Cooling a full boil without wort chiller

Ideas? I have about 6 liter bottles of water in the freezer for ice blocks. I figure I would water bath the kettle and run the garden hose in the bath, so it refreshes with cool water. I would then santize the outside of the ice bottles and drop them directly in the wort to bring down to the right temp. Does this sound like a plan or like something a noob would do or both?

just find a big bucket.....a keg bucket works well, and put some ice and water in there and let the wort cool, no need to be too elaborate with it. Also if you are doing a partial boil just take those ice blocks and add them to your "ale pail" and cool the wort while still bring you up to volume.

You'll have to work at it. It's pretty easy to get it down to the low 100's, but after that you reach a point of diminishing returns without using some sort of chiller. I bet it will take a lot longer than you think to get it down to what I consider pitching temp (70 or so).

That said, keep the cold water moving and stir the wort often. The deeper you can immerse the pot, the better. The last 20 degrees will be the slowest by far - consider getting a few large bags of ice and use them late in the process to help you with that last temp drop.

Yeah, that amount of liquid is going to be tough to cool without a chiller... +1 on stirring often, just be careful not to splash.

I stayed away from full boils for 5 gallon batches until I had a chiller... I would say doing something less would be good here (ie: 3.5 gallon boil, or even 4).

Jay

The first full boil I participated in we buried the pot in snow up to the rim and put a bag of ice on top and it still took over an hour to reach the high end of the pitching temp. A wort chiller is the way to go.

Does this sound like a plan or like something a noob would do or both?

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Did this twice and made a chiller. Cool with the water bath to about 100-120F, then put the ice bottles in.

i fill the bath tub out the pot in with weight on top, move the water around every once in awhile. i can get a full boil of 5 gallons down to 70 or so in about 45 mins or so

While I am not a devotee/practioner of the technique, there is a growing volume of evidence that no-chill brewing is quite viable as an alternative to conventional cooling methods.

I was able to cool w/ an ice water bath in about 1/2 hr before getting a chiller. I have a big galvanized tub from HD that I put my 7 gallon aluminum turkey fryer in. I put 2 20lb bags of ice in around it and top it off with water. Stir the wort and keep the ice water moving too and it goes pretty quick. Did the math though and at $10 of ice each brew a $60 chiller was a good investment.

New guy here and only just did my second batch so who knows if how right I am. Anyway, like I said, just did my second batch yesterday and to cool it, as others said, I just put it in my tub with 2 20 pound bags of ice and cold water. Then, remembering an episode of mythbusters on quickly cooling beer (thanks to the friend who reminded me), I poured a bunch of kosher salt that I never use into the water right around the pot. I had an electric thermometer to monitor the temp, and it went from 185 down to 75 degrees in about 20-25 minutes.

I don't know if my results were atypical or not, but it sure seemed to work well for me.

I did the snow thing once - that was a huge waste of time. I think Arby has the best technique yet for a full boil.

I tell ya though - chillers are sweet - I hope this is just a stop gap solution with a chiller soon.

Thanks for the replies all. So I ended up cooling it by using one of my hard shell drum cases for a water bath. It was a full boil, done in a 7 gallon aluminum kettle that came with my turkey fryer. Put that sucker in the drum case (full of water) and let the hose continue to run into the drum case replenishing it with cool water. Outdoors of course. That alone got the wort down to about 100 degrees F in about 20 mins. I dropped in 6 - 8 gatoraid bottles filled with frozen tap to the water bath. All in all, it took about 45 - 50 mins to get it down to about 75 degrees F. Pitched and now there is a yeast party in my closet.

I think I am going to build myself a chiller for the next batch. My LHBS wants like $65 for a copper coil immersion chiller, which I think I can build rather easily for about $25.



Edit: Whadaknow... I just saw the add right above this post. What a koinkydink.

+1 on the chiller.
Now, try to get those fermenting temps below 75. 65 would be much better.