HopeBrew
Active Member
Hey there guys and gals- I'll start this thread with an apology for re-hashing what seems to be an age old question regarding wort chilling. I do 5-6 gallon all grain batches outdoors on a dual burner rig, but the temps have been just a bit too low to get me out there to cook up my next batch. What I have been considering is mashing inside and splitting my batch in half and boiling on the stove. Since I can't hook up my immersion chiller to my kitchen sink, I have been trying to come up with something other than the ice bath method. It takes too freakin long, especially considering I will have two pots boiling simultaneously. Has anyone considered or tried using sanitized freezer packs (the blue bricks for your cooler) directly in your wort? I've read a thread in which someone tried using them in a sanitized ziploc bag, but the bag expanded so much after dropping it in the wort that it tore and the packs ultimately came in contact with the wort. Any thoughts? Sanitize a ziploc, put sanitized freezer packs in ziploc, freeze, remove frozen sanitized packs from ziploc and drop in wort? Any feedback is greatly appreciated. My fermenter is empty and my kegs are nearly so...