minutes at 190-212F doesn't sanitize it, nothing will. There's no need to keep it at a rolling boil with the chiller in there, in my opinion.

-Joe

My boil is usually running upwards of 200 degrees, and adding the wort chiller doesn't stop the pot from boiling. Nevertheless, try with the sanitized ice and post what happens- sounds like a great idea!

You would need to freeze more than a gallon of water and dump it into a little less than 4 gallons of boiling water to bring it to equilibrium at a pitchable temperature of about 80 degrees farenheit. A 1 gallon block of ice takes a long, long time to melt, and the specific heat of wort is likely higher than that of water, necesitating an even larger block of ice and correspondingly longer wait.
My coil chiller cost me $20 in parts from Home Depot and took 5 minutes to put together. You have to understand that using ice is a terrible, terrible idea.

If you like it try it. I use frozen bottles. 4 for 3 gals of wort. Right before I put them in the hot wort I soak the bottle in Iodophor and let sit for 5 mintues. Rinse and dunk one at a time in. They usually last 5 minutes or so before I replace with a new one. Then refreeze. Im running temperature drop to 80 in about 15-20 minutes.

Back when I did extract, I would freeze a gal or so of boiled or bottled water in a ziplock bag that I hit with sanitizer first. Had no problems at all with infections and it wasn't that bad at cooling the wort actually. I would bag up the bags real good before opening them, as the crush ice did a better job of cooling the wort that just dumping in one big chunk of ice.

I think once I even threw the crushed ice into a bottling bucket, dumped some still-hot wort in there, and then drained it into my fermentor. This technique (while I wouldn't repeat it now) worked pretty darn well.

HOWEVER, I think if you want to chill your beer as painlessly as possible, and without WASTING 10-15 GALLONS OF WATER in a chiller, then you should look at the "No-Chill" techniques listed here on the board.

lowlife said:

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nice! i like the shading work in the flame. i imagine ice would be bad.

+1 on dropping it in..I put it in at the last 15 minutes. Once It cool. I rinse it off and wipe it down..

I haven't had any problem using ice to chill my wort all of my brews so far have been done this way-

5 gallon batch = 3 gallons of wort, 1 gallon chilled spring water, 16oz drinking bottled water, and a 7lb bag of ice from the market. (make sure you can see where they store it/ make sure the area is clean etc.. never had a problem getting it from my local WaWa) **the more ice they go through = fresher ice, go to a place that moves a lot of ice**--

bag of ice goes into clean fermenter- pour chilled gallon and bottle on ice, pour in boiling wort. this has dropped my wort *instantly* down to somewhere between 90-110'F .. my next batch im thinking of using 2 bags ice and 2 drinking bottles to get it so i can instantly pitch the yeast.

the idea for the ice came from this video of Alton Brown on GoodEats, he did an episode on brewing, and this video,honestly is what started me into the world of brewing however I found that my wort dropped to 100' instead of the 80' that he says later in the video.. its a good view. about 20 mins Enjoy.

-Z

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2852527078421700337#

Thanks for all of the info everyone! On Saturday I dropped the clean chiller into the boiling pot and, while it did stop the boil instantly, it came right back up to boiling after 5minutes or so (I'm still on the stove top, propane burner has been ordered!). I do hate wasting so much water with the chiller but it's the most effective way to cool the wort it seems like. Some of you built chillers for $20? That's crazy, mine cost almost $90 to build (50 feet of 3/4 inch copper tub plus a garden hose and pipe fittings, it barely fits into the pot). After brewing on Saturday, I went to check on it Sunday morning. The air lock had clogged, the lid had blown off my bucket and splattered crap everywhere, I hope the beer makes it!!!

I drop my IC into starsan for 5 minutes or so before throwing it into the brewpot for the last 10 minute boil. The starsan is mildly acidic, so it will react with the copper and clean it up (I hate throwing in a dull, corroded IC only to see it come out of the beer looking like fresh copper) before throwing it in to boil and sanitize.

I don't leave it in for extended periods of time, as I am not sure what extended copper/starsan exposure will do for either.

I am getting ready to purchase a wort chiller here in the next month, however I have had success doing the following steps. Buy distilled nusery water, typically about $1 a gallon, and putting it in the freezer before brewing, and getting it close as possible to freezing. Then using it to top up from 2 gallons to my 5 gallons. This along with a chest cooler of ice in my garage work sink does great. I am dropping to 70'F in about 12 minutes. I have also just sanitized the jugs, then added boiled filter water. Which is not that big of a deal if you do it a day or so ahead. I am pretty happy with my results, I just run up to my golf club and they fill up my ice chest for free, I live off the course so its real close. The main reason is I am just getting the wort chiller made for me for Christmas. My father-in-law loves making stuff (he has a metal latte for making rifles, etc...), so I am having him make me the Frankchiller I saw on here.

WVBeerBaron said:

Thanks for all of the info everyone! On Saturday I dropped the clean chiller into the boiling pot and, while it did stop the boil instantly, it came right back up to boiling after 5minutes or so (I'm still on the stove top, propane burner has been ordered!). I do hate wasting so much water with the chiller but it's the most effective way to cool the wort it seems like. Some of you built chillers for $20? That's crazy, mine cost almost $90 to build (50 feet of 3/4 inch copper tub plus a garden hose and pipe fittings, it barely fits into the pot). After brewing on Saturday, I went to check on it Sunday morning. The air lock had clogged, the lid had blown off my bucket and splattered crap everywhere, I hope the beer makes it!!!

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I also dislike the wasting the water when using my immersion chiller, we have some of the highest water costs in the country here in the burbs of Columbus.

I would suggest putting the discharge hose into you sink (with the drain stopper in-place) and use the hot water for post brew clean-up. Or you could also put it in a cooler and use the warm water and some starsan to remove labels from bottles. I would also ask as most who frequent this site "take pictures of your splattered crap"

Cheers...

Good suggestions, bad67z. I fill my MLT with the "first runnings" off of my immersion chiller, and rinse it out really well, then move on to my various brewing implements. Even in the Pacific Northwest, where the water literally falls from the sky for 6 months of the year, we hate wasting perfectly good water...

Brew water in a tupperware container to make a big ice cube is a great way to quick chill a partial boil batch if you don't have a chiller. I've done it several times and it works well.

but I'd rather use a chiller if I had one.

I'm doing extract brewing and I've taken to boiling 2.5 gallons in my brewpot and throwing the other 2.5 gallons in the freezer when I get started. By the time I need to cool my wort the water in the freezer is just starting to freeze up. I throw my brewpot in an ice bath in the sink for a few minutes, top it off with one gallon of nearly frozen water and wait 5 or 10 minutes, transfer it to my primary and then add the rest of the water. This method got me to 75* without any trouble, so I was able to pitch my yeast right then.

khiddy said:

Good suggestions, bad67z. I fill my MLT with the "first runnings" off of my immersion chiller, and rinse it out really well, then move on to my various brewing implements. Even in the Pacific Northwest, where the water literally falls from the sky for 6 months of the year, we hate wasting perfectly good water...

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If you *really* have a problem I suppose you could use a submersible pump and a cooler to recirculate the water.

Once the water stops being scalding hot and is merely hot/warm, I water the tree and some of the grass in my back yard with it. Only ever have a problem if I use water that's too hot for me to put my finger in the jet.

smithwicksman said:

My boil is usually running upwards of 200 degrees

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I hope so!

And waht is with all these people rinsing a a norinse sanitizer. Are you rinsing it with sanitizer or dirty ass city tap water?

Paranoia. My friend used to freak out at the idea of starsan foam still being in the carboy. He also had issues with not boiling honey to make mead.

He's outgrown these things since, but he wouldn't take my word for it, in spite of any amount of assurances and anecdotes from my experience.

TheFlatline said:

If you *really* have a problem I suppose you could use a submersible pump and a cooler to recirculate the water.

Once the water stops being scalding hot and is merely hot/warm, I water the tree and some of the grass in my back yard with it. Only ever have a problem if I use water that's too hot for me to put my finger in the jet.

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+1 to the recirculating.

I have built an secondary chiller and plan on put it in a cooler of ice water. Once i get to between 100-120 deg. with my primary I will flip the valve and switch to the recirculating secondary. I'm hoping to get my chill time down to 10-12 minutes in the summertime when the tap water is 70 degrees. I'm only short a pump at this time but the tap water has cooled to the low 60's. This build can wait until spring.

Cheers...

IffyG said:

I'm doing extract brewing and I've taken to boiling 2.5 gallons in my brewpot and throwing the other 2.5 gallons in the freezer when I get started. By the time I need to cool my wort the water in the freezer is just starting to freeze up. I throw my brewpot in an ice bath in the sink for a few minutes, top it off with one gallon of nearly frozen water and wait 5 or 10 minutes, transfer it to my primary and then add the rest of the water. This method got me to 75* without any trouble, so I was able to pitch my yeast right then.

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I'm a newbie, but this has basically been my method too. I boiled my water the night before, put it in a clean carboy and early the next morning (brew-morning) I put it out side in a sealed carboy so it would get real cold ~35* or so. I had the temp of my wort down to below 70* in 10 minutes. Worked great - fantastic beer. I'm doing partial grain brewing, if that makes a difference over all extract brewing.