Is my dad nuts?

Saw my pops this weekend and he was talking about this great new method for chilling his partial boil wort. He froze his topoff water in a large cylinder the night before brewing and plopped it into his fermenter, then poured the hot wort right on top of it. He monitored the temperature of the cooling wort as the ice melted and when it got down to the low 70's he pulled out the ice that was left and topped off to 5 gallons with room temp. water.

He wanted to know why he'd never heard of anyone using this as a method for chilling wort before as it worked very fast. My first instinct was to tell him that since neither he nor I had heard of anyone doing it, there must be a reason why, but I could not think of any particular reason.

Anyone have an opinion on the old man's method, good or bad?

Well, hate to tell you....

There are several people around here who do the same. It seems to work for them. Some are worried about sanitation, so some will boil the water to be made to ice, other's don't stress. It's a legitimate method.

Yeah-- I've heard of such before, except for the pullin gout part. Never heard of anyone trying to extract the ice from the wort to control temp before.

I think that this would work fine, as long as the container that the water is frozen in is sanitized and preferable sealed while it's freezing.

I fill 4 each 1 gal water jugs with PUR filtered tap water and put them in the freezer for 4-5 hours prior to brewing. I've been doing that for over 10 years without any problems....from the tap to the freezer.

I only boil 1.5 gals and the wort gets cooled to the 60-70s.

I'm sure this almost goes without saying, but I would not be trying this method with a glass carboy. That could be very bad.

However, you could get a CPVC pipe to freeze a "tube" of water. Then you could use the method with better bottles.

kornkob said:

Yeah-- I've heard of such before, except for the pullin gout part.

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Coolingusinterruptus?

The Sam Adams homebrewing video suggests this method as well. I've done it in the early days before full boils. If hot side aeration is not a myth, you might want to carefully transfer the hot wort and not violently pour it. If you ever go all grain, it's not possible anymore.

I used to do something very similar when I did partial boils...works very well. I would stick my top off water in the freezer, in gallon containers. I would time it so they would be just about ready to freeze when I was transferring the wort to the fermenter. When I added the icy cold top off, it brought my temp down to pitchable regions.

I can agree with this - although i have a modification which seems to work faster -

For probably 10 or more of our brews, we'd purchase 4.5 gallons of water and an 8lb bag of ice cubes, like you'd get for a picnic.

After the partial boil (usually about 3 gallons) we'd dump the ice in the fermentor, pour the nearly boiling wort right over it, and top off to 5 with the room temp gallon of spring water. All the water added post-boil came packaged or bottled and not once did we ever have a contamination issue, even when we accidentally bought bags of ice that had tears in the sides.

From my experience, 3 gallons of boiling wort, 8lbs of ice (which is approx 1 gallon) and 1 gallon room temp water usually hits 75 or 80 degrees in about 2 minutes. Pitch and seal up.

We learned the hard way that the 16lb bags of ice were way too big. Hit temps around 55 degrees... oops! We also tried it once with a single block of ice - that took way too long to melt down to temp. We much prefered the crushed or cubed ice - more surface area and a faster melting time.

I've since moved up to an immersion chiller, for the record.

kvh

sounds like a good method....

might be a little harder to keep sanitary though...

some people barely even let the beer touch the air....

Bromley said:

He froze his topoff water in a large cylinder the night before brewing and plopped it into his fermenter, then poured the hot wort right on top of it. He monitored the temperature of the cooling wort as the ice melted and when it got down to the low 70's he pulled out the ice that was left and topped off to 5 gallons with room temp. water.

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Does he just put the entire plastic fermenter and water into the freezer?

I suppose it doesn't matter too much, but I imagine you could do the math and figure out exactly how much ice to make so that you get the temperature without having to pull the ice (which seems like a pain).

pax,
Scott

homebrewer_99 said:

I fill 4 each 1 gal water jugs with PUR filtered tap water and put them in the freezer for 4-5 hours prior to brewing. I've been doing that for over 10 years without any problems....from the tap to the freezer.

I only boil 1.5 gals and the wort gets cooled to the 60-70s.

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you only boil 1.5 gallons? Isn't your beer mostly water then? do you have low OG and finishing gravities. I have been reading directions that say boil as much as you can, it gives more flavor, body, yeast nutrients and hop flavoring. I don't wanna argue with 10 years as i am only at 10 months! Just something to discuss.

Doing partial-boils does not "water" down your beer. You're still adding the same ingredients to the beer, just only boiling 1.5 - 3 gallons of water instead of a 5 gallon boil. While doing full boils will give you more control over your beer, you can still make a helluv a good beer with partial boils.

Doing full boils allows you have way more control on the color of your beer along with more hop utilization.

Partial boils carmalizes your sugar, making it more Amber and darker. There are ways around this (late adds of the sugar, ect).

Still a n00b, but I brew 5gal. batches as follows:

I do a 2.5 gal partial mash boil, transfer to ice-bath in sink and add a large ice cube (I use one of those semi-disposable, 8 cup tupperware-style containers that Ziploc makes). I use tapwater and freeze it the night before I brew.

After ten minutes in the ice-bath with cube, I add 2 gal. cold tap-water to fermenter and pour the wort in. Gets me between 60 and 70 degrees in 15 min with no aeration worries. Results are good and getting better!

hmm, kvh must be lucky to not have contamination, because I've heard that bagged ice is notorious for being full of icky little nasties! Could be wrong there, but I won't even put it in my pepsi at a picnic if I can help it.

Wow jarrid, I thought I was pretty finicky when it comes to hygeine,I won't touch a shopping trolley if I can help it - I've heard they habour heaps of germs - and often if I find that a public toilet door doesn't push to open (that is, if I use the public toilet in the first place, often I just hold it in) I'll try and open the door with two fingers usually holding the very bottom of the handle, where I think not many people will have touched it. Long story short, I reckon I'm borderline OCD, but damn not putting bagged ice in your drink???

Back on topic, although I'm a noob brewer, I try to use ice to cool down my wert, but sometimes I don't have enough ice to put in it, so I also place the fermentor in a large plastic container thing filled with cold water and ice packs. I'm not so sure how effective this is tho, but I've just never been organised enough.

Hmmm...that sounds like a good idea to me. I would think that freezing water would have the same effect as boiling water...wouldn't any bacteria die due to freezing? Or would it just hybernate and come back to life once warmed up?

JeanLucD said:

Long story short, I reckon I'm borderline OCD, but damn not putting bagged ice in your drink???

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Well, let me put it this way, I don't make a habit of it... I worked in a pharmaceutical company a few years back, so I learned to be careful about contamination. I don't obsess about it though. I figure my immune system can do its' job. Losing a batch of beer, however is something I'll go a step further to avoid. Where are my priorities?!

jarrid said:

Losing a batch of beer, however is something I'll go a step further to avoid. Where are my priorities?!

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Isn't that the truth, lol, sometimes my sister looks at me funny when I'm running around brewing and trying to make sure that nothing comes into contact with the wert, to prevent contamination... Good thing to hear that you've got your priorities straight, :cross: