Cooling wort outside

If it's -25celcius outside I would think that the microorganisms in the air are quite limited.

So why don't I just cool my wort outside? It'll be way faster then inside instead of having it cool for a long time in my bacteria filled home.

I could make a little hole in the snow and sit it in there.:rockin:

Sure it'll work, but remember if it is in close contact with the snow it will actually have insulating effects. I sat mine on the sidewalk last Sat and it was 70F in about 5 hours. I did a bunch of stirring as well.

That's right- a snowbank especially will insulate and slow down the cooling time dramatically. An ice bath in the kitchen sink is probably still much faster, even though it's cold outside, unless you're going to stand over the kettle and stir it so that it cools evenly.

It is hard to cool a lot of liquid quickly without circulating it. So while -25C is great, if you could top off with nice and cold water that has been outside for a while, that is if you are doing partial boil extracts.

If not, do you have a chiller of some sort?

I was hoping to hold off on the immersion cooler for a bit...but the main factor here I'm interpreting from you guys is that circulating the hot wort so it all contacts the cooling surface and cools evenly is the important part....and that doesn't happen when it's just sitting out in the cold.....right?

It's just my coffee gets cold within about 10 minutes being outside....why can't 4 gallons of boiling wort cool just as quickly?

Suppose I picked a good user name for myself.

I have been leaving a tub of water outside and sitting the hot kettle in it. its like a giant sink with near freezing water in it, free.

Well, not to be a smart ass or anything but it does:
If your coffee cup is 8oz...
128oz per gallon X 4 gallons = 512oz /8=64 cups X 10 minutes to cool = 640/60 minutes per hour = 10.67 hours.
Plus or minus.

northernlad said:

Well, not to be a smart ass or anything but it does:
If your coffee cup is 8oz...
128oz per gallon X 4 gallons = 512oz /8=64 cups X 10 minutes to cool = 640/60 minutes per hour = 10.67 hours.
Plus or minus.

Click to expand...

Good math...I like Hardleft's idea. It would work better.

I was being a bit sarcastic with the whole coffee bit....however the math is much appreciated.

Hardleft's idea sounds perfect. Would I have to circulate the cold water and the hot wort as well though?

My sink is too small to fit my kettle so what happens is all the water and ice on the sides of the kettle gets hot while all the water stuck underneath the kettle stays cold so I have to sit there and circulate the water.

Having the kettle sit in an outdoor cold water bath that is continually cooled by the surroundings with some circulation seems like a wicked idea. The idea of sitting out there and circulating it in my snowsuit doesn't seem quite as exciting....

northernlad said:

Well, not to be a smart ass or anything but it does:
If your coffee cup is 8oz...
128oz per gallon X 4 gallons = 512oz /8=64 cups X 10 minutes to cool = 640/60 minutes per hour = 10.67 hours.
Plus or minus.

Click to expand...

Not to mention your not cooling your coffee down from boiling temps.

This works fine, just not fast. The whole "mixing problem" isn't, as cold water slides down the sides and produces a convection current. I cannot address -25C, but at +5C it took about 3 hours for my ESB to cool. I suspect you'd see 90 minutes or even less if it is blowing a bit.

By the way, the scaling from a coffee cup to a kettle is not linear, it's a surface/volume function.

Mountainbeers said:

Not to mention your not cooling your coffee down from boiling temps.

Click to expand...

Oh I love my coffee boiling...they call me "Old Iron Throat"

One time I was attacked by polar bears, I just splashed my coffee in their eyes and then used the rest to melt a hole through the ice pack below me and swam underwater to safety...

Okay, I'm officially being unproductive at work. I am LOGGING OFF!!!