Cooling Wort Technique

Just wondering if there is any reason I can't move my wort over to my fermenter before I cool it. Of course I would make sure it is sterilized. I was thinking I could use my wort chiller in my fermenting bucket rather than my boil kettle. The only reason I am thinking about this is my boil kettle always get dark carbon all over the outside. I use a turkey burner and the kettle always seems to have carbon all over the outside. This way I won't have to get black stuff all over the kitchen. Any reason not to do this?

Obviously, don't do this with glass. Sounds like you are using plastic, though.

I would think that the temp wouldn't hurt it, but I'm not positive.

I've done the slow chill method in a bucket before without cooling the wort. It's not ideal by any stretch of the imagination, but it turned out fine in the end. I just let the steam vent for about 30min, closed the lid, plopped the airlock on it, put it in my swamp cooler and left it alone until the next morning. Just make sure you have plenty of starsan on hand for the airlock, because it creates a hellova vacuum when you put the lid on. My lid got a little warped, but it's still airtight. I'm afraid to do it again because I'm worried it will destroy the integrity of the plastic.

Is there a reason you can't use your immersion chiller outside?

If you're getting that much carbon, I thinks you need to adjust your burner.
Should be pushing blue flame, touch of yellow at the end.

I use a turkey fryer and have virtually zero carbon on the bottom of my kettle.

Dan said:

Is there a reason you can't use your immersion chiller outside?

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I didn't think of that. Good point.

Devils advocate, that kind of heat could possibly leech some of the plastic chemicals into your beer. Most food grade plastics are designed for food storage temperatures, maybe up into the low 100's to account for high ambient. I wouldn't trust it any higher than that.

I have the same issue with turkey fryer burner soot. It's a cheapo burner compared to the banjos, and I cannot adjust the yellow out of the flame with the mixing valve.
I got my 30 qt fryer at WM for $40 on sale, so it's hard to complain about a little soot. It has no trouble at all bringing 6 gallons up to a boil. Someday I'll upgrade to a banjo burner and a full featured ss brew kettle, but it's hard to justify spending that kind of cash as a beginner.

IFMracin said:

If you're getting that much carbon, I thinks you need to adjust your burner.
Should be pushing blue flame, touch of yellow at the end.

I use a turkey fryer and have virtually zero carbon on the bottom of my kettle.

Click to expand...

This, my friend had this issues and was able to adjust his burner, now he gets no carbon at all.

I use a cheap amazon burner and have no carbon issues either.

Adjust and or clean the burner...sometimes they are full of rust and crap. HDPE should be able to handle 180 degrees without issue...likely higher. The no chill group goes right to an HDPE fermenter after boil.

Make sure you are "starting" your burner correctly. I burned through 3/4 of a tank trying to boil 6 gallons the first time with my $30 Bass Pro fish fryer (comes with the 2 gal pot), completely turned the bottom of my 7.5gal pot black and after an hour and a half, wouldn't get over 190 degrees. I did this two nights in a row before searching on this site. I found out I wasn't starting the burner correctly.
Start with the tank and regulator off, open the tank all the way, crack the regulator and light. It should be pretty loud, I was shocked at how loud it was the first time I did it correctly. Last weekend I brought 13 gal from 85 to boil in 40 minutes in my new keggle.