Chill my Wort!

I am making the All Grain jump but have recently come to what i think may be an uncommon problem. I do not have running cold water available to chill my wort for pitching and ice is in short supply. I live in Germany where our hoses are supplied by above ground tanks, sinks can hardly fit a one gallon pot, let alone 10, and ice is by in large a luxury. I guess I could start making ice but i was wondering if there are any other ideas out there?

How large are these tanks, and roughly what temperature is the water coming out of them? You may be able to still run a chiller using them, though it would likely take longer since the temperature delta would be smaller than most of us are used to...

Or, as an alternative, do a few searches around here on no-chill brewing. I've seen a handful of references and posts about it, and it could be something that would work for your situation quite nicely.

Thanks I'll check out no-chill. The tanks are roughly 50 gallons of sludge and mosquito eggs. They are whatever the outside ambient temp is that day, today roughly 75 degrees. They are filled by rainwater and whatever the rainwater brought with them. During the cooler months they should work great as long as they are not frozen and of course, the water does not touch the wort. I really don’t want to spend more on ice than what i spend on my brewing ingredients.

sounds like your best bet may be looking into the "no chill" method that strat suggested. there are many people who swear by it and have great results. just be patient with it and be on top of your sanitation game and you should be ok.

best of luck!

here is link for you if you haven't found it already.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/exploring-no-chill-brewing-117111/

Consider making your own ice and using a plate chiller. They are arguably the most efficient in terms of water use.

If this is a long term problem you might look into a DIY chiller (or glycol chiller).

Thanks guys reading and learning, i've never heard of no chill so this is a great experience. Heli, won't be long term, 2 yrs until i head back CONUS, still i got time to learn.

I've often thought about designing some kind of air cooling device similar to a cooling tower. Wort would be pumped into the top and trickle down while a fan blew air across it. You would get cooling from being in contact with the air, but then you would also get evaporative cooling and you would aerate the wort before pitching too. The only problem I see is a much greater chance of infection as the fan would introduce dust and who knows what else to the wort.

But, what about if a tower was used to cool the water which was then pumped through an immersion chiller and back to the top of the tower for cooling. Theoretically if it's 70 degrees in your house and relatively low humidity you could probably chill the wort down a few degrees below 70 with the evaporative cooling. May take a tower that's too big for practical homebrewing though. I obviously haven't done the design work on it.

Place your kettle on a towel or some other object to protect floors/counter from heat. Hook up wort chiller to your faucet similar to a Pur system. Your kitchen faucet should pump cold enough water to cool it down Outlet hose goes down the drain to keep the sink from getting too hot.

just one little note on chilling all grain ... I have found that you CAN top off all grain batches ... i have topped off as much as 2 gallons on a 5 gallon batch and the beer tasted great ... and i only had to chill my wort to about 100 since the top off water was almost at freezing temps ... just a thought