is another reason wort chillers work because they keep the lid off

I was thinking of ways to get my ice-bath time down, and I realized that when you use a wort chiller, the lid isn't flush on the kettle... I wonder how much this has an affect on the chill speed?

maybe I could do something similar when I'm ice-bathing, just crack open the kettle lid with something?

Just take the lid off.

Evaporation is the most efficient method of cooling since you are removing the most energetic (hottest) water molecules. Imagine a kindergarten class full of screaming kids. If you start to take the kids out one at a time starting with the loudest it gets quiet fairly quickly. If you try to quiet all of them at once it takes a lot longer.

I tried to leave the lid off completely when ice bathing, but there is always the chance something could fall in. ( have a chiller now)

I would take the lid off when the kettle was just sitting there and put it back on whenever I was doing anything around the kettle, like adding/ replacing water or ice.

I should point out that I did it for partial boils in the kitchen sink, or full boils outside in winter. I think both reduce the risks by some amount.


There is some risk but I judged it small in my circumstances. If you just crack the lid the effectiveness and risk will both be diminished.

I leave the lid off for cooling, at least for the first 10 minutes or so. With the steam and heat rising from the surface, it's unlikely that anything bad will be able to fall in, and with the lid off you can stir it easier and help it cool that much quicker.

I think the greatest advantage you have to keeping the lid off (as mentioned) is ease of stirring the wort, which in my mind, is the best thing you can do to speed the cooling process. I haven't moved up to a wort chiller yet, I just use an ice bath. That being said, when the kettle is sitting in an ice bath, I notice that the temperature of the wort stays very constant, until I stir it, and stir the ice bath. If I do this every 10-15 minutes, I'll notice a drop of 5-10 degrees in the first minute following stirring.

I think if you leave the lid off of the kettle (or especially just crack it) without stirring the wort, you won't notice much of a difference in cooling times. That's because the cooled wort just hangs out on top of the rest of the wort, and insulates the rest of the wort from the cooling effects of the evaporation.

IMO, wort chiller or not, stir the wort regularly with a sanitized spoon every 10 minutes, and you'll cut down on your cooling time significantly.

DRoyLenz said:

IMO, wort chiller or not, stir the wort regularly with a sanitized spoon every 10 minutes, and you'll cut down on your cooling time significantly.

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Hell, I do partial boils and stir the wort (and ice bath) constantly in my sink. I can cool 3 gallons from boiling to 85F in 10-15 minutes, easy. Top it up with 2 gallons of 40F water, and you're good to pitch.

I also stumbled across this in my attempt to not by a wort chiller. Last night I was able to get my 3 gallons of wort from 212*F (approximate) to 120*F with an ice bath and stirring in 10 minutes, then added 2 gallons of 40*F water from the fridge and ended at 65*F (overshot a bit).

All in under 15 minutes. I was told a wort chiller does it in 30 minutes, does that sound right? If so, what's the benefit?

Quikfeet509 said:

All in under 15 minutes. I was told a wort chiller does it in 30 minutes, does that sound right? If so, what's the benefit?

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Probably isn't much of one if you're topping up, but for those who do a full boil it will make a huge difference in cooling ability. Those 2-3 gallons of chilled water make a huge difference.

Quikfeet509 said:

I also stumbled across this in my attempt to not by a wort chiller. Last night I was able to get my 3 gallons of wort from 212*F (approximate) to 120*F with an ice bath and stirring in 10 minutes, then added 2 gallons of 40*F water from the fridge and ended at 65*F (overshot a bit).

All in under 15 minutes. I was told a wort chiller does it in 30 minutes, does that sound right? If so, what's the benefit?

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Not having to move 5gallons of boiling syrup across the kitchen/garage for one. This is especially the case once you start doing full boils.

RogerMcAllen said:

Just take the lid off.

Evaporation is the most efficient method of cooling since you are removing the most energetic (hottest) water molecules. Imagine a kindergarten class full of screaming kids. If you start to take the kids out one at a time starting with the loudest it gets quiet fairly quickly. If you try to quiet all of them at once it takes a lot longer.

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I don't know why, but just picturing this made me laugh really hard. Little loud bastard kids. Take em' all out. One by one. For some reason it was a midget with a handlebar mustache and a potato sack. That's just me though.

I just built a wort chiller this weekend and I think it was well worth it personally. Leaving the cover off and stirring the wort often but not constantly, I was down to pitching temp in about 15 minutes with a partial boil. This was a bit quicker than I am used to with an ice bath, and it threw off my timing for the rest of the tail end of my process =) I also liked not having to go to the gas station and buy ice, but that's just me.

Man... I dunno what you are all doing to get to pitching temp but I'm not doing it. I tried the method of leaving the lid off and stirring, but it still took forever. It was about 3 gallons at that point...

Can you think of anything else about an ice bath that maybe you are doing differently than just putting the pot in the sink and changing the water every so often?

Quikfeet509 said:

I also stumbled across this in my attempt to not by a wort chiller. Last night I was able to get my 3 gallons of wort from 212*F (approximate) to 120*F with an ice bath and stirring in 10 minutes, then added 2 gallons of 40*F water from the fridge and ended at 65*F (overshot a bit).

All in under 15 minutes. I was told a wort chiller does it in 30 minutes, does that sound right? If so, what's the benefit?

Click to expand...

I use a combo chiller/ice bath on 5.5 gallons. I use just the chiller until the wort gets under 100, then pop it in the ice bath. I'm at pitching temp in under 20 minutes.

OrangeJet said:

I use a combo chiller/ice bath on 5.5 gallons. I use just the chiller until the wort gets under 100, then pop it in the ice bath. I'm at pitching temp in under 20 minutes.

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+1. With ground water temps as high as they are right now, a chiller alone won't get me down to pitching temps. I start the ice bath and the chiller both from the beginning and when the water coming out of the chiller isn't warm any more I'm just wasting water at that point. The ice bath gets it down the rest of the way in just a few more minutes.

I use a heavy ice bath... Recycled a big rubbermaid tub that my kids used to throw toys into...
I only add enough water to float the 36 qt pot, Then I spin the pot in the ice bath...

15 min drops me to 70F for a full 5 gal boil... A wort chiller would be cheaper in the long run... But this works well, for now

The ice tub looks like a great idea. The wort chiller doesn't really lend itself to my kitchen and I don't like the idea of wasting all that water.

Our ground water temps are pretty low year round and since I have a swimming pool to dump the output from the chiller into I don't consider it wasting water.

I hear you about the water waste. We're on private well water so it's not like I am throwing away money (other than to power the well pump). I'm going to rig up a drain to my rain bucket under my deck so I won't really be wasting it, just saving it for my yard.

I've found the best method is just to pick up the wort chiller itself and use that to stir with. You can feel the return side instantly get hotter when you do this and I get down to pitching temps within 10 minutes.

How do you guys get oxygen into the wort? Seems like everyone is shying away from just stirring it (with a spoon) in the ice bath. That has worked fine here.

Recently, picked up a 02 canister from Lowes and fitted it to aerate my yeast starter, thinking about using it on the wort too.

The yeast should clean it all up by the end of fermentation.

All the literature I've read says it will make for a better fermentation.

(Note, they also recommend a sanitary filter inline.)

HopnHooch said:

How do you guys get oxygen into the wort? Seems like everyone is shying away from just stirring it (with a spoon) in the ice bath. That has worked fine here.

Recently, picked up a 02 canister from Lowes and fitted it to aerate my yeast starter, thinking about using it on the wort too.

The yeast should clean it all up by the end of fermentation.

All the literature I've read says it will make for a better fermentation.

(Note, they also recommend a sanitary filter inline.)

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I bought some oxygen from Lowe's with the intention of buying an aeration kit from my LHBS. I haven't gotten around to that yet and have been using this method :
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moE9rfFgb-Q"]wort aeration[/ame]

Electric drill + 28" plastic mash paddle

I don't know why more people don't do this hibsmax...My wing stirrer goes right into my carboy, and I stir it for about 2 minutes. With a stirred starter, and this method of aeration, I generally pitch at midnight, and have full on fermentation happening by 8 am. I'm sure it starts prior to 8 am, but that's when I wake up after a night of brewing and cleanup.

It's not that it doesn't work to get O2 levels up to "good enough" but pure O2 through a stone is more sanitary and puts the DO well above what air can. Then again, aeration is way off topic for this thread.

derekge said:

The ice tub looks like a great idea. The wort chiller doesn't really lend itself to my kitchen and I don't like the idea of wasting all that water.

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How is chilling with water a waste? You're using it to do work and then what you do with it afterwards could make a difference as well. Ice isn't free in a literal expense sense nor an environmental impact. I pay 1 penny for 2 gallons of water. I'm pretty sure a pound of ice costs more than that.

All I can say is that I don't have a horse in this race, and I'm a total gadget geek, and not even I can justify the time, cleaning, money and hassel of an o2 infustion system for my 5 gallon batches. Sanitation is binary. Either your beer gets infected or it doesn't. If your process keeps your beer infection free, moving to o2 infusion for sanitation purposes is a silly reason to do so.

"Good enough" is exactly that. Good enough. YMMV. This is just me talking about my brewing experience, nothing more.

I stir with a sanitized spoon, work the IC up and down through the wort and don't use an ice bath unless I'm brewing daytime and it's warm outside. Mostly I brew at night and the air temp is below pitching temp anyway. I get full boil 5 gallon batches to pitch temp in 15 minutes, then a couple minutes with my wingstirrer, and I can get to cleaning. My ferms go great, and my beer stays infection free. The pure science my indicate higher levels of 02 in the wort with infusion, but there's been some anectodal evidence from some very reputable brewers that it's not neccesary, and even some brewers feel it can potentially affect your flavor in a negative way. I don't know, because I haven't tried it, I haven't tried it because I don't NEED it to make good beer.

All IMHO.

I personally don't like the water waste for wort chillers. I'm thinking of getting one, but I want to rig up some sort of water pump to it, put the pump in some ice water in a cooler or sink, then have the return come back to it. That way you are recycling the water you're using.

Not sure how long it would take to cool the wort if you're using 33-40F water to cool it with.

Also, other than a boat bilge pump, I'm unsure what type of pump I should get.

The water that comes out of the chiller is pretty warm. I'm not sure that putting the pump in an ice bath, essentially a second chiller, would cool the water enough. Plus, it would heat up the ice and still produce wastewater. I don't know how much water you use to chill the wort, though you could figure it out if you knew the flow rate of your faucet. You could keep the flow rate low. That would make the chiller water absorb more heat before leaving the chiller, meaning you might use less water to chill the wort.

However, the rate that the wort chills is proportional to the temperature difference between the water and the wort. This gets into the sort of thermodynamics with differential equations situation that I'm very much out of practice with. But at some point, the flow rate is going to relate to the temperature of the water, which is a function of the length of the chiller and the temperature of the wort. Putting that all together suggests that there could be a flow rate low enough to increase the amount of water you use to chill the wort.

If you have 1.6 gallons of chiller water, you could turn off the valve to your toilet and dump it in there.

I always say that you need to look carefully at what the ice costs. It's probably easy to have a sense of false economy by possibly thinking your homemade ice is free. It's been argued that it's free because the freezer is already cold, as if it doesn't take extra energy to remove the heat from water added to the freezer. Everything has a cost.

Pumping icewater as your coolant does have an advantage of faster cooling especially when your wort approaches tap water temps. I wouldn't recommend dumping the waste back into the bath at least at first because its going to be a huge heat load which will waste ice.

Bobby_M said:

I always say that you need to look carefully at what the ice costs. It's probably easy to have a sense of false economy by possibly thinking your homemade ice is free. It's been argued that it's free because the freezer is already cold, as if it doesn't take extra energy to remove the heat from water added to the freezer. Everything has a cost.

Pumping icewater as your coolant does have an advantage of faster cooling especially when your wort approaches tap water temps. I wouldn't recommend dumping the waste back into the bath at least at first because its going to be a huge heat load which will waste ice.

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Cost of Ice is not an issue right now, for me anyways. I'm sure that will change after I move in a few months, but currently I have access to an ice machine and don't have to pay for it.

Bobby_M said:

How is chilling with water a waste? You're using it to do work and then what you do with it afterwards could make a difference as well. Ice isn't free in a literal expense sense nor an environmental impact. I pay 1 penny for 2 gallons of water. I'm pretty sure a pound of ice costs more than that.

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I am not making a general, sweeping statement that all brewers who use wort chillers waste water. Rather, me using a wort chiller right now isn't practical and I would waste a ton of water. There is nowhere for the water to go - at my condo - after it's run through the wort chiller, that's my point. I know the possible uses of the reclaimed water but none work where I live. Ice isn't expensive for me because I have an icemaker and I start bagging it / storing it a few days before I brew.

This is my wort chiller water saving process :



My rain barrel is split right now so I am not really saving water but when I replace the barrel things will be better.

I like the idea of reducing the water flow to use less water and also cool more efficiently.

I had another idea that I have not tried yet, and probably won't because I don't really need to but it's something like this....

Have a cooler full of ice water. In that cooler you should put a "wort chiller". In your brew pot you should have your actual wort chiller. Use a pump to pump the ice water through your wort and then back to the cooler, through the other wort chiller and back into the ice water. I know that the warmer water coming from the wort will speed up the ice melting process but I don't know at what rate. If you can chill your wort before your ice melts then it could be a good way of chilling your wort without wasting too much water. You do need a second wort chiller / heat exchanger, a pump and some bags of ice so I am not saying this will be more cost effective but for those people concerned about just flushing all that water away, it might be worth a shot.

HibsMax said:

This is my wort chiller water saving process :

I like the idea of reducing the water flow to use less water and also cool more efficiently.

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Newton's Law of cooling shows an exponential relationship. The water heats at the same rate, assuming no losses to the copper. But as the water heats, it will absorb less energy. You will then need more water to cool the wort. So while the chilling time may relate to the flow rate in such a general way that a high flow chills faster and a low flow rate chills slower, the total volume of used water may not have such a relationship.

Even when you use a high flow rate, as the wort temperature gets close to the coolant temparature, it will take increasingly longer to chill. As the temperature difference approaches zero, so does the time rate of energy transfer. The amount of water you need to chill the wort will climb dramatically. With a lower flow rate, there will be more warm water performing the transfer. You may end up using more water altogether.

HibsMax said:

This is my wort chiller water saving process :

I had another idea that I have not tried yet, and probably won't because I don't really need to but it's something like this....

Have a cooler full of ice water. In that cooler you should put a "wort chiller". In your brew pot you should have your actual wort chiller. Use a pump to pump the ice water through your wort and then back to the cooler, through the other wort chiller and back into the ice water. I know that the warmer water coming from the wort will speed up the ice melting process but I don't know at what rate. If you can chill your wort before your ice melts then it could be a good way of chilling your wort without wasting too much water. You do need a second wort chiller / heat exchanger, a pump and some bags of ice so I am not saying this will be more cost effective but for those people concerned about just flushing all that water away, it might be worth a shot.

Click to expand...

I have a friend who does this with a pond pump. The first few mintues the chiller water comes from the garden hose and is pumped to the lawn. After the temps drop to around 100, the water is switched to the ice water with a pond pump and he dropps from boiling to under 70 in 10-15 minutes. Not really a cheap method, but it works incredibly well.

ludomonster said:

Newton's Law of cooling shows an exponential relationship. The water heats at the same rate, assuming no losses to the copper. But as the water heats, it will absorb less energy. You will then need more water to cool the wort. So while the chilling time may relate to the flow rate in such a general way that a high flow chills faster and a low flow rate chills slower, the total volume of used water may not have such a relationship.

Even when you use a high flow rate, as the wort temperature gets close to the coolant temparature, it will take increasingly longer to chill. As the temperature difference approaches zero, so does the time rate of energy transfer. The amount of water you need to chill the wort will climb dramatically. With a lower flow rate, there will be more warm water performing the transfer. You may end up using more water altogether.

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Thanks for that! I guess I should be a little more scientific and actually measure these things. It shouldn't be hard for me to measure flow rate, just measure the water as it comes out the chiller. Then time how long it takes to cool from X to Y at different stages of the process. Sounds like a fun project.