Will this work??

I have an idea. I had a "chill haze" problem with my Pale Ale. I was told that this was caused by not dropping the wort temperature quick enough. This is my plan...

I have a medium size box that I have lined with a trash can liner. I'll placed my sanatized fermenter in the box and added 1 gallon of carbon filtered water (this keeps the fermenter from floating). Next I surround the fermenter with ice and add water. Now, when the wort has finished boiling and I'm ready to chill, I just dump the wort into the fermenter. Top off the fermenter to 5 gallon (at 70 degrees). Add the yeast and seal with an air lock.

Comments please. I'm using Mutons Light Malt Extract and I really don't want the finished product to be cloudy.

Thanks,
Skipdogchip

Just brew a 3 gallon batch of strong beer and add it to two gallons of cold (sanitized) water. No need for the box or anything.

you can build a wort chiller for around $35, it will cool to pitching temp in 15-20 min. If you plan on brewing into the future the procurement of one is inevitable, so why not build one now.
It took me about 20 to build mine.
-ander

Clearly you're doing partial boils, which makes cooling your wort a lot easier. How large of a boil are you doing? Usually you can avoid all the hassle by pre-chilling all your top-off water in the fridge, and dunking your brew pot in a sink of ice water for a bit. You'll need to figure out how much to cool the wort in the brew pot before transferring based on the size of your boil.

2 gallon boil...add 1oz. 6.9AAU Cascade and 6.6# LME. Boil 55 minutes...add 1oz. 6.0AAU Cascade. Boil additional 5 minutes.

My plan is to achieve a "cold break" as quickly as possible to avoid "chill haze". Especially since I'm using a Light Malt Extract. My last batch, Pale Ale, was a little cloudy, even after 3 month conditioning.

A traditional "wort chiller" is not in my budget at this time. That's why I'm looking at other possibilities.

Thanks again for any help with this.
Skipdogchip

I also do two gallon boils. I just fill my kitchen sink half full of cold water, then when the boil is done, I put the whole pot in, followed (carefully, to avoid splashing) by a whole bunch of ice (not the precision measurements) and wait until all the ice melts. Then I just pour it all (except for the sludge) into my brew tank, pitch and off we go.

A wort chiller looks nice and my LHBS has a fine looking one for about $40 but this works just fine for me and my five gallon batches.

If its a glass carboy for primary I wouldnt pour hot wort into a cold glass vessel it will shock the glass and shatter.

I used to chill 3 gallons of water to near freezing, then pour into my fermentor.
I would then pour my boiling hot wort directly into the fermentor, and it would chill it quickly down to around 70-80f to get my cold break.

However, I got a couple off tasting beers, and I came to the conclusion that this technique oxidized the wort while still hot, even if only for a fraction of a second.

Instead I just made an IC, and stuck with that. Though I wondered if the technique might have worked if I siphoned the hot wort into the bottom fermentor to get the chill, without oxidizing it?

nick