Is This a Dumb Idea?

[pr0cess]

Or more accurately WHY is it a dumb idea;

I was thinking a good idea might be to brew a 5 gallon recipe with 2.5 gallons of water (since that is the size of the water cows I can get at the store) and put another 2.5 gallons in the fridge during the brew (or freezer if I can make room) then when the brew is done and I start chilling the wort (I use an Ice bath still), drop in the cold 2.5 gallons. It should relatively immediately chill the wort, maybe even aerate it some.

I haven't read anything advising for or against this, but I can't be the first person to think of it so I figure its a really bad idea, but why?

-dylan.

 

[IrregularPulse]

That's generally how extract brewing is done.

 

[ChshreCat]

I always put my top-up water in the fridge. I sink chill my wort part way, transfer to the fermenter and then the cold water takes it the rest of the way to the low 60's. You get a lot of cold break in the fermenter, but it all settles out in the end.

 

[Neonsilver]

One reason it is a bad idea is because it won't get you down far enough fast enough. I find that the last few degrees is always the most difficult. So let's do some quick math. Since they are both exactly 2.5 it will make calculations easy.

212-34=178
178/2=89
89+34=123

So you would be sitting at 123 degrees once it was all said and done. If you wanted to get down to 70 the math would look something like this.
70-34=36
36*2=72
72+34=106

So at those amounts you would want to wait until you were down to 106 before adding the water.

Having said all of that what I do is sanatize the inside of a 2 liter and fill it with filtered water. Once the wort gets down to about 130-140 I cut it open and toss in a big chunk of ice and that gets me between 70-80. Put that all in the better bottle and top up with the rest of my water. This whole process takes me 20 minutes which is pretty close to what people are getting out of a chiller.

 

[david_42]

I've added the cold water up front and it works fine. Pluses: you aren't dealing with boiling wort instantly and it reduces the loss of aroma oils.

 

[coy]

I did this. with my first batch. I also used a liquid thermometor to make sure everything was at or close to 65*..
I had 2.5 gallons in the car and the outside temp was 57* brought it in and put it in the fridge for about 2 hours bringing the temp down to around 40*. the wort I had chilling was around 84*.. Once I added the worth and cold water to the fermenter it immediatly went to about 69*.. According to my instructions I can add the yeast at that temp. once I stired it up and put the top on my plastic fermenting bucket the air lock started to bubble almost immediatly.

neonsilver can you explain your math.. I don't quite get it. lol I'm not all that great at math.

 

[FreeM80s]

I saw a video on youtube where jim from sam adams spoons hot wort over ice. I'll try to link it if I can find it

 

[ChshreCat]

+1 on chilling it a bit the old fashioned way first then using the cold water to take it the rest of the way down. I have a double sink and chill it in cold water on one side, then fill the other side and transfer the kettle over once the sink water warms up. Only takes me about 15 minutes to get it down to where the top-up water takes it the rest of the way down.

 

[Neonsilver]

neonsilver can you explain your math.. I don't quite get it. lol I'm not all that great at math.

It was just a simple averages formula. 212 is the temp of boiling water and 34 is close to what is in people's fridges. When the amounts are exactly half the result will be right in the middle. To find out where he needed to be before adding the water I just reversed the formula.

 

[coy]

Ahh gotcha.. I was thinking to much into it. LMAO..

 

[pr0cess]

I have made all of 2 batches thus far, and I use an old iced tea display bucket to chill the wort. The bucket has about a 30 gallon capacity and is only a little wider than my brew pot at the base. Its on a stand that makes it a nice working height, and is designed to look like a galvanized steel tub. I put a layer of ice on the bottom, drop the freshly boiled wort onto that and pack ice around it. It has a drain hole in the bottom, so as the ice melts out I pack more ice around it. Both times it has taken about 40-50 minutes to drop the temp to the happy yeast zone, as measured by a candy thermometer. I was thinking that halving the water and dropping it into the wort should cut that time substantially. I think I will try it next time. Of course I am having so much fun I should probably just buy some copper tubing or a wort chiller but I like using what I have on hand and so far this method costs about 4 bucks a batch ( 20lbs of ice) and the melt water goes onto the garden.

-dylan.