first batch was Friday night

Ok, just figured I'd post... I started a few weeks back with a Mr. Beer, turned out terrible. So I figured I'd jump right into the real homebrew. I did however mix up some Apfelwein directly onto the Mr Beer yeast cake and its doing very well.


So, I picked up a kit (fermenting bucket, bottling bucket, and all the fixins). Brewed up a Brown Ale extract with specialty grains. The house smelled wonderful, the only issue I ran into was getting the wort temp down to pitchable.

Would it be ok to freeze a gallon of water, then sanitize the bottle and use it to cool the wort down? I boiled 2 gallons, and had three almost frozen gallons of bottled water for the remainder of the wort. But it just didn't cool down fast enough.

Anyway, its bubbling away very well... had good activity by Saturday morning (probably earlier), slowed down a bit, but I swirled it and it picked back up.


Already got big plans for the next batch (barleywine)....


addicting to say the least

I don't see a problem with using a sanitized bottle of frozen water. My only concern would be scratches in the surface, etc. that don't get sanitized well.

Did you put your pot in ice water to help it cool down quicker as well? Before I got my wort chiller, friends and I could get 3 gallons of water down to pitchable temp pretty quick with a sink full of water and ice. I still use this method to cool the wort for my starters. I think a sink of ice water and some ice cold water to give you the rest of your volume would get the wort cold quick.

Yep, sink full of ice water, and don't forget to stir! I can take ~3 gallons to 95F in about 15-20 minutes with a sink full of ice water and stirring. I thought about putting frozen sanitized bottles into the wort, but decided that it wasn't worth the risk of melting the plastic or infecting the beer. With enough stirring, the temperature came down fast enough to satisfy me.

I didn't have any bagged ice on hand (poor planning), but I put it in the tub with cold water... brought it down slowly, but after having a few Bigfoots, I was getting a bit jumpy with my process. Grabbed the frozen bottle, sanitized, and gave it a dunk... brought the temp down really quickly! Pitched and it seems to be going well. I'll try not to have to do this in the future.

I'll give it two more weeks then bottle and save the yeast cake for the barleywine recipe I'm eyeing up....


The extra three gallons of water that I had to add, was actually nearly frozen, as there were some chunks of ice, I put the water in the freezer just as I was starting to boil.

Thanks for the advice... this forum has been a huge help making the transition to brewing...