Lid or No when cooling wort?

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BWRIGHT

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I know that cooling the wort quickly is crucial. So, my question is, I don't have a wort chiller yet (will soon) but when I use an ice bath should I leave the lid on or not? I know that leaving the lid on can keep chemicals in that need to be evaporated. But also I know leaving the lid off is source of contamination. So what is the best way to do this?
 
I always keep a lid on my brew kettle after flame out. If you are going to be careful with sanitization don't you want your wort covered when it cools? There is lots of crud floating around the air that could drop into your wort.
 
I would use a lid and just remove it when you need to stir, much less exposure that way
 
I'm assuming you are doing extract recipes. In that case you don't need to worry about retaining DMS in your wort while cooling. That is only a problem with all grain, particularly with lagers. I keep mine covered as much as possible during the cooling phase as your wort is at risk of contamination from dust borne yeast and bacteria.

GT
 
This process I stumbled upon yesterday for cooling an extract batch worked great...

I placed four gallons of water in the fridge overnight, then during my boil placed them in the freezer for about an hour. They were just to the point of wanting to ice up, just one had about 3 ice cubes worth of ice. Place them back in the fridge until you're ready to use them.

When your boil is done, pour 3 gallons cold water into your fermenter (I had mine cooling in an ice bath too) and just transfer/filter your wort into the awaiting cold water and top off as necessary with the fourth gallon. This cooled my wort to 66 degrees in the amount of time it took to transfer. Eureka!!
 
Stir your wort while it is cooling? I thought you were supposed to let the cold break occur, without stirring.....


Ugggggghhhhhh!!!!!!!

Okay, I'm better....
 
dpt222 said:
When your boil is done, pour 3 gallons cold water into your fermenter (I had mine cooling in an ice bath too) and just transfer/filter your wort into the awaiting cold water and top off as necessary with the fourth gallon. This cooled my wort to 66 degrees in the amount of time it took to transfer. Eureka!!

I'm afraid the splashing of basically 200F wort would cause Hot Side Aeration.

I cool it without the lid and stir. Also, if you're doing it in your sink, have both sides filled with ice cold water and move it around while replacing the warmed up water with cold one.
 
I'm afraid the splashing of basically 200F wort would cause Hot Side Aeration

What is this...hot side aeration? To think I stumbled upon a decent method of cooling quickly, that sucks.
 
Some people say you should not splash hot wort because it can cause the beer to disolve more oxygen and then oxidize quicker. The only problem is that no one has really experienced HSA when working with small batches.
 
The Bone2 said:
Stir your wort while it is cooling? I thought you were supposed to let the cold break occur, without stirring.....


Ugggggghhhhhh!!!!!!!

Okay, I'm better....

The cold break is going to occur regardless. If you whirlpool the wort while cooling the cold break will collect in a nice neat little pile in the middle.
 
Some people say you should not splash hot wort because it can cause the beer to disolve more oxygen and then oxidize quicker. The only problem is that no one has really experienced HSA when working with small batches.

So it is unlikely to get HSA from a 5 gallon batch? Is this more of a commercial concern then? Now I'm all freaked out about it and I have 6 weeks until I will taste the fruits of my possibly futile labor:(

I read Papazian's book and he instructs the extract brewer to ladle the hot wort through a funnel to the awaiting cold water in the fermenter, my man says nothing about HSA!
 
Unless your dog/cat takes a dump in your kettle, there is a very, very good chance your large amount of yeast will outperform the little bit of foreign organisms introduced during cooling.
 
No lid here and i stir the whole time my immersion chiller is in the wort. Good to know i'm not the only one.
 
What is this...hot side aeration? To think I stumbled upon a decent method of cooling quickly, that sucks.

This is the cooling method used by many extract brewers, cold water in the carboy, pour the wort thru the filter and right in. I did this in the 80's. It works fine, hot side aeration IMO is more for all grain brewers to worry about, people doing full wort boils.

[Edit] I vote no lid if you are getting temps down in a reasonable timeframe (ie. 10-20 minutes and not overnight!).
 
Stir your wort while it is cooling? I thought you were supposed to let the cold break occur, without stirring.....


Ugggggghhhhhh!!!!!!!

Okay, I'm better....

This is something that took me a while to figure out, because you hear so many ways people are doing this. You can stir gently to whirlpool while the chiller is running, but at some point you need to stop and let it settle and drop as you say. So the answer is "do both". If you are using an immersion chiller it will cool faster with some stirring to move the wort around.

I use an immersion chiller with a recirculating arm I pieced together based on the one at mrmalty.com. So I can pump wort out of the kettle, into the arm which puts it back in the kettle creating a gentle enough whirpool that junk is not swirling wildly around, it is just slowly rotating the wort. But at some point it goes off and everything settles down.
 
No lid. Cooling quickly is more important, and a lid on will retain a LOT of heat.

Airborne infection concerns? Minimal, if that.
 
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