Totally Newbie on Cooling Wort

I am new to brewing. I e-mail the guys at xtremebrewing.com about their Xtreme kit based on a recipe from Dogfish head but I wanted to see if I could get a quicker answer. I am eager to start the Round the World Tripel kit. I am confused on how to cool the Wort. It says to cool the wort to 70 degrees. How long should that take?

It takes a LONG time if you don't aid the cooling somehow.

The easiest way to cool the wort is just by putting it into the fermenter, covering it, and letting it sit overnight. Your beer will probably be a bit cloudy, and you run the risk of contamination by delaying your fermentation.

You can do a concentrated boil (about 3 gallons, with all of your ingredients) and pour it over 16 pounds of ice, but you need to make sure the ice is very clean. Many people have success with this method, but I personally don't like it much.

You can fill a bucket or bathtub with ice and water and immerse your brew pot in it. This takes a little while, but is much faster than overnight.

Many of us have taken to using a copper coiled wort chiller that uses cold running water. The simplest version submerges in the wort (immersion chiller). A more complex version has a coil within a coil where wort flows in one direction and cold water flows around it in the opposite direction (counterflow chiller). Either will cost between $30 and $60 to buy (or make).

Wow, I just wrote a lot. Hope it helps!

If you can get your pot in a ice and water bath that should work in a fairly short time, especially if it is less than 5 gallons. Keep the lid on and stir it every so often. You can monitor the temp as you do this. Adding nicely cooled, clean water should bring the temp down close to what you are looking for. You have to keep the temp stable as fermentation begins too. Where will the fermenter sit and what is the temp on the room?

Wort chillers are definitely worth the investment.

I just brewed a partial boil today. With the ~10 pounds of ice from the icemaker and 10 or so pounds of assorted 'blue ice' packs (like one uses in a cooler for a camping trip) I got my pot with 3+ gallons of wort cooled from boiling to 75 degrees in about 35 mintues.

10 pounds of ice went in the sink. Poured a cup of kosher salt on that. Put the pot on the ice and dropped the ice packs around the sides. Topped off the sink with water. He's the important step:

Poured a beer, sat down in the kitchen and read a book, checking the thermometer periodically (I use an electronic thermometer with a remote lead) till it was ready to go into the fermenter (with the other 2 gallons of water).


This is how I've cooled wort since my Pop started brewing when I was a kid. Simple, cheap and nothing extra to store or clean when its done.


That being said, a wort chiller is certainly a good investment and is almost a requirement for boils 5 gallons and up. Chilling 5+ gallons using an ice bath, in my experience, takes a damn site more ice.

I've been able to get a pot with three gallons of wort from boiling to ~90 degrees in just about fifteen minutes, using an ice bath. One big bag of ice will do. What I do that's a little unique (I think) is to leave the cold water running a little big, and siphoning the warmed-up water out of the sink and into a carboy. This creates a little bit of circulation, and seems to have cut a couple minutes from the process.

Once the concentrated wort is at 90, I move it to the fermenter and top off with usually about 2.5 gallons of cooled water. That allows me to aerate, and lands me right in my desired pitching range. Getting the concentrated wort below 90 degrees is a PITA, the rate of cooling decelerates quickly once you get below 100. But by doing the top-off, there's no need to get the brewpot to 70, and I get the wort pitched quickly (one of the keys for avoiding contamination).

I use the ice method. 2.5 gallons of hot wort into 16 lbs of ice will usually cool the wort down to 75 degrees nearly instantly. If it doesn't, you still have 1/2 gallon to play around with for more ice or cool water.

I don't worry about getting an infection from the ice. It comes in a sealed bag, and I'm pretty sure the ice companies sterilize the water before freezing it.

It took five minutes for my last brew to go from boiling to 75.