Can ya chill too quickly?

Was wondering if it's possible to mess up anything chemically by chilling your wort too quickly? Watchin' Lonnie's videos on the Brutus rack in action, and his need for ice to combat the Texas heat got me to wonderin'.

Dry ice is a whole lot colder than ground water, an ice bath or freezer. What would be the possible negative effects of maybe a dry ice immersion type or dry ice chilled recirc. cooling system. I was all good on the Therminator 'till he started talkin' somewhere about cleaning his and gettin' bits of Irish Moss and other schmegma fallin' out. That got me to thinkin', (probably the flaw that landed me on the government watch list) and I start a'Googlin' and came across this:

http://brookstonbeerbulletin.com/quick-chilling-beer-with-dry-ice/?cat=72

The article's a couple of years old and I would have expected to hear more about the plastic cell that he was using but as yet haven't found anything. Assuming that it could be controlled there are a lot of folks who already have CO2 on hand so it seemed like it might be a good fit. (these are the things that keep me up late at night...I obviously need to start drinkin' more)

Normally makin' dry ice is a little more complex and requires a good bit of energy to make the conversion from a liquid to a solid complete, but it sounded like this kid was on to something new. He calls his little CO2 drink cooler a Huski, but I can't find them or anything that might use his idea on a larger scale.

Minus 70 somethin' Celsius is damn cold and you'd probably have to use some sort of antifreeze in a recirc system to keep it from just freezing completely. An immersion device would still probably need to include some means of circulating the wort to prevent the stuff closest to the device from possibly freezing to it, but it seems like you should be able to play with it and find a manageable input.

Restaurants and food service joints use large plastic containers filled with ice to drop in soups and sauces to chill quickly for storage as part of their normal HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) procedures to control bacteria. Just seems like a natural fit.

Probably missin' somethin' important here but thought it might be interesting to kick around all the same.

I don't think it's possible to chill "too quickly".

If you think about folks that make a single pass through a plate chiller, the beer in the chiller cools from boiling to pitching temp in just a few seconds.

theres no real reason that your couldnt do it other than possibly freezing your wort.

However, it would be extremely expensive to use dry ice/CO2 to chill you beer. you would be better off with a traditional chiller

My 2 cents

How about this to make 16oz blocks http://www.smallparts.com/Bel-Art-S...&pf_rd_i=0&pf_rd_p=493388211&pf_rd_s=center-3

hopfool said:

I was all good on the Therminator 'till he started talkin' somewhere about cleaning his and gettin' bits of Irish Moss and other schmegma fallin' out.

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Evidentally your friend does not use a Hop Filter of some sorts. I use a plate chiller and have never had a problem but I use Lil' Sparky's Paint Strainer Bag hop filter with a Polyester Filter bag. The holder for the filter bag cost $10 to make with simple hand tools and the filter bag cost $5.00 and is reuseable. You are going to need a lot more than 16 oz of dry ice to cool down that wort.

Does dry-ice come in food grade?
I remember that when it comes to oxygen or helium they (gas-dealers) have different grades of purity. Your blowtorch' s oxygen tank won't work in an ER for breathing problems.

Talking about cold:: What about liquid nitrogen? buddy of mine used it to do smoking icecream sorbets on his physics-student parties. half a can in your wort..... iced beer, but chilled

BayerischBier said:

Does dry-ice come in food grade?
I remember that when it comes to oxygen or helium they (gas-dealers) have different grades of purity. Your blowtorch' s oxygen tank won't work in an ER for breathing problems.

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Liquid Nitrogen is very expensive. The OP is not planning to put the Dry Ice directly into the wort. He wants to use some sort of chiller so I don't think "Food Grade" is an issue.

If I were to make a dry-ice wort chiller, here's what I would do:

I'd get a substantial volume of rubbing alcohol, acetone, or whatever I can get that has a low enough freezing point. Mix that up with a few pounds of dry ice, and let the liquid cool. Then, just pump that through a regular copper wort chiller.

vinyl_key said:

If I were to make a dry-ice wort chiller, here's what I would do:

I'd get a substantial volume of rubbing alcohol, acetone, or whatever I can get that has a low enough freezing point. Mix that up with a few pounds of dry ice, and let the liquid cool. Then, just pump that through a regular copper wort chiller.

Click to expand...

Using dry ice-acetone mixtures is highly effective in organic lab for efficient distillation/refluxing, so I don't see why the same wouldn't be true if you recirculated it through an immersion or plate chiller. My only concern would be that the seal might not be tight with the immersion chiller and you'd end up with acetone in your beer!

Don't forget ammonia refrigeration sytems used for many many years. I've got a complete 5 HP 3 phase ammonia refrigeration system that flat kicks butt vs a R12 or the newer R134a crap we now have.