wort chiller?

tempted to submerge full frozen gallon milk jug(s). i'm sure it'd be cleaner than a wort chiller. what am i overlooking? will plastic leach into wort?

Wort chillers are sanitized in the boil and remain that way. As the wort cools, adding a new frozen bottle will be questionable.

I use the method of bottles with frozen water to chill wort along with an ice bath. Is it more sanitary? Absoultely not. Wort chiller is actually next on my purchase list, but I have never had a batch that was chilled this way get infected. I sanitize them b4 freezing, and place them in the freezer the day before or at the very beginning of brew day. This seems to make it less likely for infection to set in, but I'm just guessing. Has always worked for me though.

limey lou said:

tempted to submerge full frozen gallon milk jug(s). i'm sure it'd be cleaner than a wort chiller. what am i overlooking? will plastic leach into wort?

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If you are doing an extract batch and you have to top up your partial boil with water you can what I do; If it's good quality bottled water in the jug, you can sanitize the outside of the jug and a razor knife. Then use a hammer to break the ice in the handle and then cut the bottom off the jug and let the ice gently slide into the wort. Be sure to do it when the worts still fairly hot or you may cool it down too much and have to wait for it to get back up to pitching temp. If you run the jug under warm water before sanitizing it some of the outer ice will melt allowing it to slide out pretty easily. Just be careful it doesn't slide out too fast and splash hot wort all over the place.

This place was linked in another post: http://coppertubingsales.com/

Buy 50ft of 3/8 refrigeration tubing and make an immersion chiller quite inexpensively. Use 25ft of it, and sell the rest to someone here.