Cooling wort , my idea

Okay so I normally put my pot into a big tub full of ice water , about 3 bags of ice . I decided this was not as easy as it could be so I came up with a new idea .
Anyone have any thoughts on this let me know .
I took one small bag of ice and put it in the tub with water and then took one more bag of ice and put it in a sanitized kitchen trash bag . Put that right in the wort . cooled it down much quicker and easier I think and more to the proper temp without any stirring to make it even .
you may want to use a dirty trash bag if you want some trashy beer for your trashy friends. You know , the ones your wife and mother hate .

I'd be concerned with putting a plastic bag into almost-boiling hot liquid - sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. I'd also be concerned with sanitizing the bag thoroughly. Lastly, I'm not sure garbage bag plastic is food grade, so I'd want to keep it as far from my beer as possible.

I'd stick with your original method or get/build an immersion chiller.

MarcusKillion said:

Okay so I normally put my pot into a big tub full of ice water , about 3 bags of ice . I decided this was not as easy as it could be so I came up with a new idea .
Anyone have any thoughts on this let me know .
I took one small bag of ice and put it in the tub with water and then took one more bag of ice and put it in a sanitized kitchen trash bag.

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In theory this would work - my concerns would be as follows:
A) A leak in the trash bag watering down your beer
B) Plastic flavors/ nasty chemicals leaching from the bag if it isn't food safe at high temps.

It sounds viable If you used a food safe drum liner that was BPA free and water tight

I saw a thread on here not long ago where the guy cooled his wort by dumping ice directly in it. Ice made from boiled or purified water and in sanitized ice trays that were covered in the freezer so no bad stuff could fall/migrate into it. He had it down to a pretty simple procedure.

for what you are paying in ice and bags you could build an immersion chiller. if you dont know how check out the DIY section. but i would not put plastic in my beer. it will really jack it up. the best thing to do IMHO is run a counterflow chiller if you keep it clean. if you need help with making a chiller pm me, i can make you one and send it to you for cost rather than you possibly having some nasty chemicals in your brew.

I have boiled a gallon of water, cooled it and froze it in a sanitized plastic pitcher, then allowed it to melt a little while brewing so it would slide out when ready. I put the block directly in the cooling wort. Works well.

There's a better way of using your ice. Fill the sink with tap water first and put your pot in that, no ice. The temp difference is going to be plenty to transfer tons of heat into the water. Once the wort has cooled enough where you're not quickly warming up the water, then use all of your ice and just enough water to cover it. No need to put plastic in your beer!

Before I got my wort chiller I would get a bottle of distilled water from the supermarket and freeze it the night before brew day. When I got done with my boil I would cut the bottle off of the huge icecube and drop it into the wort. Seemed to work pretty well.

NateLTB said:

Before I got my wort chiller I would get a bottle of distilled water from the supermarket and freeze it the night before brew day. When I got done with my boil I would cut the bottle off of the huge icecube and drop it into the wort. Seemed to work pretty well.

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In theory, packaged water should at least be sanitary (particularly distilled) but it may not have been packaged under sanitary conditions. I've never known anybody to have trouble with topping off with water, even from the taps, and I would expect packaged water to be at least as clean as tap water (90% of it really IS just tap water- look for 'bottled from municipal sources.' Almost every bottle has that.) and freezing it just helps your odds even more.

...says the guy who opened his first ever gusher bottle in front of all his coworkers today, after not having a single infection in the years he's been brewing.

Too many people on here trying to re-invent the wheel. It is what it is. You gotta either ice bath it or use some sort of chiller.

you really want it cold you can do one of two things. fill a cooler with ice water and a pump. pump ice water through the IC. that will get it cooler faster. or my personal favorite, pump ice water through a ic into a CFC! might get it so cold you will have to heat it up to pitch the yeast! LOL when the water temp is 85 here in the summer i place my old ic into a bucket of ice water and run the ground water through that to cool it down prior to going into the cfc. i have done the swamp bath and it just makes things more humid in my basement than i need.

Adding ice to wort is fine if you are needing to top up an extract batch. Not so good if you are boiling a full batch.

I'd probably be leery of using any plastic not food grade or designed for high heat. If water conservation is not a big concern, an Immersion Chiller is not expensive or hard to build. If water is a concern, there are lots of people who do No Chill brewing and like it.

I'd probably choose one of those two options over plastic bags.

abarker8541 said:

Too many people on here trying to re-invent the wheel. It is what it is. You gotta either ice bath it or use some sort of chiller.

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*cough* No chill brewing. *cough*

Chia said:

you really want it cold you can do one of two things. fill a cooler with ice water and a pump. pump ice water through the IC. that will get it cooler faster. or my personal favorite, pump ice water through a ic into a CFC! might get it so cold you will have to heat it up to pitch the yeast! LOL when the water temp is 85 here in the summer i place my old ic into a bucket of ice water and run the ground water through that to cool it down prior to going into the cfc. i have done the swamp bath and it just makes things more humid in my basement than i need.

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If you REALLY want it cold, chill some acetone with dry ice then pump the acetone through the immersion chiller. You should be able to hit -40. Enjoy your wort-sicle!

Plate chiller or immersion chiller, and honestly, you're done. It's just not THAT expensive, and it's so much easier as to be entirely silly.

Chia said:

for what you are paying in ice and bags you could build an immersion chiller. if you dont know how check out the DIY section. but i would not put plastic in my beer. it will really jack it up. the best thing to do IMHO is run a counterflow chiller if you keep it clean. if you need help with making a chiller pm me, i can make you one and send it to you for cost rather than you possibly having some nasty chemicals in your brew.

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I know how to make it . I just thought this would work so I tried it. I was a bit concerned about the heat and the plastic bag. Am hoping no bad tastes come from it . Should have thought out that chemical leaching a bit better .
thanks for the reply and offer of help

camiller said:

If you REALLY want it cold, chill some acetone with dry ice then pump the acetone through the immersion chiller. You should be able to hit -40. Enjoy your wort-sicle!

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Acetone do get cold . Now about that acetone and dry ice ...just what have you been up to lately ? ..don't answer that .

dougdecinces said:

*cough* No chill brewing. *cough*

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I was in a hurry . then I thought .... What would Jesus do ? I better ask ...

I hope you didn't use the kind of trash bag that has scent to mask the garbage odor. I've done similar things with good success, though. I used to put sterile water in food safe, heat safe plastic jugs and freeze it. Then before using, I'd sanitize the jugs in iodophor solution and put it in the kettle. Never had any problems and cooled the wort much faster than the ice bath alone. Still, a chiller is the way to go if doing full boils.

ElyIrishBrew said:

I saw a thread on here not long ago where the guy cooled his wort by dumping ice directly in it. Ice made from boiled or purified water and in sanitized ice trays that were covered in the freezer so no bad stuff could fall/migrate into it. He had it down to a pretty simple procedure.

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I see no reason why this would not be good . got to put water in it any way . Sanitized water is a waste of time for the ice cubes as normally you would just use tap water to any way .

Use a bag of ice from the store . Just as pure if not better than your water in the sink . I bet one could just melt a bag down and measure it and get it right on spot for lowering temp to the right amount with a bit of practice with some hot water instead of wort .

ProfessorPlum said:

I hope you didn't use the kind of trash bag that has scent to mask the garbage odor. I've done similar things with good success, though. I used to put sterile water in food safe, heat safe plastic jugs and freeze it. Then before using, I'd sanitize the jugs in iodophor solution and put it in the kettle. Never had any problems and cooled the wort much faster than the ice bath alone. Still, a chiller is the way to go if doing full boils.

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I used to just let it sit in the tub with cold water in it until it cooled down in about 45 minutes or so and that always worked just fine until I read that it should be done quicker for some reason . But my beer always tasted great to me .
I built a wort chiller and a mash tun today . Come summer time I think I will use a pump and a cooler of ice water for the chiller instead of tap water .
got the mash tun because I decided to try some AG to see if it tastes better than partial . Sure cost more .

ElyIrishBrew said:

I saw a thread on here not long ago where the guy cooled his wort by dumping ice directly in it. Ice made from boiled or purified water and in sanitized ice trays that were covered in the freezer so no bad stuff could fall/migrate into it. He had it down to a pretty simple procedure.

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Haha. I just dump in store bought ice. No problems and no purified water and sanitized ice trays, too lazy

Obviously only works for partial boils though.

ElyIrishBrew said:

I saw a thread on here not long ago where the guy cooled his wort by dumping ice directly in it. Ice made from boiled or purified water and in sanitized ice trays that were covered in the freezer so no bad stuff could fall/migrate into it. He had it down to a pretty simple procedure.

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Read this too and thought it a good idea IF you have to top off your wort.

I would never use a trash bag, even if it was some crazy lab grade one. However your technique us sound, and adding some kind of cooling factors to the wort it self works very well.

What I would do is go buy 3 or 4 Nalgene bottles and use those. Fill them 3/4 of the way with water, cap them an throw them in the freezer. Then you could just spray them or dunk them in Star San and put them in the hot wort.

Nalgene bottles will not leach chemical even at boiling temps, and they can take boiling water, so the will stand up to boiling, or near boiling wort.

TapeDeck said:

Plate chiller or immersion chiller, and honestly, you're done. It's just not THAT expensive, and it's so much easier as to be entirely silly.

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Not really...when tap water is warm...niether of the above are done...for this reason I still use a big ass tub / swamp cooler and about 10, 2 liter frozen soda bottles.

BTW, I do have a immersion chiller, but to use it and only chill to around 80 in the summer means I still have to introduce ice, so I just do that on a larger scale and do something once rather than twice. I have a full size fridge / freezer so freezer space is a plenty to make quantities of ice.

mewithstewpid said:

Haha. I just dump in store bought ice. No problems and no purified water and sanitized ice trays, too lazy

Obviously only works for partial boils though.

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I used the wort cooler and it was okay . Would work well this winter but in summer I see it as a waste of time as ice in tub would do better unless i bought a pump for ice water.
I never sanitze water for any reason as it is obviously a waste of time since when doing partial mash you use tap water to top off . Never heard of anyone boiling that 3 1/2 gallons of water .
personally i think with partial i will resort to dumping ice straight in the wort . One measurement of volume of a bag melted would be sufficient .

MarcusKillion said:

Acetone do get cold . Now about that acetone and dry ice ...just what have you been up to lately ? ..don't answer that .

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In my other life I'm a computer geek. Acetone and dry ice is a trick that used to be used by overclockers to achieve some really crazy overclocks.

Easiest way I found to cool wort is buy a 5 gallon bucket, fill it water and an ounce of StarSan, then freeze it. On brew day dump the 5 gallon StarSan ice bock into your brew kettle and the wort will cool VERY fast. Be warned though you will need at least a 15 gallon kettle to do this though. Now I just gotta figure out why my beers are so thin, watery, and acidic




LOL, just kidding of course. Immersion chiller is really the way to step up from ice baths. Can't believe anyone actually adds ice directly to their beer as some have commented.


Rev.

camiller said:

In my other life I'm a computer geek. Acetone and dry ice is a trick that used to be used by overclockers to achieve some really crazy overclocks.

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Spark + Acetone = no PC

MarcusKillion said:

I used the wort cooler and it was okay . Would work well this winter but in summer I see it as a waste of time as ice in tub would do better unless i bought a pump for ice water.
I never sanitze water for any reason as it is obviously a waste of time since when doing partial mash you use tap water to top off . Never heard of anyone boiling that 3 1/2 gallons of water .
personally i think with partial i will resort to dumping ice straight in the wort . One measurement of volume of a bag melted would be sufficient .

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8# ice =1 gallon

I start my boil with 4, end up with between 3-3.5, and cool using 16# store bought ice to equal 5-5.5 gallons total.

Not to stir the pot (pun intended), but after poo-pooing the OP's idea, I ended up doing it. Had the BIAB recipe go bad in double parallel brew session over the holiday. After a 90 minute soak, the hydrometer read 1.025 (probably due to yo-yo temperature SNAFU). I had to use all the spare DME in the house to get up to a reasonable OG.

Long story short I was so fed up by the end that I dumped the brew over the top of some store-bought ice. Grains were old, hops were old, the starter was ready and I was leaving town the next morning so i figured "'eff it."

That was 3 weeks ago and the beer isn't noticeably infected *yet.* It also isn't awful. I plan on dubbing it "Botched BIAB Bitter" and seeing how long it lasts - will report back.

First off I think people are far too paranoid about infections . What is going to infect your beer ? Ice ? Store bought ice is not infected with anything . It is frozen commercially and nothing much can survive that . Besides most people use water to make their beer I would guess unless you have some special chemical the rest of us do not know about . Do you know how many things are in that water ? Lots .
I am thinking infections are most likely the result of mold spores or similar getting in the brew. The air in a home is contaminated with a huge amount of this kind of stuff yet infections are rare .
Now I would definitely not drop a bag of ice in my beer. Who knows who touched that bag with what nasty on their hands . The ice is most likely much better than your tap water . The bag I would put in another bag that I had sanitized .