Rapidly Cooling Wort

Brewers,

I am new to brewing, with one brew under my belt. Now I know to sit my brew kettle into an ice bath when im done brewing, and that works fine. However I was wondering why not put some ice into the fermenter and when one pours the hot wort over the ice it will cool much faster then an ice bath or even imersion chiller ever would. I understand that the biggest concern with using ice is contamination. However I dont see why making some ice in a sanitized tupperware container wouldnt work????

Also does any one have any experience with using thoes bottles that have the cork attached on that metal lever. i dont know what there called but they seem like they would work fine???

Thanks!

Well, the safest and best way to cool your wort is using an immersion chiller. However, if you are doing extract brews and are adding water to the wort anyways, you can technically add ice to the wort to cool it faster, though the ice MUST be sanitary. When I first started out with extract I cooled my wort very quickly by freezing an unopened gallon of store bought spring water and then adding the 1 gallon ice cube to my wort as it sat in the water bath. This brought my temp down extremely fast. Though make sure the ice doesn't bring your wort temp down too far, say 40 deg, as you would have to wait for the temp to rise to pitch your yeast.

Therefore, you can use ice in extract brews but make sure the ice is completely sanitary. And I wouldn't add the ice to your fermentation bucket.

And if you are referring to flip-top bottles, they work great.

TGreen588 said:

I understand that the biggest concern with using ice is contamination. However I dont see why making some ice in a sanitized tupperware container wouldnt work????

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you must first boil the water that is being used for the ice as well....not just sanitizing the container.

TGreen588 said:

Also does any one have any experience with using thoes bottles that have the cork attached on that metal lever. i dont know what there called but they seem like they would work fine???

Click to expand...

Flip top bottles are fine for bottle conditioning. Just make sure you have good (new) seals on them.

Buy a chiller you will find it will make your brew day much more enjoyable! It is very labor intensive to boil all that water and sanitize your container everytime you brew. Plus the risk of infection is not worth it. Flip top bottles are great but kegging is best!!!

I tried adding ice directly to the wort once, but it didn't work so well. I thought I had more than enough ice, but it melted instantly and I was still way too hot. It's amazing just how much ice you need to cool boiling liquid!

You can actually get nearly as good a result rather more easily by putting some bottles of water in the freezer until they are nearly frozen, turning a little slushy, then adding those. The temperature difference between nearly frozen and frozen water is negligible, but water in the not-quite-frozen state is much easier to pour into the carboy!

I get my best results, though, by cooling my brewpot in the sink by surrounding it with a bath of ice+water, changing the ice once after the first batch melts, then topping up with cold water in the carboy. It takes me about 20 minutes to cool the brewpot to 100 degrees, and then diluting that with cold tap water gets me down to pitching temp.

This works better for me than trying to cool directly from boiling by diluting with cold water or ice, because when you mix 3 gallons of boiling wort with 2 gallons of super cold top up water or ice, the end result is still too hot for pitching. Cooling the brewpot before diluting the wort lets me get colder faster, because I have a smaller volume of material to cool, and can change out the ice as many times as needed.

I've used ice to cool a couple of times. I don't think there have been any problems. Then again, those beers are still priming/clearing. The way I was looking at it, was that my wort was being mixed with water anyway, and frozen water isn't going to be any more susceptible to contamination then would room temperature water. Maybe when those beers are done beers are done, I'll be singing a different tune, but each time I've transferred them they've tasted great.

I do 1.5 gal boils and late addition brewing.

I place 4 gals of PUR filtered tap water in 1 gal containers in the freezer for 4-5 hours prior to brewing.

This top off water takes the temps down to the 60s-low 70s in the time it takes to top off to 5.5 gals every time. Can't get any quicker than that.

I like homebrewer99's idea. Personally I have done exactly what you are asking a couple of times and not had any issues. Last time I did it, I did an icewater bath in the sink draining and refilling twice. That used up about half a bag of ice from the c-store. Then I poured the rest of the bag into the fermenter bucket, sprayed the ice with Starsan and poured in my wort.
I then topped up with water from my sprayer. When finished it is usually on the cooler side, high 50's low 60's. I just pitch and let it warm back up and it does fine, although it starts slower. Lately I've been reading you are supposed to do this anyway (pitch cooler than 70).

The beers turned out fine. I know for some this all sounds scary, so try it at your own risk. I've since built an immersion chiller and plan to use that going forward.

P.S. The last brew I did, I used just an ice bath, but with my icemaker's tray. I ran out of ice after about two cycles and wasn't quite where I wanted to be, so I put frozen sausage and hot dog packs around the pot. They completely thawed, and got me the rest of the way.
(Don't worry I didn't put those in the bucket.)