cooling the wort...which way???

so i've heard to fill your sink with cool water, submerge the pot, and repeat, with an ice bath once it is cool enough to not melt the ice right away. the instructions for my recipe say to just add 3 gallons of cold water to the primary and add the hot wort to it and wait for it to cool...which way should i do this? its the ipa kit from true brew if that matters....

I do partial boils like that, but prefer to cool my wort before putting it in the fermenter. For one thing, then I can separate out some of the cold break material so it doesn't all go into the primary.

Also, what do you do if the top up water isn't enough to get you to your pitching temp? Those instructions are meant as an easy short cut and will cool your wort at least to the point where it won't kill the yeast, but won't necessarily get you to the BEST temp to pitch your yeast at.

yeh i figured it was basically a short cut....does the water need to be cold then to add the cooled wort to or can it be room temp? it also says to pitch the yeast by simply sprinkling it into the primary...does it not need to be activated by warm water first? i'm getting so many different instructions from so many different sources...

What I like to do is to sink cool my wort in the boiling kettle most of the way. When it's around... ohh 80 or so, I pour it into my ale pail and then top up with water I've had in the fridge. That easily gets it down into the 60's. You can also cool it all the way first and then add room temp water. Try different ways and see what works best for you. That's what this hobby is all about.

Dry yeast doesn't HAVE to be rehydrated. I've just sprinkled it on top of the wort and made good beer, but after reading about osmotic shock, I started rehydrating mine in water. It just gives them a little head start before they had to start dealing with the sugars and whatnot in the wort.

One reason I don't like adding the hot wort to cool water is that you still aren't sure what ending temp you will end up with. Sure it will be cooler than the hot wort, but will it still be too warm for your plastic or glass primary? I added water I thought was warm to a Better Bottle and it ended up warping.

I'm still working on my cooling method but for now I'm using a cooler which I also use for my primary. I put the pot in the cooler with ice and water and let it cool. When the ice melts I start to add frozen water bottles I keep for cooling. I move the pot around a few times to try and even out the cooling effect. I judge when it's done by testing the water in the cooler and the temp of the pot. Very crude on my part and I should do something else at some point. It's not perfect but it works so far. Then again, I'm not sure if my method is affecting the flavor or not.

For the yeast, I also will boil water, let it cool, then add the yeast packet before I start my brewing. This gets it going well in advance. But I think just adding it to the primary is fine too. I remember reading how the yeast companies do a lot of work to make sure the yeast can stand up to some serious abuse. I think we sometimes over do it in our search of perfection. So it's probably fine to just dump it as long as you are careful with everything else.

I used to do the sink method when I first started, it worked fine, but I got tired of buying ice and waiting for the wort to cool. The best investment I made was an immersion chiller. If you don't have one, look on craigslist and get one, you'll be glad you did.

When doing the sink/ice method, I would put a few gallons of spring water in the freezer, then add to primary to speed up the process a bit. Either way works, but go with the immersion chiller!

I am relatively new to brewing, but last time I followed some advice and chilled 3 gallons of bottled spring water (which is what I use for everything) in the fridge. I did a partial boil that ended up with under two gallons in the pot, and then poured the chilled water in. It was immediately under 80 degrees. I have an immersion chiller that I use for full boils, but I'll never need it again for partial boils!

After talking to the LHBS I tried something new. I took a food safe pail that is used for LME and sterilized it. Then I put water in it, put the top on, and put it in the freezer. I ended up with a giant ice cube that should be sterile and clean. I chilled the pot after boil a bit then put the ice cube in to really bring it down. It will be a while before I know if it works or not.

x4904857398475 on the immersion chiller.

I did 4 batches cooling by hand before getting a copper chiller at the LHBS, and believe me-waiting 20-30 minutes with running water and occasionally stirring the wort is s**tloads better than dumping 4 bags of ice in your sink and constantly swirling the water around your kettle.

Spend the $, or make your own! There's several threads about DIY chillers on here. It saves time and possible contamination from extended cooling times.

Ice bath with 30 pounds of ice and water chills my 2.5 gallon batches in 20 minutes from boiling to below 80

scrambledegg81 said:

x4904857398475 on the immersion chiller.

I did 4 batches cooling by hand before getting a copper chiller at the LHBS, and believe me-waiting 20-30 minutes with running water and occasionally stirring the wort is s**tloads better than dumping 4 bags of ice in your sink and constantly swirling the water around your kettle.

Spend the $, or make your own! There's several threads about DIY chillers on here. It saves time and possible contamination from extended cooling times.

Click to expand...

Regarding the chiller, isn't the top off the pot when you are running the chiller? If so, isn't that more of a risk of contamination than putting the lid on the pot and then putting the pot in an ice water bath?

I'm not trying to start a war but I'm really curious. I started by being paranoid about covering my pot when chilling so even a tiny bit of dust wouldn't get in. As I started to look at chillers I realized that to run most of then you need to keep the top off the pot. Obvious I know but I never thought about it until I considered buying one.

I chill with the top off.

Actually, once I am done mashing/steeping the lid never goes back on the pot. It's my understanding that this is where DMS can get trapped in the wort.

If your chilling a 3-5 gallon boil, the 20 mins of chill time is not really all that much exposure.

Reedwalker said:

I chill with the top off.

Actually, once I am done mashing/steeping the lid never goes back on the pot. It's my understanding that this is where DMS can get trapped in the wort.

If your chilling a 3-5 gallon boil, the 20 mins of chill time is not really all that much exposure.

Click to expand...

Part of the problem with being new to this is learning how much paranoia is necessary. It makes sense that the wort is vulnerable after the boil but given how popular chillers are, and how many require the top to be off the pot, I was starting to assume that it couldn't be all that bad to have the top off.

get a chiller. Drop it into the wort 5 min prior to boil flameout and the hook it up to chill. This sanitizes it.. It you want to cover it use a towel that is dampened with stersan solution. Works just as good as any lid.

One word of warning about dropping the chiller into boiling water -- the one I got had (I guess) some cheaper plastic tubing hooked up to it that melted. That sucked. Now, I just dip the whole immersion chiller in my bucket of starsan solution for a few minutes, then I turn on the water through the chiller to make sure there are NO LEAKS (you don't want potentially dirty water leaking into your wort), and only after I take the wort off of the fire do I put in the chiller, with the water already moving through it.

You may buy an immersion chiller with nice enough parts that you don't have to do it that way, but that's what works for me.

i did one batch with ice in the sink and have been using an IC ever since. i made mine for $20 at home depot and it cools 5 gallons in about 12 min.

I like the method of freezing water in sterilized containers for partial boils. (Probably because I don't have an immersion chiller!)

There is ZERO reason to do an ice bath, unless you can get 30 lbs of ice for free. I built my chiller for $20.76. While my wort was on the burner, in 10 minutes. It also stores in the brew pot (obviously.)

To everyone who built a wort chiller for 20 bucks.. Was this recent? Copper prices are through the roof lately..If recent, where do you get the materials?

The last partial boil I did I dropped the temp to about 80 using the ice bath method. I then put it in my primary and put it in the basement. I came down the next morning and pitched at 66 degrees.

MStudinski said:

To everyone who built a wort chiller for 20 bucks.. Was this recent? Copper prices are through the roof lately..If recent, where do you get the materials?

The last partial boil I did I dropped the temp to about 80 using the ice bath method. I then put it in my primary and put it in the basement. I came down the next morning and pitched at 66 degrees.

Click to expand...

http://www.thehardwarecity.com/getProductDetail.html?sku=5516752

$13.32 for pipe

Trevor57 said:

http://www.thehardwarecity.com/getProductDetail.html?sku=5516752

$13.32 for pipe

Click to expand...

Wow.. it's 2x that at Home Depot/Loews... Shipping is expensive but still cheaper... Thanks

i think my copper coil was like $16 at home depot and i built it over the summer. best advancement ive made in my equipment by far

What about just sticking it in the snow? That's the idea that entered my mind once I was standing around freezing at the Patriots v. Titans game.

My first batch I tried cooling a partial boil in the snow. Forty minutes later it was still over one hundred degrees.

Snow is a great insulator.

Yeah. Think igloo.

touche, no more snow

I just popped for an immersion chiller and pre-chiller, since my tap water is not usually below 75 degrees. I'm hoping this setup requires less ice than my too-small, leaky sink and ice routine. I'm tired of going through 2 bucks worth of ice and 45 minutes hassle to cool 2 gallons of wort to 80 degrees.

i dont know if anyone has added this yet, but all i do is use a 7lb bag of ice in the fermentor and pour the boiling hot wort over it. it usually drops my wort to pitching temp before it even reaches the correct dilution.

i know someone is going to say that that can cause an infection, but any ice company is going to ensure that thier ice is sanitary, and in over 10 batches made this way, i have never had a problem.

and i am willing to take a small risk in return for 0 wait time, i go from boil to pitch temp in the time it takes to pour.

I got 20' of 1x2" tubing for around $28, garden hose connectors were another $8. Still the best money I ever spent.