Chilling wort without wort chiller.

Maybe a dumb comment, but I thought the salt helps to melt the ice.

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I think it's a different type of "salt".

1) Salt lowers the freezing point of water, thus making the ice on the streets/sidewalk a liquid and letting it evaporate.

2) Salt lowers the freezing point of water, thus allow the liquid surrounding the ice cubes to get below 32ºF without freezing, making the water colder, making it cool things faster.

3) I find adding isopropyl alcohol to my ice baths is way more effective and less messy than salt

Massive thread resurrection

I'm brand new and starting my first brew tomorrow. Wondering, if I'm going old school, simple ice bath to cool the wort, is it ideal to have a top on the kettle or should I leave the wort open to air?

Thanks for any advice you might have...

If it were me I would put a lid on it as it cools to keep from introducing any of the bad guys that could ruin your batch.

Yeah, the cooling (or loss of heat really) comes from the sides, not the top. You can however stir the wort occasionally with a sanitized spoon to make it go faster. Stir the ice bath as well with something different.

punkerdru said:

Yeah, the cooling (or loss of heat really) comes from the sides, not the top. You can however stir the wort occasionally with a sanitized spoon to make it go faster. Stir the ice bath as well with something different.

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Edit: zombie thread!

EvilTOJ said:

We made homemade ice cream a few months ago and gave me an idea; In an ice bath, add mostly ice and a little water, then sprinkle salt over the top of the ice. It makes it colder and chills the wort faster. I'm not sure how much faster it is, but it turned the ice cubes into a solid block.

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Do not do this in the sink if using an aluminum kettle. Steel sink + aluminum kettle + salt = battery. Long story short it will shock you. Lol

I use a wort chiller and tap water. As you all know, initially, the chiller cools the boiled wort rapidly, but as the temperature approaches that of the tap water, cooling slows down considerably. My boil pot is to big to immerse in ice water, so I was considering an alternative. Fill some plastic bottles with water, immerse those with sanitizing solution, then freeze them. When the wort chiller starts to slow down, put the sanitized frozen bottles in the wort for the final cooling, being careful not to touch the bottles with anything that wasn't also sanitized, i.e., using sanitized tongs to carries the bottles. The trade off seems to be the risk of introducing an infection from the bottles vs. a longer exposure of the wort to air-borne infections. Has anyone tried this?

I believe that scenario is addressed earlier in this thread. Both using bottled water as a heat sink, and also using them as giant top-off ice cubes.

A lot of Zombie threads recently. They need an icon or something so that at least people know they are undead.

I don't think this was mentioned, recently lost my immersion wort chiller during my move, I plan on running 100' of silicone through an ice cold picnic cooler (jockeybox) and transfer my wart through the tubing ending with an aerator tip I figure about 90' will be in the cooler this should save time, leave extra space to whirlpool during the transfer, give the yeasties their O2, and minimize water consumption.

...possible downfall: line resistance pressure could be offset by gravity haven't ran the numbers yet

Using an ice-cold Coleman cooler as a re-engineered bass-awkward thermal sink has been an idea of mine for a while. Instead of using vertical cylindrical coils the 1/2" or 3/8" copper could be utilized in angled, multiple flat sandwiched layers of "S" bends that would be more space efficient. Gravity feed would be reliable. It might be expensive given the price of copper but the heat transfer in 20-50ft of copper would be much faster than a same size immersion coil put in the kettle.
Using ice-cold calcium chloride salt water would introduce the observed "supercooling effect" and significantly reduce cooling times. The only real issue would be choosing proper connections to the kettle valve and sealing the copper lines efficiently. No one wants wort contaminated with salt water. Furthermore, if gravity-fed wort flowed well, it would be a breeze flushing the copper line with sanitizer in the same manner.
The idea sort of intrigued me because the glycol chillers are so expensive and not everyone can afford one ... but making a "better" thermal sink might be a more affordable idea people would love to see as a DIY home brew project.

The reason I brought this up is because I don't use an immersion chiller, but all the needed parts for such a project can be easily found. Like everything else in this hobby you have to consider how much money, time, and effort gets applied ... and some of us appreciate cheap but efficiently effective home engineered gadgets.
I might get around to it eventually.