Cooled my wort too much...

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cwb124

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A homebrew guy I know says he dumps his wort in a the primary that already ice cubes in it bought from the store. So I dumped 2 8lb bags of ice in the primary and poured my boiling wort over it.

Well...the temperature got down to ~52 degrees almost immediately. I know a cold break is good, but is that too low? I am now waiting for the cubes to all melt and hit 70 degrees before throwing in the yeast.

Will I see any problems from this?
 
It doesn't hurt the beer to have it cool too much. First time I used my plate chiller I got down to 54 degrees. I waited about an hour for it to creep up to 64 and pitched my yeast.

However, in the future, I wouldn't pour wort over the ice. Ice you buy from a store is generally considered unsanitary and could lead to an infection.
 
wow! I just asked almost this same question a few minutes ago in another forum.

I have been using ice as well and it has been working for me.. just not as much as you have, only about 1/3 bag. I have had no adverse effects, but I think I am going to make my own wort chiller next weekend, and pump ice water through it, rather than adding ice directly to the wort.
 
What I've done in the past is boiled, then cooled and frozen water in a sanitized gallon jug and chucked that into the hot wort to cool it. By chuck it in, I mean cut the crap out of the jug and dropped that into the hot wort.

PeteOz, you're cheating on us with another forum? We thought we were special! :p
 
I pitched over ice for months and got away with it. That is how it was taught at the LHBS. I have a chiller now.
 
What I've done in the past is boiled, then cooled and frozen water in a sanitized gallon jug and chucked that into the hot wort to cool it. By chuck it in, I mean cut the crap out of the jug and dropped that into the hot wort.
Click to expand...
I didn't boil, but would freeze store-bought gallon jugs of drinking water. When time to add I would sanitize a knife and the outside of the jug (Star San) and, as mentioned here, cut the plastic jug away and drop the block of ice into the hot wort in the brew pot. Did so a couple of times and didn't have a problem, but have since bought a chiller.

Rick
 
I see how ice is apparently unsafe due to possible infection and i have never done it, but thinking back on it...

A lot of people here just end up filling up their primary to the 5 gallon mark using store bought water right out of the jug. I would imagine that the water thats used to make store bought ice is the same "quality" water thats being put into plastic jugs for us to consume.

Also, wouldn't freezing the water kill off any harmful bacteria in the water?
 
Chello said:
I would imagine that the water thats used to make store bought ice is the same "quality" water thats being put into plastic jugs for us to consume.

Also, wouldn't freezing the water kill off any harmful bacteria in the water?
Click to expand...

If you ever saw the scummy slime that grows in a commercial ice machine, you would probably never use ice again! Ice machines are inspected by local Health Departments and are consistently dinged on the report for the unsanitary conditions. Ice companies are a notch above restaurants about cleaning their equipment but not by much.

BTW, heat kills most bacteria, cold just slows most of it down.
 
rickylr said:
I didn't boil, but would freeze store-bought gallon jugs of drinking water. When time to add I would sanitize a knife and the outside of the jug (Star San) and, as mentioned here, cut the plastic jug away and drop the block of ice into the hot wort in the brew pot. Did so a couple of times and didn't have a problem, but have since bought a chiller.

Rick
Click to expand...

+1..I do this. I use spring water and freeze it..Never had a problem.
 
Sorry folks, just a little picking of nits here: Beer does not become infected, it becomes contaminated. Infection is a term applied only to things with some sort of immune response such as plants or animals. I know that the term is commonly used but it is still wrong.
 
cwb124 said:
A homebrew guy I know says he dumps his wort in a the primary that already ice cubes in it bought from the store. So I dumped 2 8lb bags of ice in the primary and poured my boiling wort over it.

Well...the temperature got down to ~52 degrees almost immediately. I know a cold break is good, but is that too low? I am now waiting for the cubes to all melt and hit 70 degrees before throwing in the yeast.

Will I see any problems from this?[/quote
I've been freezing plastic gallon jugs and then breaking up the ice with a ice pick and cutting the jug away with a utility knife (ice goes in sink, not into the boil kettle.) Used 2 in the sink last week and got called to dinner and lost track of time. By the time I remembered about 30-40 min later the temp of the wort was down to 50 deg. I decided to warm back up on the stove to 70 deg before I dumped into the primary. Hope I didn't mess it up to bad because it was a Fat Tire with actual Fat Tire yeast. I'm trading for a wort chiller this week but the ice thing really works. I had 5 gal frozen in case I needed them but won't for the next brew.
Click to expand...
 
wait, none of you guys boil your ice before using to sanitize it?

always worked for me !

its like fried ice cream. sorta,
 
i remember an episode of "good eats" where alton brown uses the ice-in-the-primary method. i agree that it's not the safest method, but that indicates to me that it must work somewhat regularly for someone.

his argument was that store bought ice was "very clean." which of course means different things to different people, and depends on which ice and which store.

i used this method for my first batch (out of a total of four now) and as far as i could tell the beer wasn't contaminated. sure would be an awful way to lose a batch though. now i've got a wort chiller.

i'd also add that one should be very careful dumping near-boiling water into a fermenter.
 
Thought provoking:

"Benito Middle School student Jasmine Roberts examined the amount of bacteria in ice served at fast food restaurants. The 12-year-old compared the ice used in the drinks with the water from toilet bowls in the same restaurants. Jasmine said she found the results startling. “I thought there might be a little bacteria in the ice, but I never expected it to be this much,” she said. “And I never thought the toilet water would be cleaner.” Her discovery: Seventy percent of the time, the ice had more bacteria than the toilet water."

Yeah, granted, it was a study done by a 12 year old, but having worked in restaurants for quite some time, I believe it... some of those ice machines are gross... when I eat out, I always get water with no ice...
 

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