Wort Cooling

hello all,

im about to do my first home brew and was intrested to see how others go about cooling the wort after boiling. i dont have anything as flash as a heat-exchanger, so will allowing the wort to cool naturally after the boil affect the finished product? also, i know that aeration the wort pre fermentation is necessary for good yeast action. how do i do this ? pouring from bucket to bucket? blowing air through a tube?

any help is greatly appreciated

chin chin

If you don't have a dedicated chiller, you can do a couple of things:

(1) sit your kettle in an ice-water bath
(2) dump a bunch of ice into it (if you are doing a boil less than 5 gallons)

You want to cool it as fast as possible and get your yeast in before any nasties take hold and spoil the brew. Also, there is a chemical called DMS that tastes like cooked vegetables. DMS is produced while the wort is hot, so the faster you cool it, the less DMS you will have.

As for aeration, you can do it by pouring it back and forth. Or, put it into the fermenter and shake the hell out of it (that's my method). Don't blow through a tube... you could contaminate it and end up with vinegar.

One last thing... don't aerate the wort until you have colled it down below 90°F or so.

excellent!
thanks for your help

One note on cooling with ice. If you do decide to dump ice in make sure it is made with preboiled or bottled water and covered in the freezer otherwise you may get a contamination. One good tip that I used to do is buy a 1 gallon jug of bottled water and pour a bit out to allow for expansion, take the label and residue off and freeze it. When it comes time to chill the wort sanitize the whole bottle and toss it in your kettle. Do this in conjunjuction with an ice bath and you should cool down pretty fast. Also stir your wort every few winutes to circulate. Just make sure that anything that comes into contact with your wort post boil is well sanitized.

The way I chill my wort with ice is to soak 4-5 plastic freezer bags in the sanitizing solution. Then its as simple as filling the bags with ice and tossing them in the wort. It works well and will not add any volume to the wort, plus you don't have to deal with sanitizing water and freezing it.

thedaler said:

The way I chill my wort with ice is to soak 4-5 plastic freezer bags in the sanitizing solution. Then its as simple as filling the bags with ice and tossing them in the wort. It works well and will not add any volume to the wort, plus you don't have to deal with sanitizing water and freezing it.

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that sounds like a really good idea. i've been trying to figure out the best/quickest way for me to cool down my wort without a fancy schmancy chiller, i'm gonna try this in combination with putting the pot in a sink full of ice water.