Partial Chilling

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marckovach

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I have read a lot of threads on no-chill, but has anyone tried partial chilling wort. Current tap water temperature around here is 80 F. Brewed yesterday and was stuck at 80 after an hour. Using an immersion chiller I can quickly get my wort below 100. Thought about chilling to 100, sealing the wort in my carboy and pitching the next day when the wort temperature is at a more favorable pitching temperature. Anyone have any experience or advice on this? Thanks!
 
Just did this with a 10 gallon batch of helles. Got it down to 80 then into the fridge. Pitched next day. This has worked for me many a hot Summer day batch before.
 
I've never used a chiller (always no chill), but I suspect you would be just fine doing it that way. The only thing I'd add is to either use an S type airlock or cover the opening with a sanitized baggy or foil or something.

That amount of cooling will draw in sanitizer if you have a blowoff or 3 piece airlock hooked up.
 
I do this for all brews now in the summer in TX. Lagers and hybrids I don't pitch the yeast till the wort is 48F and 55F respectively. Ales in the low 60's.

Cool the wort with my chiller/prechiller combo to ~70F into the FV.

I oxygenate, place sanitized foil with elastic band and put in in the fermentation chamber. Few hours later it's at the target and the yeast get pitched. I use the delay to allow the yeast to warm from ~36F to ~pitching temps.

No problems encountered thus far. Usually a 1-4 hour gap between transfer to Fv and pitching yeast depending on the target temperature.
 
This is what I do. I'll usually get the wort south of 100F and cool it in the fermentation chamber to pitching temp over a day or so.

:off: I used to no chill, but I made the genius decision one day to drain 5.5 gallons of 212F wort into a plastic carboy. It's amazing the fun shapes hot plastic can morph into.
 
using an immersion chiller? you could always coil up your source line in a sink full of ice water after you've hit your cooling limit to get the temp down the rest of the way.
 
I do every batch "partial chill."

Immerse my open kettle in cold tap water in the garage utility sink and occasionally gently stir until it gets to ~140°F, add hopstand hops and cover for 30min (if recipe calls for that), then transfer wort to carboy (trub and all). Cover carboy opening with sanitized foil and place into fermentation chamber. When gets to pitch temperature (usually takes 8-12 hours, often I wind up waiting until next morning, sometimes 2 days), oxygenate and pitch.
 
I have tried this in the past, but still seems slow going once you are close to the temperature of the ground water.
 
Would the foil still allow air in? Has anyone used a closed stopper or does this cause too much pressure with the cooling?
 
I have tried this in the past, but still seems slow going once you are close to the temperature of the ground water.

I'm with you on that one. I'm in south Florida and our ground water is like bath water.

I tried recirculating through ice baths and all of that and found it just too tedious. The partial chill just makes more sense for me and it looks like you as well.

:mug:
 
Would the foil still allow air in? Has anyone used a closed stopper or does this cause too much pressure with the cooling?

Yes foil is not airtight. Oxygen is not a concern at that stage of the process.

If you place a bung in a carboy and cool it more there is a good chance that bung will be pushed into the carboy as it cools. I've not tested that myself.

Foil works just fine. I secure it with elastic band. I do the same when it comes to cold crashing.
 
Now that you mention it, I guess *I* do partial chill too. Except I sort of do the opposite. When the boil is done, I let the wort cool overnight. Next morning I transfer it into a thermowell equipped carboy and put that into my fermentation chamber. I use a “low limit alarm” probe in the thermowell and when the chamber has brought the wort to my target pitching temperature, I rehydrate and pitch my yeast.
My Local Home Brew Shop owner recommended not putting the lid on the kettle after the boil until the wort was down to about 165 *F. His theory was more of the precursors being driven off during the boil have a chance to escape and “bugs” cannot live in the 165 * wort so increased chance of infection was minimum. I’ve never really had a DMS problem but decided to try it on my latest brew. The main thing I noticed was that the wort cooled much faster down to where I put the lid on the brew kettle and that resulted in a lower morning temperature. That helped me because my fermentation chamber is a wine cooler appliance I got off of craigslist and so doesn’t have a lot of horsepower. So the lower morning temperature allowed me to pitch earlier the next day.
 
I have been doing "Partial Chill" for the last 8 batches; works great. Use an immersion chiller to 100° in about 10 min., then into the ferm chamber, pitch next am. I used to "no-chill", but this eliminates the transfer to a "cube" for chilling.
 
I have been doing "Partial Chill" for the last 8 batches; works great. Use an immersion chiller to 100° in about 10 min., then into the ferm chamber, pitch next am. I used to "no-chill", but this eliminates the transfer to a "cube" for chilling.

It also eliminates the prolonged Hops alpha acid isomerization, which is a plus if you want to maintain hop aroma and flavor. Hoppy beers don't work very well with no-chill.
 
So I have never dabbled with partial chilling because I do not have a fermentation chamber and my water is cold enough to do the job.

However, I tried something out at one point, to save water, that may be able to be applied. I setup a bilge pump as to recirculate my cooling water for my immersion cooler. This works really well in the winter when I have a lot of snow to keep throwing into my "reservoir" of water (a storage tub).

With that said, if you need to completely cool, you could use your tap water to get as cold as you reasonably can and then switch to the bilge pump solution, adding ice to your recirculating water. Let me know if you want any details on the setup. I can take photos of the pump and hardware.

I have gone from boiling to pitching temp (around 70°) in about 10 or 15 minutes. I have deemed this quite unnecessary, but it can be done.

Another solution is to also put your kettle into a bath of ice water as you use an immersion chiller. If your water is warmer than the desired pitching temp, turn off the water and remove the chiller for your last bit...
 
Circumstances beyond my control made my last two brews wind up as "partial chill" batches.

I do not think the downside is all that great, but I do note that the cold side break has been almost non-existent. The brew prior to these two, with 62F tap water, had the mother of all cold side breaks. I do not know that it matters all that much, but I suspect that losing the cold side break will lead to a lack of clarity in the final product.
 
So I have never dabbled with partial chilling because I do not have a fermentation chamber and my water is cold enough to do the job.

However, I tried something out at one point, to save water, that may be able to be applied. I setup a bilge pump as to recirculate my cooling water for my immersion cooler. This works really well in the winter when I have a lot of snow to keep throwing into my "reservoir" of water (a storage tub).

With that said, if you need to completely cool, you could use your tap water to get as cold as you reasonably can and then switch to the bilge pump solution, adding ice to your recirculating water. Let me know if you want any details on the setup. I can take photos of the pump and hardware.

I have gone from boiling to pitching temp (around 70°) in about 10 or 15 minutes. I have deemed this quite unnecessary, but it can be done.

Another solution is to also put your kettle into a bath of ice water as you use an immersion chiller. If your water is warmer than the desired pitching temp, turn off the water and remove the chiller for your last bit...
I thought of a similar set-up as an option if I am not happy with the results of a partial-chill set-up.
 
I, for one, would be interested in seeing your setup. I tried to do my own variation on that theme last time, but I did not have all the connections I needed. I think I am now ready if it happens again, but I guess I won't really know for sure until it happens.
 
When I have some spare time, maybe I'll do a mock setup to take some photos. I'm getting married in two weeks so I'm pretty busy. But I intend on brewing another batch in a week. Maybe I'll set it up...
 
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