Pour over ice?

When pouring your boil into your primary is there anything wrong with pouring it over a bag of ice to get the temp down. Then get it exactly where you want by adding warm/cold top off water. I ask because I always see people talking about wort chillers, not this method.

Most folks with wort chillers are boiling their full size batch - so we can't add ice or water to it....

the problem with ice is that you cannot ensure its cleanliness

Alton Brown highly recommends this method in his Good Eats episode about homebrewing. It's been debated at length, and the consensus is generally negative. However, it's not a terrible technique. If it's the best you can do at the moment, it's certainly better than nothing at all.

JebCkr said:

When pouring your boil into your primary is there anything wrong with pouring it over a bag of ice to get the temp down. Then get it exactly where you want by adding warm/cold top off water. I ask because I always see people talking about wort chillers, not this method.

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I like to put the pot in the sink and put ice around the pot. After it cools most of the way down I add the cold water to top off. If your talking about pouring the wort over the ice bags you get from a gas station, I have to main concerns:
1) is the bag properly sanitized?
2) can the plastic stand up to the high temperatures?

Also, how do you pour it over the ice bag without spilling the wort everywhere? I think the ice bath method is better.


I'm assuming that your doing partial boil / extract batches. Wort chillers are more critical for full boil / all grain. So I don't think you need to rush out and get a wort chiller.

brian_g said:

I like to put the pot in the sink and put ice around the pot. After it cools most of the way down I add the cold water to top off. If your talking about pouring the wort over the ice bags you get from a gas station, I have to main concerns:
1) is the bag properly sanitized?
2) can the plastic stand up to the high temperatures?

Also, how do you pour it over the ice bag without spilling the wort everywhere? I think the ice bath method is better.

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LMAO! Funny, but you should put a or or at least a so we know you're joking.

dontman said:

LMAO! Funny, but you should put a or or at least a so we know you're joking.

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I wasn't joking. I thought he meant pour it over the bag. I figured if he meant adding ice to the wort, he would have said so.

Yes you could pour over the ice, however, like evryone else says, sanitation is an issue. To be safe, I would assume that manufactured ice is not the most sanitary form of frozen water.

IMHO it would be better to purchase some gallon jugs of drinking water (or distilled water) chill it in the fridge for a few hours, or better yet, over night, and use that very cold water as top-off water to get you to pitching temps.

Personally, I use an ice bath in the sink, and get my wort temps down into the low 100's, then I use chilled PUR filtered water that I keep in the fridge for at leat a day or two before brew day, to get into the high 60's mid 70's before pitching, it works well.

Two bags of ice for the bathing definitley gets me a better cold break, but one bag will work, however, with one bag the cold break will be a crap shoot. Sometimes you will get significant chill haze other times you won't just depends on how quick you get the temps down.

Good Luck!

I used to use bagged ice. When I was doing partial boils I would put 16 pounds (two gallons) of commercial ice right in my fermenter. Actually, the IPA that mademy dropdown used that system.

What I would do was pour out ofmy kettle into a waiting gallon of cold water in my bottling bucket, whirlpool that and then out the spigot onto teh ice in the fermenter.

I never got burnt, but it is a variable, and it could hurt a lot.

Be real careful to check your bags for tears, and for goodness sake use the self checkout so a careless clerk doesn't tear the bag open on some germ laden grocery store checkout lane thing.

I built a chiller for about $50, so now I put the chiller in the kettle with the store bought ice in the kitchen sink. I use a pond pump (seasonal department, Lowes/ Home Depot) to recuirculate the ice cold water in the sinkthrough the coil. Pump was ~$25, 20 feet of soft copper was ~$25.


Fifty bucks is fifty bucks, but it takes a variable out of my system.

Pics link: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/1391859-post33.html

Maiden voyage of my cooler will be either Monday or Tuesday, I worked this weekend; going after Mosher's Black Ship Pirate Stout as soon as I can get my work area clean.

I've heard that manufactured ice may not be the most sanitary. You'd want to watch out for that. I've used ice from boiled water made in a handful of sanitized food containers.

However, your best use of ice is after the wort has cooled down a bit. Use a cold-water bath in your sink for a bit, then after it chills down to low 100's or 90's, add the ice.

Ok, this is the way I do it.

I brew extract 6 gal batches with 3 gal boil.

Day before I boil 4 gal of water, let them get cold, sanitize 2 bottles (2 gal each) and put the water inside. At night I put both in the fridge (4º C) and when i wake up I put one of the two bottles inside the freezer (0º C).

That morning we start to brew and when it's time to chill the wort I just put the kettle in the sink with some tap water, I take the bottles out of the fridge and the freezer (this one has not formed ice yet but is almost 0 ºC), I put the water in the fermenter, take the wort from the sink (It has not been there for more than 2 minutes) and pour it over. Usually I get instantly 25-27 º C (77 - 80 ºF). More or less it takes ten minutes.

What do you thing of this method?

I just buy those 1 gallon jugs of water, and put 3 in the freezer and then when i brew i use the other two for the boil. Then I put the three cold ones in the sanitized fermenter when it's in ice water with salt, till i see the temp is down to 33-35 degrees, and poor the wort in. chills that mother down faster than a raccoon finding a shiny coin!

The bagged ice that you get from the supermarket is absolutely fine for chilling your wort. It goes through the same RO process as the bottled water.

Just make sure the bags are not torn up.

Although we are a relatively silent minority, there are many brewers on HBT who have been using this method for years with no problems.

Before I went full-boil, I always dumped bag of ice (carefully!) into my wort to cool it, and top off the volume. never had any problems.
sanitation is key.

I've made my won ice from brew-quality water in sanitized containers and tossed that in my wort while it's in the sink chilling. Lately I've just been putting half my top up water in the fridge the day before I brew. I chill the usual way in the sink until I'm down below 100, then the cold top-up water is enough to bring me to pitching temp.

I'm still playing around with how much water I need to put in the fridge though. The first time I did this I only had half my top up added when I was down to 60F, so I had to find some room-temp bottled water to finish up with.

Since my pot is 6 gallons, I tend to start with 5.5 gallons, boil down to 4-4.5, cool to 100 degrees or so in a cold water bath, and then top off with ice from a bag or made in a sanitized container. Hopefully since my wort chiller arrived today my next boil will be less trouble, but I don't see it being a total ice-free solution until winter arrives and my tap water turns frigid.

One thing to keep in mind when you do use top-off cooling like this is that ice will be far more effective than even near-freezing water. To avoid the long-winded scientific explanation, it takes more heat to turn 32 degree ice into 32 degree water than it takes to turn that same amount of 32 degree water into 60 or even 100 degree water. End result is that ice in your wort(or in your cold water bath) can drop your temperature much more than cold water. This means larger boils, less top-off, and quicker cooling.

This technique always gets knocked but I have never heard anyone actually have a problem from using ice.

This addiction is all about trial and error. It does work to get your wort down to pitching temp pretty quick. If you don't find that it adds any off flavors to your beers, then more power to you. Ask ten different people a question about what the best technique is and you're likely to get ten different answers.

When i started brewing, I would put a big bag of ice into my bottling bucket, and pour my partial boil directly onto it, and stir it like the dickens to make as big of a vortex as i could. after a 10min rest, I would let it go down the spigot to the primary fermenter and leave as much sediment as possible at the bottom of the bottling bucket. Every batch turned out just fine this way.

Now, I do an ice bath in the sink...
1: 4 cups of ice and cold water, when water is hot, drain
2: 4 cups of ice and cold water, when water is hot, drain
3: empty icemaker into sink and cold water.
Wort will reach 90deg within 30min with this method (about 3gal post boil) then top off with water to reach the desired temp (I have 3 jugs of filtered water on hand, 1room temp, 1@50deg, 1@34deg)

arturo7 said:

The bagged ice that you get from the supermarket is absolutely fine for chilling your wort. It goes through the same RO process as the bottled water.

Just make sure the bags are not torn up.

Although we are a relatively silent minority, there are many brewers on HBT who have been using this method for years with no problems.

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It's good to know people are having success with this method. I think my main concern would be the bags. They aren't air tight and they tear pretty easy.

I've made my own ice before. I've never boiled top off water. IMO, I think there are much greater sources of infection then the water. Just think about how many critters must be living in our kitchens from spilling wort in various places.

brian_g said:

I've made my own ice before.

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My ice comes from my icemaker, which passes through a built in brita filter. Same water i use for my brewing.

brian_g said:

I've made my own ice before. I've never boiled top off water. IMO, I think there are much greater sources of infection then the water. Just think about how many critters must be living in our kitchens from spilling wort in various places.

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Me too! In fact I've been making my own ice since well before I started brewing beer. I've got it down to a simple routine to the point where I only buy store bought ice once every couple years.

Joking aside. I think the fears of contamination from store bought ice are exaggerated. Beer is much hardier and resistant to infection than forums would make you think. I think it is a good way to get a very quick chill and cold break on wort.

What I did on my last brew (first non Mr. Beer, and first 5 gallon brew) was to clean, sanitize and fill a couple of gallon milk jugs with water. Put them in the freezer a few days before the brew day and use them in the fermenter before poring in the wort. With a 2.5 gallon boil, it only took one jug to lower the temp low enough. Everything seems to be fine. I bottled it last week, and just tried one tonight. Still needs more carbonation time, but overall, I think it was a damn good tasting beer.

Thanks for all of your help. I like the idea of storebought gallons jugs of water chilled instead of ice...that is if I can bring myself to care enough to d that after reading that ice most likely won't be a problem. Again, Thanks Everyone!

I watched a beer making episode of "Good Eats" with Alton Brown from the Food Network. He had it figured where he could use one bag of ice plus one bottle of water in the primary and pour the wart over it. Ice, just like water, is one pound per pint, so a 7lbs bag of ice plus a bottle of water equals a little over a gallon. I think I might try this on my next batch and see how it turns out.

Arkador said:

My ice comes from my icemaker, which passes through a built in brita filter. Same water i use for my brewing.

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You just let a machine do the work for you. I make my ice from scratch.

1. chill with a wort chiller
2. put wort chiller in a bucket of ice water
3. run wort THROUGH the wort chiller into the fermenter. This way you get it going through an ice bath and cool it even more. Obviously you'll need a pump to do this unless you got enough gravity going on.

I have been curious about this topic ever since watching Jim Koch do it on the Sam Adams website. I was shocked. You're not "supposed" to do this!

He used a sanitized ladle to pour his wort over a block of ice one ladle at a time. It aerated and cooled the wort at the same time. I might try it.

Why not just get some water bottles, freeze and sanitize them, then pour over that? They would act like giant ice cubes, and it's sanitary.

JebCkr said:

When pouring your boil into your primary is there anything wrong with pouring it over a bag of ice to get the temp down. Then get it exactly where you want by adding warm/cold top off water. I ask because I always see people talking about wort chillers, not this method.

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I wouldn't you run the risk of getting bacteria or other contaminants into the wort. The risk is pretty low but I wouldn't chane it.

Whoa nice dig, this was one of my first posts. For the record I do not do this anymore, but never had a problem when I did. Now, if I do an extract brew, I just put the pot with the wort in a sink of ice and if it is still a little warm I add cold water from gallon jugs.

Cheers.

For what it's worth, I tried this on my latest batch, and I had a lot of lag time. It's possible that the purified water didn't have what the yeast needed. Then again, the yeast was on the older side, and the strain of yeast has a history of having a longer lag time. So, make of it what you will.

But for cooling the wort quickly? A+ It took 10 minutes to cool 3 gals of water. I placed the wort in an ice bath while getting the jugs ready. I took 2 gallon jugs of frozen water, sanitized them, thawed them enough to allow the plastic to slip off, and cut them open with a sanitized knife. I poured the wort slowly over the ice. Cooled in 10 min...