Wort chilling time

[phil74501]

I'm going to make a batch, my second ever, later today. I know you're supposed to chill the wort to below 100 degrees as quickly as possible. How quickly do I need to get the wort below 100?

 

[mgregg]

The easiest way is to fill your sink with ice and water and toss your boil pot in there to cool it. When I was doing this I would try to get it down close to 100 degrees in the ice bath. Then I would add it to the fermentor and top it off with cold water until I got to my batch volume. It usually took me 45 minutes or so with 2-3 gallons of wort in my pot cooling it this way.

Since I started doing full boil batches and didn't want to spend $10-$15 on ice for every batch of beer I made, now I just throw my wort into an old chest freezer I have and let it cool slowly. It takes 4-5 hours to cool 7 gallons down to pitching temp, but I have never had any problems with my beer cooling it this way.

 

[JonM]

Don't stress out over it too much. Just get it chilled using whatever methods you have and ignore the clock. Plenty of people do "no chill" (I.e., turn the burner off and let it sit overnight, pitch yeast in the morning). It'll be fine no matter how long it takes.

EDIT: you should chill down to fermentation temps (mid/Low 60s) rather than to 100ish.

 

[gbing]

It is best to get it down to pitching temp quickly to ensure you have a good cold break, promoting a clearer, cleaner tasting beer.
The sooner you can pitch lessens the chance of bacterial or wild yeast contamination.
I tend to use my food safety experience from being a chef to navigate how I can play around with these guidelines.
For instance : a 5 gallon pot of soup is allowed a full 6 hours before it must be either brought back up to a boil or discarded. .. but please note that said soup must be boiled again before being served to kill any potential pathogens.
This does not hold true with wort....generally, the longest you'd want to be allowing the wort to cool is at very, very most 2 hours, but if you can do it in less than 1 hour, and ideally less than 20minutes, you'll have a much more satisfactory product.

 

[andy6026]

Build yourselves a wort chiller - they're not that expensive to build and will chill your wort down in as long as it takes you to sanitize the bucket.

And I will repeat a previous poster's suggestion - you want to go colder than 100. You want to get to pitching temps, which for most yeasts is around 65.

 

[phil74501]

On my first batch, I filled the bath tub full of ice, my kitchen sink isn't wide enough to hold the kettle, put the kettle in, and stuck a thermometer in it. IIRC, It took about 30 to 45 minutes or so to get it below 100. I then siphoned it into the fermentor, and topped it off with room temp spring water. I did wait until the temp was around 70 before I pitched.

I was just curious if I needed to cool it down faster than that. And what the effects would be if it took too long to cool down.

 

[JonM]

Eh, chilling fast is great (and FWIW, I use a plate chiller that does it super fast) but it's not the end of the world if you don't yet have the means to do a super rapid chill. It'll be fine with an ice bath. That's what I did for a long time before I got a chiller and it works fine.

 

[brew_ny]

It is best to get it down to pitching temp quickly to ensure you have a good cold break, promoting a clearer, cleaner tasting beer.

This does not hold true with wort....generally, the longest you'd want to be allowing the wort to cool is at very, very most 2 hours, but if you can do it in less than 1 hour, and ideally less than 20minutes, you'll have a much more satisfactory product.

over the last 600 gallons I have been really lucky in the fact I get very clear and clean beer

being that I no chill most of the time and it take me all of 8 - 10 hours to get to 62 - 64 to pitch

all the best

S_M

 

[brewcat]

Use your bathtub! Open lid and slowly move the water around the outside of the kettle. I never used ice, my tap water is cold enough. The extra volume of water allows better heat dissipation. I then got the wort to 80 or so and dumped on top of the 2.5 or so gallons in the fermenter. It would then be at pitching temps. That method took me about the same as my immersion chiller now. 20-25 minutes.

 

[Brew_G]

I fill my laundry room tub halfway with water, then add ice that I make in my chest freezer - old milk gallon jugs, quart soup containers, and water bottles. I then put the kettle on top of that and circulate as often as possible. I've gotten the process down so that it takes me right about an hour to get from the burner to 65F.

It is best to get it down to pitching temp quickly to ensure you have a good cold break, promoting a clearer, cleaner tasting beer.
The sooner you can pitch lessens the chance of bacterial or wild yeast contamination.
I tend to use my food safety experience from being a chef to navigate how I can play around with these guidelines.
For instance : a 5 gallon pot of soup is allowed a full 6 hours before it must be either brought back up to a boil or discarded. .. but please note that said soup must be boiled again before being served to kill any potential pathogens.
This does not hold true with wort....generally, the longest you'd want to be allowing the wort to cool is at very, very most 2 hours, but if you can do it in less than 1 hour, and ideally less than 20minutes, you'll have a much more satisfactory product.

No-chill crew is going to eat this up...

 

[brew_ny]

No-chill crew is going to eat this up...

 

[mgregg]

I would definitely agree that cooling faster is better. I'm just saying that in my personal experience(admittedly limited experience-roughly 20 5 gallon batches) I have not noticed any significant differences in clarity or quality between the batches I chilled in an ice bath and the ones I've no-chilled.

I did have problems with my first 2 batches because I was not patient enough to let the wort cool to pitching temps. I was more worried about pitching fast then I was about temperature. I pitched both those batches at or above 100 degrees and did not get a good fermentation on either one. I would say that pitching temperature is more important than time. Having said that, my next project is building an immersion chiller so I can get down to pitching temps faster.