Using a wind chill of -5 to chill wort

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BierMuncher

...My Junk is Ugly...
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I'm brewing my Black Pearl Porter today and I'm about to move the batch to the burner in the garage. It is way to cold outside to run a garden hose to my wort chiller so I was wondering if anyone has had luck/experience setting the brew pot out in the frigid cold to cool down.

I plan on keeping lidded and stirring every 5-7 minutes or so.

Thoughts?
 
Seems like it should work. It might work better if you have a snowbank around.

- magno
 
I use stainless steel milker bucket as a fermenter, and I tried sitting it outside to chill in the winter weather.

It took forever...................I set it outside about seven in the evening, and I didn't pitch yeast until nearly midnight.

I don't think it will chill nearly fast enough, unless your bucket sits inside a water bath or ice water bath also.
 
Put it in a tub of SALT water. The salt will allow the water to get colder and will help chill it quicker.
 
I think cheesefood and jim are right... I've tried the air temp thing when I found that my chiller had a hole in it (from freezing). Even at those temps it's gonna take a long time-- heat transfer is a lot slower to air than it is to water.

-p
 
I stand corrected. We dont have that kind of problem much in Texas.
 
Looks like I'll have to split the batch after the boil and carry it downstairs to the work shop. Reassemble back into the brew pot and run my chiller out of my shop sink.
 
I've had some success with wort chilling in the cold and snow.

I've brewed outside in sub-zero weather and then put the brewpot in the snow. This, however, took a bit of work.

I have to pack the snow against the brewpot really, really well, and repack it every few minutes. And I stir often. It will work, if you keep at the snow and stirring. I can get my five-gallon batch down to pitching temp in 25-35 minutes usually. Be careful: the brewpot will sink through the snow and rest on the frozen ground (not a bad thing). But watch out that the the surrounding snow doesn't flip the pot's lid.

The lesson I learned: the cold air alone won't do it.

I did three batches using the snowbank wort chiller (since I didn't want to mess with hoses in these temps). Well, I gave in and got an immersion chiller. I'd rather haul in a pot of hot sub-boiling wort and use the immersion chiller at the kitchen sink. Still, though, there is something about putting on the Carhartt "wind bag" and brewing under the stars.

The salt water idea is excellent, though. I wish I'd tried that.

Good luck.
 
Air has a very low heat capacity, so unless you've got about 30 knots going, I suspect it will take a while. Wind chill is a measure of how cold it feels and factors in normal evaporation from your skin. Ideally, brew kettles don't sweat.
 
Get yourself a big plastic tub, maybe the kind with rope handles that a lot of people use to ice-cool half kegs. Fill it half way with water and then add some rock salt and leave it outside for a few hours. It should get to about 10-20dF without freezing. Then set your kettle in it being sure to stir (whirlpool) both the wort and cold water every once in a while. Of course use different spoons and make sure the one touching the wort is sanitized. It will take a little longer than running the chiller, but with that kind of differential, you should be good to go. You can also use the cold to create little ice bricks using empty coolwhip containers and such. As your tub water warms, dump a few of them in.

Bernie, yes I'm pretty sure most folks whirlpool the wort during immersion chilling. It cuts the cool time in half. I get under 90dF in less than 5 minutes if I whirlpool once before running the water. It spins for a while after so I throw the cover on. As long as your spoon is sanitized (I leave it in the boil for the last couple minutes), no problem.
 
I tried cooling a split batch in the snowbank about a month ago. It doesn't work worth a darn. There isn't enough surface area on the pot the transfer heat from the beer. I put snow on the lids to help speed things up. Then when I lifted the lids a bit of water ran into the brew ! My beer became infected.

I'm brewing a half batch tonight. I'm using my immersion chiller to cool it.
 
By the way, you can still use your IC if you get yourself a cheap pond/aquarium pump. Then you can bring a bucket of icewater to your pot instead of worrying about your frozen outdoor spigot. This cools incredibly fast too.
 
used the wind today do to sheer laziness, in not wanting to either sanitize the wort chiller, nor even walk down the stairs to get it to drop it in the boil, i tossed the six gallons of steaming wort out back and let the sub arctic wind act as my ghettoist of chillers. it took four hours from boiling down to 70.

i don't think anything grew in there infection wise, it's pretty cold in cleveland, and the top of the pot froze up... i thought about retrieving a tote box and filling it with cold water after hour two, but see above paragraph about not even wanting to sanitize the chiller ;)
 
Most of us sanitize the chiller by dropping it in the pot during the boil. That is as easy as it gets. You don't get much cold break during a 4 hour cooling, but if it works for you, go for it.
 
From reading the rest of this thread, I'd say the oversize tub of salt water, set out early to get cold. Maybe the day before? Then, allow the wort to air cool slowly to about 160-170, since that is still too hot to get bugs started. The "danger zone" is usually qouted as 40 to 140. Then, once it aircools, you'll want to slip it into what we hope is ice water for rapid cooling into the danger zone, where yeast will go nuts...
 
I have used the tote tub/icewater method for my last 3 brews.
A month ago when the temp was around -5*f I set 20 gal of water with a cup of salt out when I started the AG process. After I started mashing and pretty much in between each step ( after I moved to lauter tun, before 2nd batch sparge, at start of boil) i went outside and sloshed the solution around to keep it from freezing. By the time I had finished the boil, the water had made a nice salty slushy. Cooled the wort from boiling to 50df in about 45 minutes with a stir at about 20.

This last batch, I brought the tote inside when I started brewing (still frozen solid) and put them in the shower to thaw. At the end of the boil, they were half water/half ice and I saw similar cooling times.

-e
 
Bobby_M said:
By the way, you can still use your IC if you get yourself a cheap pond/aquarium pump. Then you can bring a bucket of icewater to your pot instead of worrying about your frozen outdoor spigot. This cools incredibly fast too.
I second that - I ran this setup for my last batch and was at pitching temp in about 20 minutes, even though the pump didn't come close to the flow rate of a hose hook-up from outside. Next time i'll salt the water and really get 'er going.
 
Why don't you just get an adapter for your sink so you can hook a hose up to it? You might already have one if you use a bottle washer. Run the hose to your garage. Run the waste hose back to a sink or outside.

Pray for the mercy and patience of your wife/fiancé.
 
How much wort are we talking about here? My girlfriend did a partial mash last Saturday evening. We set the (tightly covered, no stirring) brewpot w/ ~3 gals. of wort outside on her porch where the actual air temp. was -1oF! After an hour, it had small ice chunks in it!:eek:
 
Ruy Lopez said:
Why don't you just get an adapter for your sink so you can hook a hose up to it? You might already have one if you use a bottle washer. Run the hose to your garage. Run the waste hose back to a sink or outside.

Pray for the mercy and patience of your wife/fiancé.
That would certainly be the most practical way to go - my faucet is just configured so the threads are set too deep for the adapter to reach and I haven't found a properly threaded, thin-walled extension that'll fit. FWIW it's a Moen pull-out with an integrated sprayer, hence the funky configuration. Believe me, I've considered plumbing in an auxilliary cold-water feed for just this purpose!
 
It's bitter cold here in the Chicago area so what I do is hook a garden hose to my laundry tub faucet and run the hose up my basement stairs to my CFC and chill my wort that way.
 
I'd do what ere it takes to get yr system working the way youre used to. Tahtr would mean putting the hose somewhere warm until you plunck the innersion shiller in and them make a run for it.
Slowly chilled wert ... a host of flavor and clarity issues.
Come to think about it you could chill yr wert with hot water! - then when all is under control, got back to the faucts and turn from hot to cold to finish the cooling
 
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