chill brewing

[andycook]

I do chill brewing but I have 6-8 plastic containers filled with water and frozen. When it comes time to chill I sanitize and drop them in the boil kettle. I recirculate the wort from the bottom to the top so the wort is constantly getting cooled by the frozen blocks floating at the top. Takes about 20-30 mins to cool and no water is wasted.

Any improvements on this technique?

 

[Brewmegoodbeer]

Never tried that. I would be worried about the possibility of one of the containers not being completely sanitized but then again, if you drop them in your wort when it has just finished boiling, that is hot enough to sanitize anything. Are the containers you use to freeze the ice food safe and are resistant to leaching at high temperatures?I may have to give this a try in combination with my wort chiller to chill even faster.

 

[andycook]

Yes, food safe and resistant to leaching. Though I did start with milk jugs the very first time for the proof of concept. Those were too thin and couldn't handle the heat.

Take care to clean and sanitize the inside as well as the outside in case of puncture or cap comes off. if that happens hopefully you are just adding a bit of unwanted water.

I do NO CHILL every couple of batches due to family requirements.

As I do recirculate during the chill I've been thinking about using the ice jugs to chill a cooler of water and run the pump recirc hose through that just to see how long it takes to cool. Doing so would eliminate adding the ice jugs directly to the wort.