Newbie question about cooling wort.

So from the basic recipes I have it says to boil about 3 gallons of wort, cool it, transfer to fermenter and fill to 5 gallon mark with water.

So my question is can I pour the cold water straight into the hot wort to expedite the cooling? Or is this a big no?

You need to cool the wort a bit first. Adding cold water to boiling wort does cool it a bit, but not enough. Then it stays at 100 degrees, and is very difficult to chill! If you cool the wort in an ice bath to about 90-100 degrees, then adding cold water to it can get you right to about 70 degrees.

I'll freeze brewing water in tupperware bowls in the freezer and plunk one or two giant ice cubes into the kettle while it's cooling in the sink.

Put the covered pot in the sink full of ice/water and then stir it every five or ten minutes with a sterilized spoon. The stirring will speed up the cooling process.

Just remember that everything that touche your wort after boil must be sanitized.

If there's room around the pot, stir that water now and then too (with a different spoon) and it'll speed it up more.

i used to just freeze my last 2 gallons almost solid, hack them open with a knife, and add it to the wort before i went AG , no problem. (i wouldnt recommend that practice)
but like yooper said, that will only get you to 90-100.

i would look into building a immersion chiller-you could just hook the chiller right up to the sink, drop the temp to 90 in probably 10 min then add your 2 gallons and be set. i spent i think 35$(?) on mine.

Some of it depends on the temp of your water you can get out of your sink faucet. I checked mine the other day and it's about 50 degrees. I don't even both with ice in the sink, just tap water.

Just remember that if you cool the wort in the sink and pour it into the carboy, make sure you completely dry off the outside of your kettle before pouring. You don't want that sink water becoming a source of a mystery infection!!

ChshreCat said:

Some of it depends on the temp of your water you can get out of your sink faucet. I checked mine the other day and it's about 50 degrees. I don't even both with ice in the sink, just tap water.

Click to expand...

very true. i feel blessed with <45 degree well water and a nice cool basement year round-it was meant to be

Agreed. My well water comes out at a consistant 52°F. My basement is nearly always between 62° & 64°. I was made to brew.

All of you guys talking about cool water from the tap and basements can just touch it. Rare to find basements here and even more rare to find cool water from the tap after Jan. Southerners have to work at brewing.

Got any extra room for my primaries in your basement??

Heh, I'm not sure I'd want to use an IC with well water, you'd have to use some kind of recirculating pump to conserve water I would think.

For the ice bath, I've done a few. I kinda have limited ice so I would always put the pot with wort in the sink and put in cold water around it (no ice). Wait till water heats up drain and repeat once. The third time is when I would add my ice and add water around it. Worked for me before going to an IC.

Minky said:

Just remember that if you cool the wort in the sink and pour it into the carboy, make sure you completely dry off the outside of your kettle before pouring. You don't want that sink water becoming a source of a mystery infection!!

Click to expand...

a siphon would make it worlds easier.

Minky said:

Just remember that if you cool the wort in the sink and pour it into the carboy, make sure you completely dry off the outside of your kettle before pouring. You don't want that sink water becoming a source of a mystery infection!!

Click to expand...

Good point!

I always disinfect my entire kitchen before I brew - especially the sink - but I never even thought that water from the outside of the pot would drip into the fermenter.

I live in a "New construction" home in AZ and the water pipes run throught the attic space. My cold water runs hotter than my hot water gets in the summer for a few minutes (scalding, could seriously burn you) after that I think its safe to say the ground water would be around 85-100 degrees at the peak of the summer. Only good thing is that it can cut boil times down, but any top-off water I use is chilled in the fridge for 1-2days prior to brewing. This will be my first summer attempting to brew since I have started to dial in my fermenting temps with the 'ol ice chest swamp cooler setup.

another way to expedite the cooling is to put the kettle into a larger water area than most sinks, like a bathtub. The increased amount of water gets your temps down faster.