Why is Ice for cooling wort bad?

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AZOTH99

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Just curious as I saw a video that said don't col down your wort with ice?

If someone was using a Bucket for the primary and put ice in the bucket, then poured the wort into the bucket onto the ice using the ice to finish up the rest of the 5 gallon batch what would be the problem with that?

To me I'd think it would just cool the wort down faster in order to pitch the yeast?

All the ice really did was cool it down, melt into water which was making up the rest of the 5 gallons anyway?





 
You can use ice, but "they" say not to possibly due to the risk of infections. You could also boil the water first, then freeze it, and it would probably have a less risk of an infection, but I wouldn't bother. Just freeze some potable water and use it. In my mind, it's no different than if you were topping off with water straight from your faucet. There's no guarantee that your faucet water is infecion-free, yet people use it all the time.

EDIT: one thing just popped into my head. If you don't let the ice fully melt and if you don't get it fully mixed, the ice will throw off your gravity readings. So just keep that in mind.
 



Just curious as I saw a video that said don't col down your wort with ice?

If someone was using a Bucket for the primary and put ice in the bucket, then poured the wort into the bucket onto the ice using the ice to finish up the rest of the 5 gallon batch what would be the problem with that?

To me I'd think it would just cool the wort down faster in order to pitch the yeast?

All the ice really did was cool it down, melt into water which was making up the rest of the 5 gallons anyway?






The problem is with the ice itself. Ice from the home fridge isn't sanitized, ice from the ice machine at the big grocery stores isn't sanitized, and ice from a bag you buy isn't sanitized. You're introducing all sorts of bugs, germs, critters, bacteria, and microscopic creepy crawlies that can ruin your batch.
 
If you can be certain that the ice is uncontaminated, it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Some people will pre-boil their own filtered water to be safe.
 
Simple answer: everything that touches your wort post-boil should be sanitized.
People do top off w tap/ bottled water or ice, but it is a risk. Is it worth it? your call!
 
What if you buy a gallon jug of commercial water, go the extra mile and boil it, put it back in the jug, freeze it, take it out of the freezer and spray the jug down with StarSan and then use sanitized scissors to cut off the plastic jug and add it to the hot wort? Sounds a lot harder than it really would be I think.
 
What if you buy a gallon jug of commercial water, go the extra mile and boil it, put it back in the jug, freeze it, take it out of the freezer and spray the jug down with StarSan and then use sanitized scissors to cut off the plastic jug and add it to the hot wort? Sounds a lot harder than it really would be I think.

And then wait 4 hours for it to melt so you can finally pitch the yeast :)

Also, if you freeze the jug of water, it will expand and possibly crack the jug anyway, unless you make sure to leave a bunch of headspace. It seems like it would be way to much of a hassle. I haven't heard of anyone getting an infection from tap water, not saying it isn't possible, but more than likely if you have a good pitch of yeast, the yeast will take over before any possible infection can.

You could also buy some bottled water and refrigerate it, instead of freezing. Or even buy the water, boil it first, sanitize the jug, let the water cool down to a point that it wont melt the jug, pour it back into the jug, and refrigerate it, and not have to use scissors to get the water out. But you are still prone to infections due to the minuscule amount of oxygen in the top of the jug when you close it back up :cross:

OR: you could let the batch cool to around 100 degrees or so, top off with cold tap water, and drink awesome beer in a couple months :mug:
 
beninan said:
I haven't heard of anyone getting an infection from tap water...(snip)

but more than likely if you have a good pitch of yeast, the yeast will take over before any possible infection can.
Really? It can be hard to pinpoint where the infection came from.
I boil water, cover, leave it overnight, then add it to the fermenter if needed. It does not have to be complicated.
I agree about the second part but beginners (doing partial boils) are more likely to underpitch cell counts with liquid yeast as they aren't making a decent starter.
cheers.
 
AZOTH99 said:
Just curious as I saw a video that said don't col down your wort with ice?

If someone was using a Bucket for the primary and put ice in the bucket, then poured the wort into the bucket onto the ice using the ice to finish up the rest of the 5 gallon batch what would be the problem with that?

To me I'd think it would just cool the wort down faster in order to pitch the yeast?

All the ice really did was cool it down, melt into water which was making up the rest of the 5 gallons anyway?

This is how I did it when I did extract. I would dump the boiling wort on top of a ten pound bag of ice in my ale pail. I did nearly 50 brews like this with no infection. But there's a good chance I got lucky....50 times.......Chopps
 
I'm not advocating this, but I frequently use ice or ice water to top up my beers and help cool them. Never had in infection. I do use sanitized bowls or containers when adding ice or ice water.
 
I do this. Start of brewday I get my topup water in the freezer. using store bought gallon jugs. Then I have almost frozen slushy water. Chill my wort down in an ice bath then pour into ale pail. Topup with slush which melts quick. Gets my temp down perfect
 
Really? It can be hard to pinpoint where the infection came from.
I boil water, cover, leave it overnight, then add it to the fermenter if needed. It does not have to be complicated.
I agree about the second part but beginners (doing partial boils) are more likely to underpitch cell counts with liquid yeast as they aren't making a decent starter.
cheers.

I understand that it would be hard to pinpoint the cause of the infection, so blaming on the water without looking into the other variables would not be a good way to rule it out. I'm just saying, that a lot of people top off with faucet water, including me, and have never had issues with infections, thus making me feel more confident that faucet water is ok to use.
With your method, unless you are vacuum sealing or pressure canning the container that you place the water into when you cool it, you are still risking infection. If there is any headspace at all in your container when cooling that hasn't been sanitized, there is a potential for some sort of bug to be present in it. I'm not saying it's a high risk, but there is a slight possibility.
Would I agree that the risk is greater when using straight faucet water? Yes, I would agree that the risk is much greater. But in an overall comparison, I don't think it's any more of a risk than when people dunk their arms in the fermenter to retrieve their fallen-in airlock grommet. If it were me, I wouldn't waste my time with making sure the faucet water is sanitized.
One thing that a lot of beginners should realize, is that yeast care and pitching is critical to a great quality beer. If they are using a liquid yeast, a starter should be made. If they are making a high gravity beer, the correct amount of yeast should be pitched. I'm not saying "If you don't do this, you are stoopid, lawls!!11", because I am guilty of not doing this as well. But, if good procedures are followed with yeast care, then I don't think using faucet water is a terrible idea.
I hope I don't sound like I'm being a dink, I know how sometimes the "tone of voice" can be perceived differently when reading something on the internet, I'm just trying to state my opinion. If everybody in history did things only one way, because one person thought that was the only way to do it, we would still be naked and living in caves.
 
I used to top off with tap water, as the ground water got warmer in the summer I started making slush water with pre purchased gallon jugs of spring water. Worked great for me. I now have an immersion chiller so no need to do either.

There are a lot of different ways to do things and a lot of different opinions. Do what works for you.

Happy brewing.
 
I do the ice method you mentioned. I use 16# ice I.e. 2 gallons and dump my 3.5 gallons wort on top. Been doing it for a couple years. Got the idea from a documentary on olde burnside brewery/ ice factory where they said they do this to cool their wort faster. Works well

Also I believe that ice and water from the store is sanitary either thru a going thru a .2 micron size filter or uv/ irradiation sterilization. Now of there are holes in the bag then that's a different story. But I agree yeast will outcompete if pitched properly.
 
I used ice in my wort about 3 batches ago. It actually cooled it down too far and had to warm it back up a bit. Other than that, I had no problems with it fermenting though. It turned out great. I haven't done it since though.
 
I use 16# ice I.e. 2 gallons and dump my 3.5 gallons wort on top. Been doing it for a couple years. Got the idea from a documentary on olde burnside brewery/ ice factory where they said they do this to cool their wort faster. Works well.
Also I believe that ice and water from the store is sanitary.

With your method, unless you are vacuum sealing or pressure canning the container that you place the water into when you cool it, you are still risking infection. If there is any headspace at all in your container when cooling that hasn't been sanitized, there is a potential for some sort of bug to be present in it. If it were me, I wouldn't waste my time with making sure the faucet water is sanitized.

Good point from you both. I agree that there is some risk of infection, but there has to be just as much from air borne bugs when we pour the wort into the fermenter (unless we are set up for pumps, etc. and I am not). I probably use about one gallon of water to top off, and I used refrigerated water last time and it only got my wort down to about 125 and I had to use an ice bath to get it down to pitching temp. To me there is a lot more risk of infection with an open kettle of wort sitting out for 45 minutes cooling than a half gallon or so of ice being tossed in to get to pitching temps pronto. Think I will go for the ice jug routine next time and see.
 
It's bad because of risk of contamination. I have done this on most of my batches over the past 3 years (somewhere between 10 and 20?), until I bought a wort chiller a few months ago. I'd buy two bags of ice from Safeway or the gas station, do a partial boil, dump one bag of ice into my fermenting bucket and then pour the hot wort directly on top. It cools very quickly, and I never picked up an infection that I could detect.

The two issues I had were:
1) Your gravity reading is worthless until at least a few hours have passed. The mixing takes a while.
2) The ice temperature can vary wildly from store to store, and even day to day. In the craziest case, using one bag of ice and faucet water for the rest, I dropped the temperature down to about 50F. I had to wait hours for it to raise. My eventual solution to this was to buy the ice a few days in advance, and store it in my chest freezer (whose temperature I know). With that method, I could get within 1-2F of my target temperature in under 10 minutes, with no wasted water.

I think that if you assume surface contamination is the major potential source of bacteria, and ensure that near-boiling wort touches every surface of every ice cube, you'll be ok.
 
This whole contamination thing among homebrewers is quite frankly ridiculous. No matter what you do you are making beer it your kitchen (or garage) and bacteria are going to be in your beer. Even under the most sterile conditions in my cell culture lab I get bacterial contaminations. They are everywhere and there is nothing you can really do to prevent them from entering your beer. This is not to say sanitation is not important, but it seems it has been blown way out of proportion, with people asking if their beer is ruined from simply opening those airlock. 2000 years ago you think they used star San??? Be careful but don't be ridiculous.

Just my rant.
 
Ice can be pure - it can be dirty, very dirty. It can have bad after-tastes if it has been in the freezer too long (onion-ish). I've used straight ice to cool wort with no issues many times. Adding ice to hot wort is a fast way to cool it but you never know what other tastes and microbes you might introduce. Go ahead and use a direct addition of ice to cool, but be smart about it. Get clean ice, preferably from filtered water and not out of the 7/11 freezer box that some drunk puked in two years ago. I like what someone said above - "Be careful, but don't be ridiculous."
 
This whole contamination thing among homebrewers is quite frankly ridiculous. No matter what you do you are making beer it your kitchen (or garage) and bacteria are going to be in your beer. Even under the most sterile conditions in my cell culture lab I get bacterial contaminations. They are everywhere and there is nothing you can really do to prevent them from entering your beer. This is not to say sanitation is not important, but it seems it has been blown way out of proportion, with people asking if their beer is ruined from simply opening those airlock. 2000 years ago you think they used star San??? Be careful but don't be ridiculous.

I agree and sort of wrote that earlier. The need for sanitary conditions is obvious, but it does seem to be pretty 'manic' for some folks. Dry hopping seems to me to be a good example. I know hops are somewhat resistant, but ading anything unsanitized to beer is frowned on, and yet lots dump in leaf hops out of the bag into their beer in secondary or keg. Just be as sanitary as possible within reason is my goal. I think adding a little ice to near boiling wort is on the low end of risk taking.
 
The company that supplies ice to our local grocery store is fanatical about the cleanliness/purity of the water they use. Prior to building my wort chiller, I did use ice from the store to cool my wort with no problems. But I knew beforehand that it was clean, pure and without nasty bacteria. And, of course, it would be in the ice company's favor to sell wholesome, pure ice, rather than risk lawsuits due to contamination of their product.

My take: if you have "clean" ice, go ahead and use it!

glenn514:mug:
 
As long as the bag is intact, the ice you get at the store is probably the cleanest thing you put in your beer. The chemistry of that water may be less than optimal (mineral content and chlorination), but that's more important during the mash and boil than during fermentation. We're also only talking about maybe 25% of the total volume anyway.

Your tap water is heavily chlorinated/chloramined, so the only way it would contaminate your beer is if your faucet is dirty. Your tap water may or may not make good beer, but it's not the source of contamination.
 
I never done it, so don't really know what the issue is, but my 2 concerns would be:

1) As noted, contamination, and introducing contamination between the temperatures of 140 and 80 F when the fermenter is a perfect incubator.

2) Hot side aeration. Unless you boiled the water before freezing, you are introducing air into the wort at high temperatures (water contains a lot of air/oxygen, boiling drives it out). This could lead to the beer becoming stale/dull quicker.

I use a copper wort chiller. Connections are far enough from the pot so as not to be a problem if they ever leaked (after 100 batches they have not done so yet), and I place it into boiling wort, eliminating any potential for contamination. I'm down to pitching temps in about 15 minutes. No prep, easy clean-up, and hangs in the garage ready for next time.
 
beninan said:
With your method, unless you are vacuum sealing or pressure canning the container that you place the water into when you cool it, you are still risking infection. If there is any headspace at all in your container when cooling that hasn't been sanitized, there is a potential for some sort of bug to be present in it. I'm not saying it's a high risk, but there is a slight possibility..
Why do you keep adding steps to boiling top off water? I surmise it is straw man argument.
I keep the water in the same container I boiled (thus keeping it sanitized). There is no second container for cooling. I said I boiled & covered, then let it sit overnight. cheers.
 
When I did extract/partial boils I used to pre-boil water and cool it in an ice/water bath (just like you would with wort), then I would put it in an airtight container that was soaked in starsan and freeze it. When frozen I would plop the big sanatized ice cube in my wort to chill it fast and supply top-off water.. Never a problem!
 
midfielder5 said:
Why do you keep adding steps to boiling top off water? I surmise it is straw man argument.
I keep the water in the same container I boiled (thus keeping it sanitized). There is no second container for cooling. I said I boiled & covered, then let it sit overnight. cheers.

My mistake. I was under the impression that it would have been transferred to another container.
 
I fail to see the problem with using ice to chill wort. It does the job rather well, and in most circumstances, its just as clean, if not more clean, than filtered water from your faucet.

If people everywhere can get away using that water than I see no reason why anyone says that freezing the same water makes it any less sanitized (especially if you keep your water sealed in the freezer)
 
How nasty are your ice trays?

Ice thats been in your freezer for weeks/months with the ripped open french fry bag dropping frozen tasty wonderfulness on your cubes WILL contaminate your beer.

clean, sanitized trays treated like a piece of brewing equipment with fresh tap water prepped the night before brew day is pretty darn safe.
 
I used ice for a while and had no problems with it but I think I dodged a bullet. Problem is the ice isn't made with sterile water and it was probably made with chlorinated water which isn't good either. Also, ice can pick up off flavors from your freezer. Ever notice how ice sometimes smells "oniony?" That is not a flavor you want to add to your beer.
 
Ice is dirty. Unless you make it yourself and clean everything that touches it beforehand.

For an example an ice machine I used recently poured out ice when I pressed the lever....it also poured out ice laden with random black specks imbedded in the ice. From heads of a pin size to shirt button size....Gross.
 
How nasty are your ice trays?

Ice thats been in your freezer for weeks/months with the ripped open french fry bag dropping frozen tasty wonderfulness on your cubes WILL contaminate your beer.

clean, sanitized trays treated like a piece of brewing equipment with fresh tap water prepped the night before brew day is pretty darn safe.

exactly what I do. 4 red cups rinsed out and sterilized with hot steam, filled with filtered water and frozen with plastic baggies covering the tops 3 days before brewing time (it takes about a day or two for the water to completely freeze through)

I haven't done it much (I'm a new brewer and only tried this once) but I have high hopes that my brew will do well ^^
 
To lessen effects of contamination, why not just freeze the water in a temp safe plastic container (1-2 gallins)? When you're ready to use it, sanitize and drop in the container? This allows you the benefits of full wort boils and you don't have to buy ice.
 
I find it funny how many people will obsess over things like this but never stop to consider how many germs are on the counter top they lay their stirring spoon on throughout the brewing process.
 
Why increase the potential for an infection? People who say they haven't gotten one from this are only playing with fire. Use a Wort Chiller or Boil some water a couple days ahead and chill in the fridge in a sanitized bucker or carboy. But don't tempt the God' of Infection as it will catch up to you.
 
During the Brewing process you have a boil going, my spoon stays in the kettle while brewing and cooling, it becomes critical once you begin to cool your wort as far as infection are concerned.

I find it funny how many people will obsess over things like this but never stop to consider how many germs are on the counter top they lay their stirring spoon on throughout the brewing process.
 
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