wort chiller necessary?

i've decided to jump right into AG, but was wondering if i need to really spend the extra money for the wort chiller for my first batch or if it can wait. would a huge ice water bath and frequent gentle stirring be enough, or do i truly need the chiller? thanks.

The bath would work. In fact if you use salt in that bath it will decrease the time it takes to cool.

It's gonna take a LONG time to chill a full volume boil without a chiller, in my honest opinion. That would have to be one BIG ice bath.

It'll take you 20-30 minutes tops with active stirring of the ice bath. You can decrease the time even more if you gently stir the wort in the opposite direction that you stir the ice bath. And I'll say it again. Salt. Good stuff

thanks guys.

devaspawn said:

It'll take you 20-30 minutes tops with active stirring of the ice bath. You can decrease the time even more if you gently stir the wort in the opposite direction that you stir the ice bath. And I'll say it again. Salt. Good stuff

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I don't agree at all- even with a wort chiller, it takes 30 minutes to chill 5.25 gallons of boiling wort. You'd have to have a way to lift a boiling hot pot FULL of boiling wort into an ice bath without scalding yourself, also. I don't see how it's possible to do this in 30 minutes.

YooperBrew said:

I don't agree at all- even with a wort chiller, it takes 30 minutes to chill 5.25 gallons of boiling wort. You'd have to have a way to lift a boiling hot pot FULL of boiling wort into an ice bath without scalding yourself, also. I don't see how it's possible to do this in 30 minutes.

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Well you can get down to 15-20 minutes if you shake the chiller until the temp drops to around 110 or so, and then switch from your ground water supply over to a pump recirculating ice water from a cooler through the chiller. Boil to 110 is about 7-8 minutes and it takes longer to get to pitching temp.

I second the concern of safety with the water bath method, even though it will work, I value my body parts at more than the $50 a chiller costs.

I've got 5 gallons sitting in the bathtub under 20lbs of ice and it's been over an hour (got the day off). I changed the water twice before adding the ice to get it below 130.

Based on the previous batches I'm looking at another 45 minutes minimum before it's down to a reasonable pitching temperature (~75F). It isn't helping that my tap water is coming in at 78F

It's totally possible to do a full volume boil without it but my next purchase is going to be a wort chiller.

On my first full boils before I had a wort chiller I was able to chill it reasonably quickly. Looking at my notes the first time it took 40 minutes to get down to 82F, the second time it took 16 minutes to get to 90F, after that I used a chiller.

What I did was set my aluminum pot with lid on in one of those cube coolers with the spigot open on the bottom. Then I stuck the garden hose in the cooler and adjusted the flow so as much water was going in as was coming out. IIRC I had stuck the hose through the handle of the cooler so the water was circulating around the cooler.

I'm sure I could have cooled it quicker if I had stirred inside the pot during the process, but I didn't know any better at the time

YooperBrew said:

I don't agree at all- even with a wort chiller, it takes 30 minutes to chill 5.25 gallons of boiling wort. You'd have to have a way to lift a boiling hot pot FULL of boiling wort into an ice bath without scalding yourself, also. I don't see how it's possible to do this in 30 minutes.

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I don't know about you but I don't chill my wort while the pot is sitting on the turkey fryer. I bring it into the kitchen and then run my chiller in there. If he has cooking mits and has the ice bath ready to go then all he would have to do is take his pot from the fryer and put it directly in the ice bath.

Before I went to a 10 gallon pot I would ice bath 4.5 gallons of wort every weekend in my double sink with a 6 gallon pot. I got the temps down to 70-72 within 15 - 20 minutes consistently. I would go back and forth in each sink for the first 75 degrees and then it stayed in one sink until it was done. If you are gently stirring your wort and stirring the ice bath in opposite directions you dramatically increase your effeciency in temp drop.

With the use of salt it makes the ice last that much longer. If he had a tub and followed this method of active stirring and salt in the bath he is going to be able to do it. My own experience tells me that he can. Now if he is not capable of moving the pot then all bets are off.

What really stinks about all of this is that because I can't ice bath my pot in the sink anymore I have to use the chiller. Takes me about 10 or 15 minutes longer with the chiller.


EDIT: This was done with an aluminum pot. Better for conduction than SS

devaspawn said:

I don't know about you but I don't chill my wort while the pot is sitting on the turkey fryer. I bring it into the kitchen and then run my chiller in there. If he has cooking mits and has the ice bath ready to go then all he would have to do is take his pot from the fryer and put it directly in the ice bath.

Before I went to a 10 gallon pot I would ice bath 4.5 gallons of wort every weekend in my double sink with a 6 gallon pot. I got the temps down to 70-72 within 15 - 20 minutes consistently. I would go back and forth in each sink for the first 75 degrees and then it stayed in one sink until it was done. If you are gently stirring your wort and stirring the ice bath in opposite directions you dramatically increase your effeciency in temp drop.

With the use of salt it makes the ice last that much longer. If he had a tub and followed this method of active stirring and salt in the bath he is going to be able to do it. My own experience tells me that he can. Now if he is not capable of moving the pot then all bets are off.

What really stinks about all of this is that because I can't ice bath my pot in the sink anymore I have to use the chiller. Takes me about 10 or 15 minutes longer with the chiller.


EDIT: This was done with an aluminum pot. Better for conduction than SS

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Thanks for the explanation- that makes perfect sense to me now! I was thinking about the boiling hot SS pot, and how to try to get it in an ice bath and cool it so quickly, but I can see how that would work.

I don't recirculate with a pump, that's in the plan for next year, but with a WC and cold tap water, it still takes me nearly 30 minutes to go from 212 to 65 degrees. When I did ice baths, even doing partial boils, it took twice that long- so I wasn't able to see how it would work for a 5 gallon batch. Again, thanks for the details- that helps alot!

I just reread my first sentence and realized it came off smarmy. If you took it that way I am sorry. I actually have considered chilling directly on top of the turkey fryer with the hose connected to my wort chiller in the winter so assumed that others might already do that.

lol im a big strong guy, so lifting a pot w/ some good mitts isn't really a problem for me. I know i WILL eventually get a chiller, but i just didnt want that to be the ONLY thing keeping me from brewing, thats all..thanks for the info guys.

YooperBrew said:

I don't agree at all- even with a wort chiller, it takes 30 minutes to chill 5.25 gallons of boiling wort. You'd have to have a way to lift a boiling hot pot FULL of boiling wort into an ice bath without scalding yourself, also. I don't see how it's possible to do this in 30 minutes.

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its possible. i have a huge steel basket ( i think its for putting ice and drinkns in it...i don't even know). but i use ten punds of ice and water and it chilled 5 gallons in 30 minutes. I put the wort in the ice bath. went and took a shower....came back and it was at 75 farenheit. But if you can't lift a pot of 5 gallons of water then i guess you should get a wort chiller....But for those who can..there is no need for one

Safety was the #1 goal for me. IMO burns are the worst injury to have within reason. Even for a big strong guy that's a lot of weight that tends to slosh and is in general bulky.

Then there is the laziness factor of just turning on the tap vs lifting crap.

Mike

well we're talking about an outside setup. id only have to move it from the propane burner to an already prepared ice bath, directly underneath it...no sloshing really.

What's the maximum time one can still have for cooling and still get a "cold break"?
BTW:
I use a large tub (3'x4'x0.5') put it out in the yard on an incline with the pot in it and run hose water into the tube. The incline creates a flow and cools the pot off pretty quickly (but we have really cold tap water here).

My CFC chills 5.25 gal in about 16 minutes. The higher you have your intake and the lower you have the output, the faster the wort flows. This requires me to lift 5 gallons of boiling wort to a shelf that's about 5ft high. That's always a slightly nerve-racking step in the procedure.

is it possible to use those blue ice packs, if they were sterilized, to float around in the wort to help speed things up? or i was thinking a frozen and sterilized gallon of water.

As long as it's sterilized real good. As a matter of fact, at my last club meeting, one of the guys brought a one gallon tall slim Pet bottle that is used in the food service industry for cooling large kettles of soup. Says it take 2 hours to bring down to 75 degrees without active cooling and in larger than 10 gallon pots. I wouldn't use the cold packs just because they have a potential of leaking nasties into your brew. Go with a well cleaned milk jug. I actually plan on trying this method this weekend. Gonna use a half gallon jug with ice this weekend in concert with my wort chiller and stirring.

Certainly it can wait. But figure how much 20# of ice will set you back for each batch and what happens when you run out of ice and your wort is still 100F? I suspect you'll want a chiller.

my first batch i used an ice bath and it took hours so there is no way your going to bring the temp down far enough and quick enough without risking infection. i have an immersion chillier and i stir with the chiller and it takes about 20-25 min to cool, then i put the carboy in a cooler with 5 inches of water and a frozen gatorade bottle covered by a wet t-shirt and pretty much does the trick. also if you are going to have it exposed for any extended period of time, the foam stoppers that generally come with yeast starter kits are a good means of protection.

any thoughts on this?

ebay wort chiller

I had the great idea of siphoning my hot wort through a sink full of ice water in into my carboy. I went from 200F down to 170F and managed to melt my auto siphon (think ) in the process. I then resorted to placing the carboy into one half of a double sink with cold tap water overflowing to the other half for about 1 hour. I think if I had like 30 more feet of tubing and the sink space to do it, this method might just be feasible.

A proper wort chiller is my next purchase (after a new auto siphon that is).

Terje

americanweirdo said:

any thoughts on this?

ebay wort chiller

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I'll stick with my copper one. SS is good in that it's tough and not easily bendable but copper has a much higher rate of conductivity. I'm also a little worried about the effective cooling area of that particular one but it's hard to tell from a photo. I would have preferred a total length of tubing used, judging by the dimensions it's not enough.

Having said that, just measured my copper one and it's about 7.5" wide and 7.5" high (when I compress the coil) so all things considered probably very similar. If it's cheap then it's probably worth a punt.

I did a few AG batches without a wort chiller and it sucks. I just did my first batch with my 50 foot chiller today and I am in LOVE!

BuffaloSabresBrewer said:

I did a few AG batches without a wort chiller and it sucks. I just did my first batch with my 50 foot chiller today and I am in LOVE!

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Ditto. I did the ice bath for a while, then made a chiller out of 1/4" copper tubing. When I made the move to 10 gallon batches, I also needed to make a chiller out of 50' of 1/2" tubing. For me, batch time is important, so I am willing to spend more $ on the chiller and burner btu. It is sure nice to get 10 gallons down to pitching temps in under 20 minutes. I am currently considering a plate chiller, but I siphon out of my boil keggle rather than pump. If I add a pick-up mechanism to my keggle, I will probably get a plate chiller, too.

It really cut my batch time down by more than I can really count. Cooling will take a long time in an ice bath and its a huge PITA. It can be done but it only takes 1 batch to see how annoying it is without a chiller. Defiantly one of the best investments Ive made in the brewery.

like i said, its really not by choice. i prefer to do things right, and as efficiently as possible, but after already investing:

cooler...30.00
tun conversion parts....25.00
turkey fryer.....40.00
ingredients/misc supplies...50.00

i'm sure you can see why i'm trying to wait on the wort chiller...its getting harder to justify purchases to my wife LOL. I'm not a rich man, so dropping 150.00 on somethign isnt really a luxury i usually have...and adding another 50.00 to it to make it 200.00 spent on one paycheck triggers my guilt reflex.

As they say you have to pay to play. I'm actually thrilled with how cheap this hobby is. Most of my hobbies are really expensive so it takes a long time to get where you want to be.

Mike

never said it was expensive...coming from activities such as cello/violin where a good instrument runs you in the thousands, and japanese sword arts, where a good contemporary (i'm not even talking about japanese) sword can still run you a couple thousand dollars, and winemaking, where everything labeled "wine" automatically gets jacked up 20000% over cost...this by far is the cheapest.

but that doesnt mean that i'm not a working man, that needs to prioritize the money spent to avoid conflict in my house. most of my big purchases for other hobbies/activities are saved for over months and months, before i buy them. 200.00 in one paycheck = not the norm, and big enough to cause waves.

some of us are able to spend more money than others, plain and simple.

A chiller is one of the most important pieces of the brewery you could have. It allows for proper cold break, reduces the chance of infection due to decreased cooling times before lidding it, shortens your brewday, each reason worth the expense of the chiller. Its a one time purchase. If you buy 20-30 lbs of ice for each brew, the chiller will have paid for itself in about 10 brews, and you get the other chiller benefits. Just my humble opinion.

My own experience is that the wort chiller hasn't been this holy grail that everyone speaks of.

I have yet to get a brew down to pitching temps with mine. I know that is due to h20 temps out of the faucet and not the chiller, but it is still my experience.

I've had to resort to wort chiller + emergency ice bath in order to get down to pitching temps each time.

I tell you this so you are aware that while a wort chiller is important to have, in the summer it may not be quite enough to get the job done.

good to know..thats what i was trying to find out. if i put down the money for a wort chiller now, i have no guarantee that i wont need a pump to run ice water through it as well. My water runs warm in the summer..probably around 70-80 degrees...so i figured that would put a huge damper on it as well..one big enough maybe that i can wait a little bit to get one, since i cant afford anymore modifications after that, if i did buy it.

i'll play it by ear, ill see how this batch goes this weekend using an icebath, and sanitized frozen water bottles, in the wort.

can those water bottle/soda bottles withstand the heat?

Summertime cooling can indeed be tricky, but a $20 submersible pond pump from Lowe's/HD and recirculating ice water will make your life so much easier. My groundwater runs about the same as yours does in the summer (70-80) so I use my usual IC set up with the garden hose for the first 5 minutes or so to get my wort down to about 100-120, then switch to the submersible pump setup. I get down into the 60s in about 5 minutes after the switch. The result is a solid cold break and nice clear wort.

when you syphon or drain into your carboy try keeping the carboy in a plastic tub with some ice water for a small time before filling so that the empty glass is chilled a bit and still chills as the liquid fills it. also if you aerate slowly into the carboy all of the above should help chill faster.

flyangler18 said:

Summertime cooling can indeed be tricky, but a $20 submersible pond pump from Lowe's/HD and recirculating ice water will make your life so much easier. My groundwater runs about the same as yours does in the summer (70-80) so I use my usual IC set up with the garden hose for the first 5 minutes or so to get my wort down to about 100-120, then switch to the submersible pump setup. I get down into the 60s in about 5 minutes after the switch. The result is a solid cold break and nice clear wort.

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This BTW works really well for me. I bought a cheap submersible pump from Harbor Freight. I like the idea too because you use much less water and if you plan ahead and make your own ice for the pump reservoir, you don't pay for the big bag of ice. The pump I bought is also ok for use in salt water.

I'm about to get a wort chiller and am interested to see what kind of difference it makes. I have a 2.5 bushel bucket that I use to cool the wort. Ice is free thanks to my buddy who's a firefighter. For some reason, they have a restaurant-style ice machine in the fire house.

Anyway, with that bucket, some salt and whirlpooling I can get a full boil down to 80 in about 15 minutes. I then use the melted ice as a bath for my primary to keep fermentation temps where they need to be.

Wort chiller will be employed soon using the garden hose water. For some reason, that water runs far cooler than my tap water.

I could always beat my ic with an ice bath. I have a huge laundry tub in my garage and collected free ice from my ice maker a week or two in advance. I would fill it with ice, top with water, and plop the turkey fryer right in, it would sink within 3 to 4 inches of the top. Could easily cool to fermenting temps in 20 to 25 minutes. If I didn't go to a bigger pot I would still be using ice baths. No hoses to hookup, not wasting near as much water, sometimes simpler is better.

wildwest450 said:

No hoses to hookup, not wasting near as much water, sometimes simpler is better.

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True that. The only issue is my buddy having to run out during the boil to grab the ice. I have nowhere to easily store 2.5 bushels of ice.