Wort Chilling

Novice brewer here with a question on wort chilling...I know that it is pretty important to get the temp down to 70 degrees, and my question may be dumb but I dont care...Im on beer #8. After you chill the wort to 70 degrees, you transfer it to the fermenting bucket, then add water until you get to 5 gallons...That being said, why cant I just add cold water to the wort to assist in chilling it to the proper 70 degrees? I dont own a wort chiller yet so my only option right now is sitting it in cold water until it gets to the proper temperature...which takes a little time. Thanks for all your help and replies.

CHEERS!

You can do that.

TimpanogosSlim said:

You can do that.

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I can add water to bring the temperature down? The instructions state not to add water to the wort while chilling...Its a kit from Brewer's Best. I don't mean to question you, I just want to make sure I am on the same page as you.

I'll admit, I'm not an extract guy, but i was under the impression that it can be done.

how are you cooling your wort? Are you just waiting?

Some people boil some water to sterilize it then put it in sanitized zip lock bags, freeze them. Then sanitize the bags, open them and add the ice to the wort as both cooling and top up water.

So cold water as top up is a good way to cool the wort.

I have it sitting in the pot in my kitchen sink with ice water in there...so yeah Im pretty much just waiting lol. Its been in there for about 15 minutes and still at 110 degrees.

I've made many extract batches, partial boil, and almost always add cold tap water to cool the wort (and bring the volume up to the 5 gallons).

I've never had any problems doing it that way. It's definitely faster.

Dan.

IFlyEm said:

I have it sitting in the pot in my kitchen sink with ice water in there...so yeah Im pretty much just waiting lol. Its been in there for about 15 minutes and still at 110 degrees.

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Stir the water in the ice bath and rotate the pot or stir the wort (with a sanitized utensil) so that both the water and the wort right next to the metal is moved. This will bring new warmer wort to the metal and cooler water to the outside metal, thus cooling it faster.

the person who said to not add cold water is an idiot. add ice water and shorten your brew days

I guess I have another question...How important is the 70 degrees? What if I transfer it at 80 degrees?

Transferring to the fermenter at 80 is fine. Most people recommend waiting to pitch the yeast until you get down to 70.

It is best to cool to the temperature that you are going to use for the fermentation. The best is near the low end of the recommended range for the yeast you are using.

I have had to pitch a little warm a couple of times, but put the fermenter in a swamp cooler and lowered the temperature the rest of the way before the fermentation got going and it turned out fine.

Not saying that this is the best practice, but it worked for me.

The important part is to keep the temperature under control while the active part of the fermentation occurs. (the first 3-5 days) The fermentation will add up to 10 degrees to the wort temperature.

I wouldn't add water WHILE cooling, since that will lower the rate of heat transfer out of your wort to the water bath.

Instead cool until you can add cold water to get the final temperature of the wort and cold water mix to the temperature you want. Adding cool/cold water to the cooling wort while you're cooling will actually make it take longer to get to your final temperature than cooling the hot wort to where you can add the cool/cold water to get to the same final temperature. Back when I was using partial boils, I had used gallon jugs of bottled water cooled in the fridge as my water additions, and I had even used bagged ice.

If you're using water (not ice), you can use an equation to figure out what temperature you need to cool to:
If Tmix = (Twort * Vwort + Twater * Vwater)/(Vwort+Vwater), you can rearrange to get to the equation you need, where Tmix is your desired temperature (temp of mixed wort/water), Twort is the temperature of the wort you have to cool to, V wort is the volume of wort, and Twater and Vwater are the temperature and volume of the cold water you are adding. The equation becomes
Twort = [Tmix * (Vwort+Vwater) - Twater*Vwater] / Vwort
and if you're shooting for 5 gallons, Vwater is 5 gal - Vwort, and Vwort+Vwater = 5 gal
So,
Twort = [Tmix *5 gal) - Twater*(5gal - Vwort) ]/ Vwort

I calculate that if you have 3 gallons of wort, and you're shooting for 70F and 5 gallons total, and you're using 34F water from the fridge (2 gallons), you'd have to cool those 3 gallons of wort down to about 95F, which should take a good amount of time less than cooling to 70F.

Of course, if using ice, the wort temperature could be much higher. You can figure out how cool you'd have to get your wort, you'd just have to include the heat of fusion for water (heat required to melt ice).

If I may add onto IFlyEms post- can someone explain why it's necesary to cool the wort before pitching at all? Why not pitch immediately to icewater?

I pitch the wort to cold water at 100dF, I just don't know why. I add yeast at 70-80.

west1727 said:

If I may add onto IFlyEms post- can someone explain why it's necesary to cool the wort before pitching at all? Why not pitch immediately to icewater?

I pitch the wort to cold water at 100dF, I just don't know why. I add yeast at 70-80.

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You seem to misunderstand the definition of pitching. "Pitching" and "adding yeast" mean the exact same thing.

Get about 3- 1gallon jugs of drinking water from the store (less than 1.00 each). Pour it all into a pot and bring it to a boil, let it boil about 10 minutes. Let it cool down, or run cool water around the outside of the pot in the sink to cool it faster. Don't forget to sterilize the jugs. Get a sterilized funnel, and pour the water back into the jugs. Put the jugs in the freezer. Just don't let them freeze completely, don't worry it takes awhile to get cold. Prepare your beer like you normally would. Now... What I do is after I'm done boiling my 2 1/2 gallons of wort, I let it cool for a few minutes (10-15) then I put it in a plastic ferment bucket. By this time my jugs of water are one minute away from freezing. I pour the ice cold water in to make a little over 5 gallons (give or take a little) and it instantly takes 100 degrees of the temp. Then I hook up a sanitized hose to the spigot on the ferment bucket and run the other end into my Carboy. I wrap the hose with a freezer bag filled with ice, open the spigot and let it flow. By the time it all drains into Carboy, it's at the perfect temp (70-80 degrees). It takes a little planning, but so far that's what has worked best for me. It's quick, efficient, sanitary, and cheap

Even better idea.

Buy a gallon of spring water and freeze it the night before. Or boil to sanitize and freeze a gallon of water.

Dump gallon of frozen water into bucket and pour wort over it.

All of my extract brews did this, the local brew shop actually has it on their instructions. Gallon of ice water + gallon of tap water, pour 3-3.5 gallons(Partial boil) of wort on top. It cools down nice and fast, if your doing partial boils i highly recommend it. If your doing full boils dont just add water to cool it down.

Depends how good your water is. A simple ph test will tell you. Hard water will screw you all up. Best bet is to boil all of it to be safe, and still sometimes it's not enough if the water quality is crappy.

You seem to misunderstand the definition of pitching. "Pitching" and "adding yeast" mean the exact same thing.

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Thanks- I often do that, its what i get from learning on my own vs relying on the experts! Thanks emjay

Loudawg7777 said:

Get about 3- 1gallon jugs of drinking water from the store (less than 1.00 each). Pour it all into a pot and bring it to a boil, let it boil about 10 minutes.

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Why boil it first? The water will be sterilized when you get it assuming it is not a fill it yourself type. Think about it, they seal these things up and they sit for weeks before being drank by people. They have to be sterilized before you open them up. I'd say just spray a little starsan around the cap and pour them in. Save yourself the extra prep time by just sticking them in the fridge/freezer without the boil.

Also, IFLYem: this may have been mentioned and I just missed it but if you continue to do the ice bath method it is a good idea to put only cold tapwater into the sink when you first put your pot in there. Let that heat up for 5-10 minutes, drain it, and repeat. Once you do that 2-3 times then put your icewater in the sink, tub, whatever you are using for your bath. The reason is the heat transfer is faster the bigger temperature difference there is. So heat transfer will be quick between boiling wort and tap water even without the ice. This will be a tiny bit slower overall, but can save you a lot of money/space in ice because you use a lot less.