What's the rush?

I know some of you folks living in warmer climes sometimes use a prechiller to get the wort down to a temp where your tap water can manage to cool your wort. Well, right now, it's freakin like 20 degrees outside. This got me to thinking.

What's the rush with cooling your wort? Why all the fuss? I'm not suggesting that we all go back to the ice water bathtub routine or anything, but why not just let nature do her own prechilling? Think about it...

Water as cool as 130F degrees or so can be used to sanitize/sterilize... so why make any fuss whatsoever before the wort has reached this temperature? What benefit do we get with the ice baths and the pre chillers? Sure, we chill the wort faster, but does it really stave off infection if the wort is still hot enough to sanitize itself?

Why not just let the wort cool itself down to 135 or so.... why not?

I thought you wanted to cool it quickly to limit oxidation and DMS production also....

wihophead said:

I thought you wanted to cool it quickly to limit oxidation and DMS production also....

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Correct.dam 10 charachter thing

should something about a cold break be mentioned here?

How about "The faster it cools off the faster we can pitch and we can go back to drinking the fruits of our labor" also known as "a shorter brewday"?

BuffaloSabresBrewer said:

should something about a cold break be mentioned here?

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That will happen regardless of speed.
It may happen in the fermenter though.

DMS is my main reason for fast chilling.

Bah Humbug said:

That will happen regardless of speed.
It may happen in the fermenter though.

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Not exactly. Slow cooling doesn't produce the same level of cold break as rapid cooling, according to the things I've read and my own experiences.

http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter7-4.html

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Rapid cooling also forms the Cold Break. This is composed of another group of proteins that need to be thermally shocked into precipitating out of the wort. Slow cooling will not affect them. Cold break, or rather the lack of it, is the cause of Chill Haze.[/FONT]

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the quicker to pitching temps, the less time the wort acts as a petri dish for wildborne infections.

I just hosted a brew event at my place with 8 people brewing. 4 of these were first timers. Since my brother and I let everyone use our equipment, we had everyones beer fermenting at my place.

Nick and I noticed right away the difference between the brews cooled in under 6 minutes compared to the brews cooled close to 15 - 20 minutes. Although they were different brews, thew were similar in style (3 of the 4 were brown ales) The brews with the faster chill had the solids drop very quickly and cleared much faster after fermentation. The slower chilled brews stayed hazy all the way through primary and started to clear 2-3 days into the secondary.

I'm not 100% sure the fast chill time was the reason but it seemed reasonable to us.

The faster I get it to cool the sooner I get get on with the second batch for the day.

I say use that 20 degrees to your advantage...
(Lid removed for picture)

In addition to the reasons already mentioned, fast chilling is said to lock in hop aroma and flavor.