Wort Cooling Method...??

so I've done the standard ice bath for all of my brews so far which has worked just fine. but i was thinking about trying a new way. would it be ok if i just poured the wort into the fermenter right after the boil, and then dumped in a few bags of ice? It seems that would kill 2 birds with one stone (cooling the wort and adding the extra water)

I have heard that several people do that, but the risk of infection is high. I like to make my own ice that I know is bug free and can control the amount of water added

soxpats said:

so I've done the standard ice bath for all of my brews so far which has worked just fine. but i was thinking about trying a new way. would it be ok if i just poured the wort into the fermenter right after the boil, and then dumped in a few bags of ice? It seems that would kill 2 birds with one stone (cooling the wort and adding the extra water)

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I routinely siphon hot wort onto onto bagged ice. I discussed it here once and people cried bloody murder. My theory is that we use bottled water all the time in brewing. Bacteria could end up on the surface of the ice, but a nasty can't survive being subjected to freezing, then boiling water. People have said here that I'm "lucky" so far and doing it wrong. I even had someone tell me that he somehow has intimate knowledge of the bagged ice industry around me or something. But I can't deny the stats. I've done it over 100 times and never once had an infected batch. Now you don't know me, and I don't know the guy who claimed to know that all commercial ice making machines are unsanitary, so it's your call. The bottom line is it's your time and momey. If you want to take the supposed risk (which for me hasn't materialized) it's your call. My experiments put the risk between zero and less than one percent, but people that never tried it apparently know better.

I disc

Give it a shot; if the poster who has done it 100 times is infection-free you will likely be ok. But if you get infected...don't come crying to HBT!

To make things even safer...maybe make your own ice from spring water. Seems that would remove even more of the (apparently already small) risk.

This has been coming up a lot lately on the forum.

IMHO, it would seem to be WAY cheaper over the long-haul to just make an immersible wort chiller out of copper tubing instead of buying all that ice.

buying ice would add up very quickly for price
making your own is probably more painful than bottling
I made my own immersion chiller very cheaply ($30), and it was easy to do, and makes the drop in temp in usually 10 minutes from 210F to 70F. I dont see anything wrong with the ice method, but I personally would do it again the same way I did, with the immersion chiller.

Just be careful with the ice method. I dont think that glass carboys could stand up to that kind of temperature fluctuation. I would cry if five gallons spilled. Especially if you are indoors.

I bought an immersion chiller that brings the temp of the wort from boiling to 65 in about 5 minutes. It's awesome. Probably the best investment I've made in brewing gear yet.

I haven't bought my own yet, but these immersion chillers work great. My buddies let me borrow theirs on brew days and it works pretty darn good.

thanks for all the input. buying bags would certainly add up, and i plan on buying/making an immersion chiller soon. this would just be temporary. i was mainly concerned about contamination, but i agree with newell...between being frozen and then thrown in boiling wort, any bad stuff on the ice would be taken care of.

This is one issue that I really don't understand but hey.....we're all different, right? I just don't get the added exenditure of buying bagged ice to cool your wort when a bathtub full of cool tap water will accomplish the same thing in about a half hour to 45 minutes. I've been using this method for YEARS and I've yet to have an infection nor have I dropped a pot of hot wort and scalded myself. I can see a wort chiller when you get above five gallon batches because ten gallons of beer is some kind of friggin' heavy! Personally I absolutely refuse to purchase bags of ice when my bathtub is right there and will do the same thing. But again.....to each his own!

The whole cooling process for me is an issue of time. I know it is good to cool the wort quickly but I also want to shorten the brewing day.

I'm and extract brewer and I do not do full boils (yet). During the boil I use another pot to bring a couple of gal of water up to 70 degrees and then store this water in my sanitized bottling bucket which I cover. After the boil I put the pot of wort in sink filled with cold water and frozen water bottles and use my chiller to get it down to 70 degrees in about 10 minutes. I then rack it to the carboy and add the water from the bottling bucket up to the 5 gal mark. I can immediately pitch the yeast - less than 20 minutes after the boil. Makes for a short brew day.

Any vendors with ichiller sale? I'm tired of waiting for my wort to cool........

However I got with a horrible process right now that most people on here will get mad about........

After boil I either set the covered kettle in cold water or not and let her sit until cool, sometimes it takes over night but no worries......

I first was doing ice bath but found someone on here saying just let her sit so I tried it one time and well it worked.

thats not horrible... but its certainly not ideal. One thing you could do is replenish the cold water every 10 minutes. Once the cold tap water equalizes with the pot, its just the air temp thats going to continue chilling, which could take all night. If you switch your water after its warmed up a bit (all the while cooling the wort a bit), you will have a quicker cool. It is the basic physics principle behing an immersion chiller, on a different scale.

before I got my CFC every extract batch I did I cooled with ice directly into the wort. I've not had a single infected batch (of at least 200) by this method. I've always used my own ice though, not bagged. I don't really think it's that big of a deal.

I'd really like to get these 10 to 15 minute cools everyone talks about so I guess I'll have to get a chiller.........

brewagentjay said:

I'd really like to get these 10 to 15 minute cools everyone talks about so I guess I'll have to get a chiller.........

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For 5.25/5.5 gallons, my cool time to 65 degrees is more like 5 minutes when I use the chiller to actively stir around the wort a bit. I also have really cold well water, which I suppose doesn't hurt.

tamoore said:

For 5.25/5.5 gallons, my cool time to 65 degrees is more like 5 minutes when I use the chiller to actively stir around the wort a bit. I also have really cold well water, which I suppose doesn't hurt.

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<------Jealous as even if I try real hard it takes me 2 hours.......

couldn't you sanitize some ziplock bags and freeze some spring water in that and use that to cool your wort? just get the bags from the dollar store and you'll be keeping your cost down and keeping everything clean...

Before i got a wort chiller, I use to give the brewpot a cold water bath and add a ice chunk to the wort. I recycled an old milk jug (washed and santized), boil some water, funnel it into the clean milk jug and set it in the freezer to freeze. When it came time to cool my wort down, I put my brewpot into the laundry sink, added cold tap water to give it a bath and then cut open the milk jug to plop the ice chunk into the hot wort. No worries about infection since the ice I threw in was boiled before freezing it. This method cut down my wort cooling time in half from the previous method of cold water bathes. The only disadvantage of this is method is that you have to prepare the ice ahead of time. But it is a small investment of your time to boil up a gallon of water and clean/santize a used milk jug.

That is half the fun of brewing, is trying new ideas and developing a system that works for you. I know a brewer who had a really large chest freezer in his garage. After he got done boiling his wort he would set the whole brew pot and lid into the chest freezer, close the freezer lid and go mow his yard. He said that by the time that he finished mowing his yard his wort would be cooled down to 75-80ºF and then he would transfer it to his primary add yeast and airlock it. His method is not fastest for cooling down wort but worked for him and his schedule.

Happy brewing
Redbeard5289

Before I bought my copper chiller, I dumped ice into my brew kettle. It was crushed ice that came from the store. I did this maybe 3 times and never had infections.

I made my own Imersion chiller as well (cost me about $45.00 in parts) I dont hook it up to my water tap though. I hook it up to a submersible water pump located on the botom of a 10 gallon igloo cooler and put about 5 gallons of water and 1 bag of ice in it. The output hose goes to the kitchen sink drain, by the time the ice water is gone my wort is cooled to about 70 degrees. My water pump is only a 194 gph but it works fine for 3/8 in copper tubing. Harbor freight has them for about $13.00 and you dont use so much water in your process.

@EricT

Where did you buy your copper Tubing from, and How did you bend it?

On my second brew, I stopped at the grocery store just before beginning, and bought a 7 pound bag of ice. The supplier, Sissler's, prides themselves on offering CLEAN, SANITARY, NON-CONTAMINATED ice to the consumer. Exactly what they do or how they do it is not known to me.

Anyway, once the boil was complete, I just carefully dumped the ice into my brew pot, and then poured the cooled wort into the primary fermenter. Worked like a charm, but then I made my immersion chiller which works almost as efficiently at little threat of contamination, so I haven't done it again. I had absolutely no problem fermenting that beer...and SWMBO really liked it!

glenn514

I made my immersion chiller with tubing(1/4 OD) and fittings from Home Depot, although
I found out later that Lowes has a better selection of fittings.

I bent the tubing around a 2 gallon stock pot, read up on how to "sweat"(solder) copper fittings, then assembled the chiller. Lots of great info here on HBT for assembling your own IC or CFC!

Made my own IC and learned how to solder copper tubing, it was a win-win situation.

All together I think I spent about $35 but I already had the torch kit!

AirborneBrewer said:

@EricT

Where did you buy your copper Tubing from, and How did you bend it?

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I got mine on Ebay, 50 feet of it (just copy and paste this into ebay "NEW 726-18000500 Copper Refrigeration Tubing (3/8"")") . I went to home depot and got a 8" Cement tube which was dammaged so they gave it to me for like 2 dollars and just bent it around it. I actually got the idea from watching a video from Bobby M on his immersion tutorial. He used a corney keg which I dont have. The hardes part was actually getting hold of the 3/8 copper elbow which I got on Ebay as well. but you can just bend it at the bottom if you want, I just like the elbow so I didnt risk kinking my tubing.

I used to throw a couple pounds of ice into my fermenter, then pour the hot wort over the ice when i started. It would chill it VERY fast, and I never had an infection. I cannot say anything against this method. I used the same amount of ice as an ice bath in the sink, but saved myself about 20min. Did this at least 20times with no infection.

I use ice made by my ice maker, which is filtered public water suply.

I live in a 1 bedroom apt, and do stove top partial mash partial boils. My kitchen is kind of weird and I don't really have enough room to setup a chiller let alone store it.

Tho temperatures of water are never a problem. Even in the hottest summers public water in Canada is generally down to about 4-10C. I just fill the bath tub, and put the brew pot in there. Usually takes about 20 mins. I use that time to clean everything (save for the brewpot which soaks overnight) tidy up the kitchen, put everything away, and of course have another beer.

To me making ice was never even thought of. Not only am I weirded out by city water sometimes, but making ice? I live in a 1brd apt as stated. That means one ice cube tray, and little freezer room. To me the 20-30mins it takes to cool my wort, is a good trade off for having to boil, then freeze several batches of ice cubes.

If you think about it, bag ice has little chance of contaminating your beer. It starts off as tap water which is chlorinated/treated. Then it is frozen and bagged. And since the stuff is meant for human consumption, the facilities have to be relatively clean.

Plus, water on its own does not support life all that well so combined with the frigid temperatures of the freezer, even if bacteria were introduced they would be severely inhibited. Even if bacteria were introduced they could not replicate meaning their numbers would be small.

So when you dump your hot wort onto the ice which may harbor bacteria, the bacteria go from ~32F to above 90F very quickly. This temperature shock is a good way to kill or nearly kill bacteria. Then when you add the yeast which number in the billions of cells, the heat shocked nearly dead bacteria can't compete.

With my last batch, I just left my wort to cool overnight. It took about 12 hours to cool to 70 degrees and then I just added my yeast and let it go. After 18 hours, or so, it bubbled for about 3 days but didn't seem as 'lively' as some of my other attempts.

Is there anything wrong with using a long cool down period?

Freeze gallons of purified water in plastic gallon jugs/cartons, cut open jugs, dump ice blocks in fermenting bucket, pour wort over ice. Bang! Glass wouldn't work in this instance of course. I need to buy purified (UV sterilized) water anyway because our water quality in Vegas sucks. So, its money I would spend whether I had a wort chiller or not.

People have discussed a no cool method and it works just fine. I have done it couple of times and sometimes I do a partial cool down method. I do icebath but dont change the water multiple times and let it sit overnight. Cover your pot when you are doing it.

I'd like to hear about this no cool down method...

I've always been under the understanding that you need to crash cool it to get some of the proteins out of the wort that can produce off flavors and or chill hazes. Plus the quicker it cools the quicker you can pitch your yeast which means less time for bacteria.

So, anyway, I'd like to hear more of the science behind the no cool down method.

Interesting idea!

http://www.brewersfriend.com/2009/06/06/australian-no-chill-brewing-technique-tested/

The Aussies use it to conserve water. Check out the link I provided.

soxpats said:

so I've done the standard ice bath for all of my brews so far which has worked just fine. but i was thinking about trying a new way. would it be ok if i just poured the wort into the fermenter right after the boil, and then dumped in a few bags of ice? It seems that would kill 2 birds with one stone (cooling the wort and adding the extra water)

Click to expand...

I place my 7.5gal aluminum pot in a 6.5 gal bucket and poke my garden hose between the two, letting the water overflow and stirring the wort. I can cool down boiling wort to the low 20's C in 15 min or so.

Surprised i never seen this method posted before.

joekerr1 said:

http://www.brewersfriend.com/2009/06/06/australian-no-chill-brewing-technique-tested/

The Aussies use it to conserve water. Check out the link I provided.

Click to expand...

That looks really really interesting. I like the idea of the "Real Wort" starter. This facilitates a way to do that.

Have you tried it?

i do this frequently but always use my own ice, which is triple filtered for that smooth, icy taste. The water into my home is filtered at 30 microns, then 20, then to my freezer/ice maker, which is about 10 microns. I have NEVER had an infection using clean ice. A gallon (about 9 lbs) of ice will lower my beer to 120F in SECONDS. I then use Jamil's whirlpool chiller with ice water input into a coil.

Yes, there are those here that will lynch you for saying that you have done it. I would admit that it is NOT best practice.

If you can put ice cubes in your drink, you sure as hell can put them in Wort. That is my take on it.

I only have 2 batches under my belt but I buy a 1 gallon plastic jug of water for 1$. Freeze it and when it's time to brew I cut the jug open, let the ice into the fermenter and poor the wort on it. Worked good so far.

Crushed ice will chill the beer much faster. At least break up the ice a bit and it will get colder faster because of expanded surface area of the ice. Of course, the ice will be gone sooner, also.

Making beer is all about controlling variables: quality of ingredients, temperature, sanitation, etc. Using ice to chill is obviously a method employed by many people, and with success. The two problems that I see are 1) contamination (which has already been extensively covered), and 2) the inability to do a full boil, which is important to me. I just use an entry-level copper wort chiller, and am fortunate enough to have 55F well water to do the chilling.
I was invited over to a brew session by an acquaintance, and he & his brew buddy use ice to cool partial boils. At that time, they were having no trouble. Suddenly, within the last few months, they've thrown out three batches. They haven't found the cause yet, but given my observation of their techniques, there are several things they need to eliminate as possible causes, and the ice chilling is one.

If it fits your setup and schedule, I think no-chill may be a way to go, although I haven't tried it yet. There is a huge thread on no-chill brewing; it is practiced a lot by Australians, and there seems to be a growing contingent in this country that is trying it. Personally, the idea of brewing one day and not being able to pitch until the next kind of bugs me, but given the fresh water situation that already exists in some parts of this country, and the crisis that is predicted, it may be the way of the future.