Cooling the wort?

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LinuxBrew

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I'm about to attempt my second brew. Like my first (German Wheat), my second is a kit (Red Ale)

The instructions say to chill the wort rapidly to ~70ºF, and I'm debating the method with my wife. I thought that immersing the wort in its boiling vessel into a tub (maybe a Rubbermaid) filled with ice water would be good.

My wife had a different approach. Rather than cool the wort to room temperature and then add it to the room temperature water, she suggested I freeze the water I'm going to add the wort to, then add the wort so that it will rather quickly reach room temperature.

Does it make any difference which way I do it?

I know about using various other cooling methods that require plumbing, but I really just want a relatively simple method for right now.


Thanks in advance. :)
 
I just finished my first brew and i filled my tub up with ice and cold water.. put the wort in there immediately after boiling .. i stirred the wort and the ice bath constantly .. and the temp dropped to 70 in about 20 minutes.. really simple and surprisingly fast. Hope that helps.
 
Go with your plan. A large container filled with ice water (or even your kitchen sink if it is deep enough) is the best method for cooling wort if you do not have a seperate chiller.

There are several risks associated with adding wort to ice.

One, your ice would have to be made with sanitized (boiled or bottled water), that was frozen in a covered container.

Two: Depending on what you are pouring your wort into you risk damaging the container with thermal shock. Even a plastic container could be cracked by mixing hot and cold water.

Lastly, Depending on the amount of hot wort and ice you might either not have enough ice to reach your cool temp, or you might actually cool the wort too much.

Depending on how deep you can submerge your boil pot in ice water, how often you add ice, and whether or not you stir your cooling wort (with sanitized spoon), you can cool 2.5-3gal down in less than an hour.
 
I don't like the idea of ice in my beer. The ice in your (and mine) freezer wouldn't be sanitary enough and I'd be worried about an infection using it. Plus it would take an aweful amount of ice to bring your wort down to pitching tempertures running the risk of adding too much water or not cooling enough.
Better is the idea of immersing the pot in an ice bath.
 
Is this a good idea? If you live in a city with snow......Drop it right outside your door. That seem to do the trick for me.
 
I used to stick my brew pot in a snow bank when brewing in the winter. Ice water in the sink or in a tub works, too. But my DW gave me a wort chiller for Christmas, and it's wonderful! They're not all that expensive (about $50 for a basic one). Some folks have even made their own.

Basically, it's just coiled copper tubing that connects to your faucet and empties into your sink. You immerse it in your hot brew pot (I sanitize mine first by putting it in the wort while it's still boiling), hook it up to your faucet, run cold water through, and in just a matter of minutes, your wort is down to the 70-80 degrees you need before pitching the yeast. It's really great!

If you've got $50 burning a hole in your pocket, I'd recommend that as your next upgrade in your brewing supplies.
 
If you do a partial boil, what I did was gather about 8 gallons of bottled water. You'd boil 2 or 3 gallons depending and you would have 3 gallons in the fridge chilling as cold as you could get them. That leaves you with a couple extra gallons at room temperature to play with if the temp drops too rapidly. This worked perfect for me the past couple brews. I would pour all three gallons of ice watter in and it would drop the temp to right around 80, then I'd toss in another gallon to make 5 gal. and pitch. I didn't have any problems with infection or anything. Some people say to boil the water and then freeze..I think that's unnecessary though when dealing with bottled water.



Dan
 
i just finished my first batch last night. i was really worried about this, because i didn't have a wort chiller. i bought a big TUFF plastic bucket from the local tractor supply, and two big bags of ice, and just put one and a half bag of ice in the bucket, and some water, then put the whole stockpot in the bucket of ice water, and in kind of "floated" on top of the ice, and i spun the stockpot around in a circle, then i put on the lid tightly, and poured the last bit of ice on top of the stockpot, and then pushed it off the lid, to the sides of the stock pot, and spun it around some more. it cooled the wort down to 70 degrees in 15 minutes! suprised me to death, i was worried about getting it cool fast enough, and that method worked perfectly. i see no reason to buy a wort chiller now.
 
brian williams said:
i just finished my first batch last night. i was really worried about this, because i didn't have a wort chiller. i bought a big TUFF plastic bucket from the local tractor supply, and two big bags of ice, and just put one and a half bag of ice in the bucket, and some water, then put the whole stockpot in the bucket of ice water, and in kind of "floated" on top of the ice, and i spun the stockpot around in a circle, then i put on the lid tightly, and poured the last bit of ice on top of the stockpot, and then pushed it off the lid, to the sides of the stock pot, and spun it around some more. it cooled the wort down to 70 degrees in 15 minutes! suprised me to death, i was worried about getting it cool fast enough, and that method worked perfectly. i see no reason to buy a wort chiller now.

Well there will come a time where the cost of ice will have surpassed the cost of a wort chiller, pllus Chillers are easier IMO. I got tired of using ice water baths and am buying a chiller. With a chiller I will be able to take down my wort to pitching temps in about 5 minutes versus 15-20 with ice. This plus I'm going to full boils and chilling 5 gallons of wort takes a lot longer than chilling 2-3 gallons.


Dan
 
I used snow, this last time, worked great! I just piled it up around the pot.

Btw, nice name!
 
I use two stage homemade chiller. It cools 5g boil to 78F in seven minutes. I bought 50ft copper tube (3/8" OD) from HomeDepot, split in half and rolled over a bucket and a scuba tank to obtain two different diameter coils. Larger ones goes inside the kettle 15 minutes before the end of the boil and the other one into a cooler filled with ice/water. I circulate the tap water from the faucet to first coil in ice filled cooler and to the coil in the kettle. Chilling time is seven minutes when I slide the kettle to not used part of the stove top. Yes, I do all this in the kitchen over the counter. Don't have the lift the hot kettle risking a nasty accident. The cost is ~$40 including copper tube, clear tubes and clamps.
 
I didn't do anything to help speed the cooling of my first two batches except pouring the hot wort into cold water in the fermentation bucket & then covering with the lid. I let it cool down on it's own, maybe a few hours before pitching the yeast. Maybe I was just lucky, but the beers turned out just fine.

However, I invested in a submersion chiller and can say that it is probably the best equipment investment I've made outside of my initial brewing kit purchase. Even though I only do 2-3 gal. boils, the chiller works wonders and cuts the time down to about 10 minutes from the time I start the process to the time the wort goes in the fermenter.
 
McKBrew said:
Lastly, Depending on the amount of hot wort and ice you might either not have enough ice to reach your cool temp, or you might actually cool the wort too much.

Quoted for Truth.

On my first batch I thought I'd be super fast at cooling the wort, using an immersion chiller and having my two extra topoff gallons be near freezing temperatures. I ended up having the wort too cold and stopped adding water with more than 3/4 of a gallon left of water to add.

doh!!
 
Laar summer, I stuck several 1 liter bottles of spring water in the freezer. Take them out and shake them up every hour so that they don't freeze solid. Then I've poured them into the wort to cool them off.

This winter I've been using the ice bath in the sink method. I also have been keeping 4 gallons of clean water in my cold room (30F - 50F depending on the weather).
 
So thanks much to every one who posted their advice and experience, it was greatly appreciated!! :mug:

In the end what I decided to do was the simple ice-bath. I didn't add anything inside the wort. I simply filled up the kitchen sink with water and ice, stirring both the ice-bath and the wort to help with the heat distribution.

In the end, it took me about 25 minutes to go from boiling to 70ºF. Myself, I want it faster.

I think for the next brew, I'm going to double-team the wort. I'll do the ice-bath, but I'll also go to Home depot and buy some copper tubing, make a chiller of my own. I'd like to get the cooling down to under 10 minutes (ideally 5).
 

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