Full Boil chill take too long with ice water bath?

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Toasted678

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I have my inaugural brew set for this Thursday night! I can't wait (however SWMBO may be able to wait.) I have been planning this pretty carefully as to what equipment I need and what not but I am unclear about 1 thing.

I planned on doing a full-boil of a northern brewer extract kit. However, in going over the process 1,000 times in my head, the only way I have to cool the wort after the boil is with an ice water bath. Do you all think this is sufficient enough to cool as quickly as I need to given that it is for a 5 gal recipe? An Immersion Chiller is definitely on my Christmas list but I'm not sure if I should partial boil until I get one or just say screw it and try the full boil and see what happens. What do you all think? Thanks!!
 
Ice water bath will be fine... to speed up the process I recommend that you stir both as much as possible to help with convection cooling.

I would probably do it in two stages... if you can --- put your pot in a bath of tap water -- have the tap water slightly open to help with convection... for 15-20 mins or so. Then add ice to cool down to pitching temp.

Note: there are a lot of people on this site, that also let the wort cool down overnight in the bucket - and pitch yeast next day. (search No Chill Brewing)

John.
 
A lot of us started with the ice bath. It takes too long to be ideal, but you'll be fine if your kettle fits in your sink.

I moved to 10 gallon batches recently and now I'm anxious to upgrade past my immersion chiller. Homebrewing can be a gear treadmill, the key is to not let your lust for new gear get in the way of actually brewing.
 
A lot of us started with the ice bath. It takes too long to be ideal, but you'll be fine if your kettle fits in your sink.

I moved to 10 gallon batches recently and now I'm anxious to upgrade past my immersion chiller. Homebrewing can be a gear treadmill, the key is to not let your lust for new gear get in the way of actually brewing.

+1 to this. Or you will end up like me. SWMBO thinks she isnt getting anything for Christmas.
 
Start making ice now. I do that, and it works pretty well. I have some small, square freezer containers that I partially fill with water. I leave them in the freezer for about 12 hours, take out the ice blocks, put them in the freezer loose, refill the containers, make more ice blocks, etc. I end up with quite a few ice blocks, and it works really well. Just make sure the blocks are small enough to fit in the water between your kettle and sink or whatever tub you use for chilling. If nothing else, buy a couple bags of ice cubes from the local grocery store. It should only take about half an hour or so.
 
Awesome. Thank you to all that replied. I am a go for a full boil!

+1 to this. Or you will end up like me. SWMBO thinks she isnt getting anything for Christmas.

Haha, yea I see this definitely happening. It seems that there is always something on sale or a 'good deal' that you just cant pass up. With my construction background I know that having the right tool will make your job 1000 times easier. Perhaps I may end up with a full electric brew rig before I even brew my first batch... :cross:
 
Start making ice now.

I should have done this. Instead, I ran to the store while my kettle sat in the sink. Damn. I used a total of about 30lbs of ice that night. But, my tap water is very warm compared to the rest of the country except Arizona and Death Valley. Next up, homemade ice blocks and a shiny new immersion chiller. Hey, if I think I can make beer, I can probably make ice too.
 
my tap water is very warm compared to the rest of the country except Arizona and Death Valley.

HAHA, so true...theres no such thing as cold water during the summer!

No Prob with Ice Bath, and if you want to be even quicker.....after its sat in the ice bath till the temp is down below 130 ish, (if your worried about leaching chems from plastic) float frozen 2 liter bottles (sanitized) in the wort...worked for me on more than one occasion

happy brewing
 
anything wrong with pitching ice right into wort to chill it? normal bacteria won"t procreate on ice. i haven"t had any beers go bad from this, but is there any other problem with this?
 
You can also add clean ice (not grocery store ice) directly in the wort. It's somewhat controversial on this board to do so but I have done it for pretty much all my batches so far along with all my friends and none of us have gotten an infection from it yet. The way I see it, you have more infection risks stirring forcefully wort exposed to the open air for 30 minutes while it either sits in your kitchen or your bathroom, two of the most bacteria and yeast laden places in homes, than from the tiny amount you have in tap water (or even better, unopened spring water). Plus, if you add it straight after the boil, you get the added benefit of the contact with the hot wort. Freezing temperatures won't kill alaready present bacteria.

I would only do this with water that is clean though. If your tap water sucks for brewing, don't do this. Also, you have to account for dilution. The more I think about it, the less I like the idea of the ice water bath or ice additions. No-chill or conventionnal fast chilling methods (immersion chiller, counter-flow chiller, plate chiller, etc.) all seem more convenient from both a time and consistency perspective. Not to talk about being more sanitary. I see a lot of people saying they can chill their wort in half an hour to pitching temps using only an ice water bath. Well, my tap water is 50F or below year-round and I use around 15 2 liters frozen water bottles in a big pail to chill my wort and my best time yet from boiling to 65F is about an hour and fifteen minutes, even when I stir pretty much the whole time and add some ice or water to the wort. I can get it below 120F very fast, but the drop from 120F to 65F takes forever.
 
On my first batch, I did a 2.5 gallon boil for the wort and boiled the rest of the water separately to sanitize it. The instructions on the kit said a 2.5 gallon boil...didn't know any better on the first kit. I couldn't get the stuff cooled with the ice in my freezer, but I didn't make any extra ahead of time either. It took hours to cool down to around 70-75* F.

Second and third batches I boiled the extra water to add to the wort the day before and it was down in the 40s from sitting outside overnight. That got the wort down to about 100-110 and then had to chill from there.

I just bought an immersion chiller from a forum member here and did a 4 gallon boil for my holiday beer and it chilled that and the spiced "tea" added to the wort down to 75 in under 30 minutes.

I found that if you live in the northern part of the country where it's in the 30s-40s at night, it's probably faster to just put the kettle/pot outside since my sink isn't deep enough to get all the liquid in the pot exposed to the ice bath.

After using the chiller, I noticed how much of the trub is settled from how fast the wort is cooled compared to taking hours just sitting there.
 
I do a ice water bath and can cool in 15 minutes. I get 20lbs of ice and put a little over half in my sink about 10 minutes before it comes off the stove. Fill the sink a little over half to account for volume displacement from the pot. Water will get pretty damn cold in those 10 minutes.

With a sanitized stirrer of some sort I try to keep the wort rotating in the pot and continue adding my ice as the old ice melts, lid on of course.

Due to current pot limitations I can only do a 3 gallon boil right now, so that helps mine cool down. Since I have to do a top off anyways, next time I'm going to boil some water then freeze it in a plastic bowl with a lid the day before. Then I'll top off with my giant ice cubes and see how that goes.
 
anything wrong with pitching ice right into wort to chill it? normal bacteria won"t procreate on ice. i haven"t had any beers go bad from this, but is there any other problem with this?

You can also add clean ice (not grocery store ice) directly in the wort. It's somewhat controversial on this board to do so but I have done it for pretty much all my batches so far along with all my friends and none of us have gotten an infection from it yet. The way I see it, you have more infection risks stirring forcefully wort exposed to the open air for 30 minutes while it either sits in your kitchen or your bathroom, two of the most bacteria and yeast laden places in homes, than from the tiny amount you have in tap water (or even better, unopened spring water). Plus, if you add it straight after the boil, you get the added benefit of the contact with the hot wort. Freezing temperatures won't kill alaready present bacteria.

I would only do this with water that is clean though. If your tap water sucks for brewing, don't do this. Also, you have to account for dilution. The more I think about it, the less I like the idea of the ice water bath or ice additions. No-chill or conventionnal fast chilling methods (immersion chiller, counter-flow chiller, plate chiller, etc.) all seem more convenient from both a time and consistency perspective. Not to talk about being more sanitary. I see a lot of people saying they can chill their wort in half an hour to pitching temps using only an ice water bath. Well, my tap water is 50F or below year-round and I use around 15 2 liters frozen water bottles in a big pail to chill my wort and my best time yet from boiling to 65F is about an hour and fifteen minutes, even when I stir pretty much the whole time and add some ice or water to the wort. I can get it below 120F very fast, but the drop from 120F to 65F takes forever.

How do you get the melted ice back out of your wort? OP said he is doing a FULL BOIL ;)
 
so is just putting the kettle outside good enough in the winter if the temps are below 32 farenheit? it won't be long until it gets that low here
 
Rock salt helps tremendously. Also starting with a water/ice combo full contact with the brew pot. Adding rock salt lowers the freezing temp. And is what's used when making homemade ice-cream to get temps down low enough
 
A few nerdy science types did the calculations a while back that says it takes 40ish pounds of ice to chill a 5 gallon batch from boiling to 70F. You might get away with 30 pounds if you let just running tap water take it down to like 150F first.
 
Rock salt helps tremendously. Also starting with a water/ice combo full contact with the brew pot. Adding rock salt lowers the freezing temp. And is what's used when making homemade ice-cream to get temps down low enough

yep, and rotate the kettle in the ice. I didn't even put water in with the ice, and had to use table salt. Took about 10 pounds of ice and about 5 minutes to get down to 70 but it was only a 2 gallon boil....
 
A few nerdy science types did the calculations a while back that says it takes 40ish pounds of ice to chill a 5 gallon batch from boiling to 70F. You might get away with 30 pounds if you let just running tap water take it down to like 150F first.

These are the numbers I came up with on my first ice bath. Plus, probably an hour and a half, pretty easy. Maybe two. Don't remember for sure, had to run to store in that time for more ice so pot was sitting still and no stirring.
 
Propping up the kettle in the ice bath so water can circulate under it might speed things up a bit. Think I heard this on a BN podcast.
 
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