Time frame for cooling wort?

Hi All,
Working on a batch right now, the wort is at 120 F. Have it in the kitchen sink with water, 10 plastic frozen water bottles and all my ice cubes, it has only went down about 10 degrees in almost 45 minutes. Need to get it down to at least 80 to pitch the yeast. Is it ok to wait 2 hours or so for it to cool without anything happening to it? I know it is vulnerable at this state. Thanks!

PhoenixCoyote said:

Hi All,
Working on a batch right now, the wort is at 120 F. Have it in the kitchen sink with water, 10 plastic frozen water bottles and all my ice cubes, it has only went down about 10 degrees in almost 45 minutes. Need to get it down to at least 80 to pitch the yeast. Is it ok to wait 2 hours or so for it to cool without anything happening to it? I know it is vulnerable at this state. Thanks!

Click to expand...

No, you can cool it down much faster than that. My larger batch of wort I did yesterday(2.5-3 gallons). After running cold water to get it really cold, I put the kettle in the closed(clogger) sink and ran cold water making the water go around the kettle, at the same time stiring the wort. After the water got warm I drained the sink and did it again adding ice to the cold water.

15 minutes total I put the wort in the carboy with semi cold filtered water from my refridgerator water dispenser. It was a perfect 75 degrees. I like to pitch my liquid yeast at 73-75 degrees.


You don't want the temp to be too low either.




As you can see, ALL is well.


Friday's wort was about 2 gallons and it was coller in about 10 minutes by that proccess. I was a bit worried it was too cold but adding it to the carboy and the rest of the water, it was a perfect 73 degrees. I use carboy thermometors that stick to the glass, they work great.

In the future, make sure you buy a big bag of ice before brewing. I don't know about two hours, that's a lot longer than my wort's ever taken to chill, I'd take steps to quicken the process. Simple things - change the water it's sitting in frequently, make sure you get it out of there before it turns lukewarm. What I did last time was set up a siphon from my sink to an extra carboy, so I was constantly draining water away (and I had the faucet - as cold as possible - on slowly to replace the draining water. Helped to keep the water moving around the pot as much as possible, seemed to significantly reduce the time it tool to cool the wort.

EDIT: I've never stirred the wort, never touched it after it's off the burner; you haven't had any problems doing so?

I'd recommend covering it while it cools to try and prevent contamination.

Stiring with a sanitized spoon (or what ever you used to stir the wort, keep it in the brew kettle for the last few minutes to make sure it's sanitized) occasionally, making sure not to airate untill it's cooled, may help to cool faster.

I definately recommend a wort chiller if you can get one.
Cooling the wort faster will help your cold break (clearer beer) and help prevent contamination from some bacteria and wild yeast.

If you know anybody at a supply house, or maybe try to make friends and promise some home brew, you can get some copper tubing for far less than half the cost at home depot or lowes. I picked up 50' of 3/8 for a counter flow chiller for $27 after taxes, HD wanted $56 plus tax for 30'.

PhoenixCoyote said:

Hi All,
Working on a batch right now, the wort is at 120 F. Have it in the kitchen sink with water, 10 plastic frozen water bottles and all my ice cubes, it has only went down about 10 degrees in almost 45 minutes. Need to get it down to at least 80 to pitch the yeast. Is it ok to wait 2 hours or so for it to cool without anything happening to it? I know it is vulnerable at this state. Thanks!

Click to expand...

Just do your best. Its not like you have a choice, you cant pitch the yeast untill its around about 80F. It should be alright... next time i suggest getting a big rubber bin they sell at Target or Wow!mart for 20 bucks and use that instead of the sink. With about 4 10 lbs bags of ice and a few gallons of water you can cool your wort from 212 to 80 in 30 minutes. Heres a pic of my rubbermaid i use for both cooling wort and a water bath...

^^^^^ 4 10lb bags of ice? Holy crap! I used 1 pound for each batch.


And like was said, use the same sanitized spoon and stir the wort slowly and not long, once it gets spinning it will continue without stiring.

Two hours puts you in the danger zone. Hope you have a good starter ready.

If you have room in the kettle, you can sanitize the bottles of ice and put them in the wort for faster cooling.

And gentle stirring is a very good idea.

when I cooled my wort, I half filled my sink with ice and water, then placed the brew pot in there. Once that melted and the water temps raised, I moved it off to the other side of my sink and had more water and ice in it. It took about 30 mins to cool.

wstein said:

when I cooled my wort, I half filled my sink with ice and water, then placed the brew pot in there. Once that melted and the water temps raised, I moved it off to the other side of my sink and had more water and ice in it. It took about 30 mins to cool.

Click to expand...

Exactly what I did but for the last few switches I mixed salt with the Ice Water making it colder then just Ice and Water (a proven Mythbuster fact).

I have to say.... I have never used ice. No really. Never. When I was doing the sink thing it would take about 30 minutes between starting to cool and sending it in the primary waiting with cold water. Pitch soon after that. I'm sitting here thinking... have I ever used ice.....no. I started out using the sink method without ice and it just worked... so never thought a need for it.

Do keep working on that though.... 2 hours is a long time. If I can do it in 30 without ice you can certainly do it in 30 with ice. David is certainly smack dead on target here.... hoping you have a very active starter to take control of things. Not that I would worry about it. Like everyone here you find out what you need to work on when doing your next batch

Taken from instructions on the package of Nottingham dry yeast: "...To avoid temperature shock which could kill the yeast cells, adjust the temperature of the [yeast] suspension to that of the wort by slowly adding a little wort every 5 minutes, until the temperature of the yeast suspension is equal to that of the wort..."
I tried this (in combination with cold bath immersion) with my last batch, and so far, the yeast is active as normal.
But, I'm only on my third batch, so any thoughts from the veterans on this? In other words, is it really necessary to reduce the temp of the wort as quickly as possible, or is it just as good to just make sure the yeast is not drastically heated up, reasonably speaking? (I know that product instructions aren't always correct.)