Need to chill AG without chiller

OK here is a simple issue and I am looking for some thoughts. I want to do an all grain IPA. I have all of the ingrediants but I have no wot chiller. Is this even possible or should I wait til my wort chiller shows up next week? Thanks for any advice.

EB

It's possible. Just use a BIG ice bath and set your kettle in it. This will work better if your kettle is aluminum. Buy lots of ice and replenish as it melts. Stir the wort and ice bath constantly to speed up cooling.

I've brewed over 10 AG beers at this point with no wort chiller, and have had no problems. I fill my bath tub with cold water and dump all the ice from my freezer in it. I put in a long spoon when still boiling, then take the whole thing and set it in the tub. Every 10 minutes I stir the wort in one direction and then move water and ice in the other. Takes about 30 minutes to chill down.

Cheap and less gear to clean up. FYI, hopefully you are better than me with boilovers. My last two were a bit messy and that it is a pain to clean the tub out. Perhaps I'm not saving time on cleanup after all...

Jeff

Sure, it's possible, but ice baths are a royal PITA. If it were me, I'd wait a week for the chiller.

I'm going to try the no chill method using big "water cubes" you find in the camping supplies.

www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=9354&hl=chiller

I'll make a double batch, cool one with the cube and one with the immersion chiller and see how it turns out.

I would like to see how it turns out.

I'd say wait the week and make it easier for you.

Wort Chiller = 5 gallons chilled to pitching temp in 8 mins, and a great cold break.

Bath = 5 gallons chilled to pitching temp in 30 mins plus a sore back from leaning over the tub stirring, cost of ice and a weak cold break.

Be patient, wait till your chiller shows up and do the job right with the correct tools. Regardless of how easy or not tub method is, it doesn't chill the wort fast enough for my liking.

You can do this if you are eager enough (read, impatient enough). It is not a perfect system, but it will work ffine and you will enjoy the wort chiller all the more.

BUT be very careful moving that 50lbs pot of sticky boiling liquid. Hospital visits ruin the weekend!

I tried to chill five-gallon batches in a snow bank....I did, but it took a long time, and I had to keep repacking the snow (and the ambient temp was below 0°F). It was a regal PITA. Yes, it worked, but....no real cold break, and, yes, a sore back.

Then I got an immersion chiller.

Now, I hit pitching temps in ~10 mins. or so. *Awesome* cold break, which leads to...clean yeast cakes that are easy to harvest and very, very clear beer right out of the primary. (And the chiller isn't that hard to clean at all. Just spray off the hops/cold break when done. The pH of the wort does the rest.)

Of all the gadgets I've bought and made, the immersion chiller has provided the biggest improvement in my beer. Best bang for buck, as it were.

Worth the wait.

faber said:

Of all the gadgets I've bought and made, the immersion chiller has provided the biggest improvement in my beer. Best bang for buck, as it were.

Worth the wait.

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I'm with you on that one. I bought one before I ever brewed my first batch. I use the ice batch only to cool my priming sugar.

I have been doing it that way since I started AG. I have done quite a few things backasswards since going the AG route, and this is one that I would not recommend. As a matter of fact, I still dont have one and am likely not going to be getting one in the recent future b/c I just dumped a bunch of money into kegs, regulators, distributors, chest freezer etc etc...and am going on a cruise next week. So, SWMBO is not likely to let me spend $ on a chiller, even if it is only $40.

Anyway, to the question at hand. It can be done, and it can be done quite well depending on how you attack it. I normally go to the gas station and buy two twenty pound bags of ice and put them in a tub with maybe a gallon of water. Put the kettle into the ice and stir every couple of minutes. Usually has it cool in 15 minutes, but the cold break is very weak.

Then, you are going to have nights like last night, when you don't feel like going to the gas station so you use whatever ice is in your freezer, put it in the ice/water bath, go to your inlaws for a couple of hours and return home to find out that that wasn't enough and two hours after boiling your wort is sitting @ 115 degrees and you have no more ice...great.

Long story short, can it be done...yes of course it can. Should it be done...most likely not.

I would suggest that you wait for the chiller. There is no need to sacrifice the quality of your beer for a few days wait. When you chill wort at a slow rate you increase the chance of off flavors due to chemical reactions. The faster you chill your wort, the better it will come out.

FSR402 said:

I'm with you on that one. I bought one before I ever brewed my first batch. I use the ice batch only to cool my priming sugar.

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I also agree. My IC and my burner were the best brewing investments that I've made to date.

I've never used a chiller. It sounds like using a chiller is the proper way to go, but I wanted to chime in and say that you can still make great beer without one.

My water comes from a well. Out of the tap it's REALLY cold - even in the summer. I fill up the tub with cold water (no ice!), drop in the kettle (aluminum turkey fryer pot), and stir the tub every 15 minutes or so. The longest it has taken to get to pitching temp is 75 minutes.

scottthorn said:

The longest it has taken to get to pitching temp is 75 minutes.

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I don't mean to sound overly negative about this, but that's really 4-5x longer than it needs to be. The faster your wort goes from boiling to 70', the lower the risk of infection, the more cold break, and less DMS production. My CFC takes the wort from boiling to 70' in the few short seconds that it passes through the chiller, and the whole batch only takes 15-20 mins when the ground water is hot. There are better ways to skin a cat, my friend.

I'll definitely get a wort chiller at some point, but I've done 16 beers so far (10 AG), and have have outstanding beers everytime. No off flavors, no contamination. Once during the winter I put it in a snow bank and that was much slower than an ice filled tub. Wouldn't do that again, but even then the beer was good. Of course, maybe my beer would have been even better with a wort chiller, who knows. Is it possible that it can get better than this?

I have an immersion chiller and I used to love it, now it's just plain useless. Tried it yesterday and in 30 minutes I only dropped to 165 degrees. Gave up, dropped in an ice bath and called it a day. Guess my water out of the tap here in AZ won't get near cold enough to help quickly.

RedSun, a prechiller is recommended for those brewers stuck with super-hot ground water. It's like an immersion chiller, but it cools down the hose water past it's normal temps (which I've heard can be 80º easily in the summer in hot climes) so it makes the wort nice and cool.

I have both, and seem to work OK. Because I'm also impatient, I also have a bunch of those 'blue ice' ice blocks I freeze, then sanitize, and drop in the hot wort when it gets below 100º.

JeffNYC said:

I'll definitely get a wort chiller at some point, but I've done 16 beers so far (10 AG), and have have outstanding beers everytime. No off flavors, no contamination. Once during the winter I put it in a snow bank and that was much slower than an ice filled tub. Wouldn't do that again, but even then the beer was good. Of course, maybe my beer would have been even better with a wort chiller, who knows. Is it possible that it can get better than this?

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To answer your question yes, your beer will improve with rapid cooling. You will notice a dramatic difference between beer that has taken 90 min to cool and beer that was cooled instantly.
From the time I take turn my boil off (ten gal.) till the time I pitch is about ten minutes. I've been recording pitch temps around 75 degrees F.

Did my first batch today and cooler it fine with an ice bath. It was a lot of work though, and I can definitely say my next brewing purchase is going to be a wort chiller.

RedSun said:

I have an immersion chiller and I used to love it, now it's just plain useless. Tried it yesterday and in 30 minutes I only dropped to 165 degrees. Gave up, dropped in an ice bath and called it a day. Guess my water out of the tap here in AZ won't get near cold enough to help quickly.

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Not surprising considering your location. Up here in WI the ground wtwer is plenty cold year-round, lucky for me. There are prolly other options out there for you, but since I have never needed to upgrade fom my chiller, I have never needed to research them.

eviltwinofjoni said:

RedSun, a prechiller is recommended for those brewers stuck with super-hot ground water. It's like an immersion chiller, but it cools down the hose water past it's normal temps (which I've heard can be 80º easily in the summer in hot climes) so it makes the wort nice and cool.

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I have a beauty I'll sell you. Only...um...$500.00. Yeah...that's a bargain.

She's a one of a kind.

RedSun said:

I have an immersion chiller and I used to love it, now it's just plain useless. Tried it yesterday and in 30 minutes I only dropped to 165 degrees. Gave up, dropped in an ice bath and called it a day. Guess my water out of the tap here in AZ won't get near cold enough to help quickly.

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As stated earlier, a pre chiller will do the trick. I live in Mesa, so I deal with the same water temps. I use my old immersion chiller for the pre chill, then it's into the Therminator.:rockin: .