Cold water for chillin the wort...

I'm brewing a late night batch up here in Fairbanks. Just for kicks, I checked the temp of my well water in my garage spigot....39 degrees!!!!

I should be able to chill my batch down right.

Ps-sorry for bragging; I looked for the "I, me, my" forum but couldn't find it.

Don't chill it too much, get your wort too low and yeast wont' do anything.

Karma, dude. Karma...

Cheers

Lucky; water in the Houston area will never see temps like that.

There is a trade off....it's been -20 to -30 most of November up here in Fairbanks. I was just function checking the immersion chiller I crafted (based on info from HBT), I had my thermometer out because I'm currently in the mash....

Last brew, all I had was ambient air (about zero) and the wort was trickled from the BK to the carboy very slowly. Very, very slowly....

That's definitely a trade off. It was roughly 75* here in Phoenix today. On the downside my ground water is currently about 75*

Day_tripper....I got mine....I was carrying my spent grains down the stairs in a trash bag like I did last time but the were a little too warm.....blow out! Extra 30 minutes on cleaning to offset time saved with my chilly water.

BTW- it took 7 minutes to cool for pitching.....I had tons of crud (don't know the technical term) that separated this time. I guess all that crap is still in my first batch..?

It's called trub, not crap. There will be hops and proteins. Won't hurt a bit to dump them all in the fermenter. The yeast will eat any of it that they can and the rest will settle out in the yeast cake at the bottom.

I was going to say brag on brother, you have to appreciate SOMETHING when you're living in the deep freeze.

Skagdog said:

BTW- it took 7 minutes to cool for pitching.....I had tons of crud (don't know the technical term) that separated this time. I guess all that crap is still in my first batch..?

Click to expand...

You got an awesome cold break with your most recent batch. Something that will be nearly impossible to do with air temps (conduction vs convection). Although I bet if you you dropped your boil kettle outside when it gets to -50 sometime in January, that might chill pretty quickly

Just keep that -30 crap up in Alaska please. We don't want it yet in MN! Our groundwater might be 45 by now which is good enough for me.

Back to cold break, that should help minimize chill haze. If you didn't have much cold break in your first batch and you didn't use Irish Moss, Whirlfloc, or some type of kettle finings, you may have that issue. I would suggest using one of those products if you aren't already.

I am down in Soldotna. I use 50' of 3/8" on my wort chiller. Its takes 10-15 min to chill down 10 gallons. My well water is about the same time. Its nice having cold water, 3/8" copper is a lot cheeper and easier to work with than 1/2"

Are tap in Tahoe right now is about 44*, and has taken me just 10 mins for my last 4 batches to get to about 65ish. About a 30' 3/8 IC