Chilling wort in hot weather.

I'm from Arizona so temps can get pretty hot. What is the most effective way to cool down to pitching temps for someone like me? Plate? Immersion? Plate+Pre-chiller?

I haven't purchased any cooling devices yet. In the past I would just put my whole keg in a large bucket of water, with a hose in the bucket of water circulating new water. It did the trick but was a pain in the ass, wasted water, and won't work once I add a ball valve to my keg.

The nice thing about being accepting the contractor job here in afghanistan is that I can now afford all the toys I couldn't before.

During the summer time the tap water from my house can easily be 80*. What do you guys think I should purchase to cool down to correct pitching temps without buying a ton of ice.


I was thinking about maybe using a plate chiller to cool it down in one pass using normal tap water. Than transferring it from that container, to my fermenter using a plate chiller combined with a pre-chiller. That way I'm not burning through ice like crazy. What do you guys think?

Can you refrigerate tap water night before cooling? Use that water and ice with a recirculating immersion cooler. Just a thought.

I use a 50 foot immersion chiller plus a 25 foot pre-chiller. I don't add the ice to the prechiller until the beer chills to about 100.

Use a large plate chiller (I have a 40 plate from Rebel Brewer, their ChillHog 4000 model with RebelSmart added) to get it as close to the water temp as possible. If you can chill the water lower, then that will help. Once you have the wort chilled as low as you can with the plate chiller, have a fermentation chamber to get it the rest of the way. Let it rest there overnight, and then pitch the yeast.

With a plate chiller, you want to get it as low as possible in one pass. Adjusting the flow on the kettle and plate chiller out should let you do that. I've found that if I run the chill water pretty much full open, open the kettle all the way, or about 3/4 open, and regulate the chiller out flow, I can easily get the wort to about 60F without issue. I watch the temperature, and adjust it, so that my wort out temp is between 65F and 70F.

IF you have a fermentation chamber, (converted chest freezer) you could put buckets of water in that a few days ahead, and get them to about 40-50F and chill with that, via a pump. How much water you need will be determined by the batch size...

You might want to also think about using the method Mr. Malty does (whirlpool chilling with a bucket and pump) as shown here: http://www.mrmalty.com/chiller.php Personally, I don't need to go that route since ground water in my part of the country is pretty much always cool enough to get the wort to the temp's I want it to be. At least where I'm brewing it is.

I brew in Phoenix. And what I do is for the 2-3 gallons I need to fill in the fermenting bucket, I just use Ice instead. if you live in the valley you more than likely are using RO water to brew. Ice from Water and Ice places are RO as well.

Dumping the ice directly in the bucket usually gets my wert down to the low 70's in about 15 minutes.

I'll more than likely invest in a wert chiller sometime soon though. Particular because if I use a carboy from the get go I can't really put ice in there.

If you got the money for toys. Get yourself a glycol system. If you got a lot for toys. Get me one too....

see a few DIY systems. I may move to NC and it will be a requirement there Almost like AZ.. as a matter of fact even in jersey id like one

Golddiggie said:

Use a large plate chiller to get it as close to the water temp as possible. If you can chill the water lower, then that will help. Once you have the wort chilled as low as you can with the plate chiller, have a fermentation chamber to get it the rest of the way. Let it rest there overnight, and then pitch the yeast.

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+1

This is what I've been doing except that I find I need to recirculate thru the plate chiller for a few mins before I get it anywhere near the temp of my ground water.

~ 40# of ice in an ice water bath in the sink with frequent stirring (wort and sink) works for me. 10 gal down to pitching temp in <30 min.

I use regular tap water to cool the wort down with an IC until about 100 or so, then switch to a little pond pump in ice water to get it down to pitching temps. I'm planning on getting a pre-chiller in the near future.

kfh said:

i use regular tap water to cool the wort down with an ic until about 100 or so, then switch to a little pond pump in ice water to get it down to pitching temps. I'm planning on getting a pre-chiller in the near future.

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+1

This is the best, effective way of chilling wort in the summertime

Get a plate chiller, and use it like normal. Next, invest in a wide-mouth funnel.

If you've ever ordered yeast from NB, it usually ships with those little cool packs that you freeze up. Next time you order from NB, ask for more (they gave me 3+ for free).

Freeze those guys up, and sanitize them directly before use. Make sure all the paper labels and other non-plastic junk is removed from them before you chill your wort. Run your wort super slow through your plate chiller and onto these frozen packs saddled in your funnel. It was 103 the other day when I brewed. Brought ~200 degree wort down to 63 no problem.

I use the copper coil type chiller. A 50 foot one in the wort and a 25 foot pre-chiller in a bucket of ice. The coil types are very easy to clean and won't clog up. I boil the 50 footer in another pot for 15 minutes to sterilize it before I put it in the wort. I tried boiling it in the wort but it was just too cumbersome. If you can chill your add-in water, that will help too.

JoePro said:

This is the best, effective way of chilling wort in the summertime
Get a plate chiller, and use it like normal. Next, invest in a wide-mouth funnel.

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That works well when your ground water is cold. The water coming from the tap in Phoenix is around 80-90* in the summer. Not kidding.

To the OP: There are two approaches to chilling here in AZ. (This advice is for people who do full batch boils.)

1. Make some sort of prechiller to knock the temp of the tap water down into the 60s or so. From there you can feed that water into an IC, couterflow, or plate chiller.

2. Use water straight from the tap through your IC, counterflow or plate chiller until you're down to like 100-120*. Then recirculate ice water with a pond pump through the IC, counterflow or plate chiller to get down to pitching temps.

I use method 1, but both work well.

I live in Florida and have the same problem. I used to use a 50 ft copper immersion chiller. Now I bought the Blichmann Therminator wort chiller and it was one of the best things I ever bought. I get a bucket and put 20 lb of ice in it, using a garden pond pump and hoses I pump the ice water through the plate chiller and recirculate it. Even on those days when it is 95 degrees and the tap water is in the mid 80's, I can get my owrt to below 70 in under 5 minutes (for 5 gallons). I do use a march pump, but it works well with gravity too. The pump is nice as you can throttle the flow and get the wort even cooler.

I just did a doppelbock 2 weeks ago and got the wort from boiling to 55 in 7 minutes.

You can also use the garden pond pump with ice water in an immersion chiller, but remember to constantly stir the water.

I messed around with my 50-ft IC so that the majority of the coils would be at the top of the wort during chilling (you know, since heat rises). This seems to get the temperature down pretty fast than when the coils were evenly distributed.

I generally get my wort down to 80-90, then transfer to fermenter in the fermentation freezer, set to my target pitching tempterature, then pitch after 4-8 hours.

Before I had a fermentation freezer, after the temperature plateaued, if it wasn't where I wanted it, I would disconnect the hose attachment, attach the tubing to my autosiphon, put the autosiphon in a bucket of ice water, and rack the ice water through the IC. This seemed to work a lot better and use a lot less ice than a pre-chiller.

Based on the herms system im building: with two pumps

After the boil I will use ground water with a CF. Here in jersey with the recent heat wave ground water is 87*. Then pump back thru the herms coil with the keg now full of ice water.

Being in a small apartment, I just go with a 25 foot immersion chiller and cool it down as far as it can go... in the summer that's usually 75 at best. Then I rack to the fermenter and toss it in my mini fridge with the airlock on it. I pitch later that day, usually at about 2 degrees fahrenheit above my ideal fermentation temp. Some people would say that it's bad to do that but with a proper pitch, lag phase should last at least 4 hours which is plenty of time to cool it down the extra couple degrees.

KFH said:

I use regular tap water to cool the wort down with an IC until about 100 or so, then switch to a little pond pump in ice water to get it down to pitching temps. I'm planning on getting a pre-chiller in the near future.

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+2
but i am not worried about getting a pre chiller. the pond pump with ice water and the jz whirlpool style chiller will get it as cold as I want.

I use an immersion chiller to get the temp down to 100 F with my tap water. Then, I place some ice in a bucket with a little water and circulate that through my immersion coil with a $10 pond pump from Harbor Freight. It pumps the water terribly slow, but it absolutely cools the wort quickly because of the contact time in the coil (ie time the water in the coil has to cool the coil). Best $10 that I have spent recently on brew equipment.

Well looking it all over I think I'm going to go with the Mr. Malty method. Besides it's a great excuse for me to buy 2 pumps. It looks like morebeer.com even sells the the Mr. Malty method parts so I don't have to DIY anything. Although unlike Mr. Malty's it only has one outlet going back into the keg and doesn't split it like Mr. Malty's. I don't think it should make that much of a difference though.

Here is how my buddy and I chill our wort. A couple old beat up corny kegs full of ice, 50' IC, and some garden hose fittings from the big box store. Takes a couple kegs of ice to knock the wort down here in the middle of a Houston summer in ~15 min or so.

Bought a new 30 plate chiller from keg cowboy and will be using the same pre-chilling method with it. Works like a charm