help with technique?

tnbrewer371 · 07-31-2010, 11:39 PM

so here is what I have been doing lately with all of my brews, i brew extract only at this point

i put 3 gallons in my brewpot and do a boil using that water for an hour, meanwhile i cool 3 gallons of store bought spring water in my freezer during the boil. after the boil is over i immediately add 2 of the gallons of freezer spring water to the brewpot and put it in ice batchs for 30 mins, i than pour the last gallon of freezer cooled water into my primary bucket and pour whats in my brewpot into my primary bucket and end up with a bit over 5 gallons of wort ~5.3 gallons usually. is there anything wrong with cooling my wort down quickly this way?? any advice or comments would be greatly appreciated, i have had nothing but great succes with this technique so far and allows me not to have to mess around with buying/building and using a wort chiller. thanks guys, have a homebrew on me.

**Yooper** · 07-31-2010, 11:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tnbrewer371

so here is what I have been doing lately with all of my brews, i brew extract only at this point

i put 3 gallons in my brewpot and do a boil using that water for an hour, meanwhile i cool 3 gallons of store bought spring water in my freezer during the boil. after the boil is over i immediately add 2 of the gallons of freezer spring water to the brewpot and put it in ice batchs for 30 mins, i than pour the last gallon of freezer cooled water into my primary bucket and pour whats in my brewpot into my primary bucket and end up with a bit over 5 gallons of wort ~5.3 gallons usually. is there anything wrong with cooling my wort down quickly this way?? any advice or comments would be greatly appreciated, i have had nothing but great succes with this technique so far and allows me not to have to mess around with buying/building and using a wort chiller. thanks guys, have a homebrew on me.

No, that would work. One thing that would be even faster, though is this- instead of adding two gallons of the freezer spring water to the wort right away, cool the wort in the ice bath first. When it gets to 90 or so, THEN add the cold water. That way, you'll have your wort chilled in about 15 minutes.

It takes longer to chill 4 gallons in an ice batch than it does to chill two gallons. So, chill the wort first, THEN add the cold water. You'll be at 65 degrees in no time!

tnbrewer371 · 07-31-2010, 11:54 PM

yah that makes complete sense. is there anything wrong with using these techniques? is it not an accepted practice in homebrewing? any downside to cooling wort down to pitching temperatures this way? i just hate waiting forever to pitch my yeast!

**JoshuaWhite5522** · 07-31-2010, 11:58 PM

Nothing wrong with you technique. Remember, water + sugar + hops + yeast = beer

I would say though that given you are doing partial boils you may find that the beers aren't as hoppy as you make like given that you are boiling a higher gravity wort. Depending on the beer style it may or may not be a bing deal.

**JoshuaWhite5522** · 08-01-2010, 12:02 AM

To add to the above, you may want to only add only a portion of your extract for the boil then follow your recipie's hopping schedule and add the rest of the extract towards the end of the boil. You will see better utilization of the hops this way.

Also be carful to not splash to much when adding the cold water to prevent hot side areation.

**PJM** · 08-02-2010, 05:18 PM

I was always concerned about hot side aeration when doing it this way. Must not be much of an issue as I know that lots of people do exactly what you do with out problems.

tnbrewer371 · 08-09-2010, 05:18 AM

yah i havent noticed any off flavors or negative results using this technique. however brewed an ipa last wednesday and cooled it before adding water to cool it completely and was ready to pitch in like 15 min. maybe i should just quit being cheap and invest in a chiller??

**JoshuaWhite5522** · 08-09-2010, 11:48 AM

Chillers are the way to go in my opinion, when you move up to full size boild they will save you some much time on you brew day