Speeding Wort Chilling with Frozen Water Bottles

In a thread about chilling wort without an immersion chiller, I saw someone suggest freezing 1-liter soda bottles, then spraying them with sanitizer and putting them in the wort to help it chill faster. This sounded like a great idea to me, but then I was wondering if I might pick up a plastic taste from the bottles in boiling hot wort and/or leach chemicals out of the plastic into the wort.

Your thoughts or experience?

smyrnaquince said:

In a thread about chilling wort without an immersion chiller, I saw someone suggest freezing 1-liter soda bottles, then spraying them with sanitizer and putting them in the wort to help it chill faster. This sounded like a great idea to me, but then I was wondering if I might pick up a plastic taste from the bottles in boiling hot wort and/or leach chemicals out of the plastic into the wort.

Your thoughts or experience?

Click to expand...

I had the same idea, but never thought about the leaching of flavor/chemicals. Would love to hear people's thoughts on this.

I work in restaurants and we used something called an ice paddle to cool down huge batches of stock/soup/etc. These run 20-30 bucks at a supply house and are specifically designed to handle high temps. Might even find one cheaper than that at auction or online.

This sounds like a great idea! I found this one online ....

http://www.foodservicewarehouse.com/san-jamar/rcu128/p359397.aspx

but since I'm a noob myself, I 'd like to hear what more experienced brewers think of this idea.

I've been using ziplock bags with sterilized ice (in case one breaks our leaks). Cooled down my full boil in10 minutes.

I use a couple of plastic Sobe bottles. I fill them 80% full with a saltwater solution and use them to stir the wort with no plasticy side-effects. And yes, the obligatory sanitize like crazy before dunking.

Your ice is best used toward the end of the cooling process. The temperature difference with the wort at 200* is such that it will cool pretty easily. Once it gets down to 100, there's not as great a difference between the wort and ambient air temp. That's when you need the ice and have no worries about plastic leeching.

If you're doing extract brewing, I'd just use ice. You need to add water to bring your batch size up anyway, why not just add a frozen gallon or so? Plus, you don't have to sweat the sanitation so much -- I doubt there are many germs that can thrive in both frozen and near-boiling water.

Personally, I plan to pick up a coil of copper tubing at the hardware store and hand-tool a wort chiller. Doesn't look that hard, and I do have the luxury of a basement with a laundry sink (although I imagine I'll be hooking it up to a garden hose when I'm brewing this summer).

For the $34 bucks you'd spend on the soup chiller, you can get some copper tubing at the hardware store and make an immersion chiller. Look up some videos of people making copper immersion chillers - you might be amazed at how simple it is. Cheers!

tennesseean_87 said:

Your ice is best used toward the end of the cooling process. The temperature difference with the wort at 200* is such that it will cool pretty easily. Once it gets down to 100, there's not as great a difference between the wort and ambient air temp. That's when you need the ice and have no worries about plastic leeching.

Click to expand...

Sounds reasonable. Thanks.

And to address a different comment, I can't add ice directly--I'm doing all-grain batches, not extract.

regular plastic bottles are not rated for near boiling temperatures. I would definitely worry about chemicals and taste issues.

tennesseean_87 said:

Your ice is best used toward the end of the cooling process. The temperature difference with the wort at 200* is such that it will cool pretty easily. Once it gets down to 100, there's not as great a difference between the wort and ambient air temp. That's when you need the ice and have no worries about plastic leeching.

Click to expand...

Yeah what he said. I don't have a wort chiller. For the first 100 or so degrees stick it in your sink and cycle the water a few times. At about 90-100 dump the water, fill sink with ice and you should be good to go.

JonM said:

For the $34 bucks you'd spend on the soup chiller, you can get some copper tubing at the hardware store and make an immersion chiller. Look up some videos of people making copper immersion chillers - you might be amazed at how simple it is. Cheers!

Click to expand...

I am not able to hook up a chiller to my sink, otherwise I'd use one.

AgentHubcap said:

I am not able to hook up a chiller to my sink, otherwise I'd use one.

Click to expand...

You can't screw an adapter onto your faucet? Most sinks I've seen have removable aerators that reveal threads you can use.

tennesseean_87 said:

You can't screw an adapter onto your faucet? Most sinks I've seen have removable aerators that reveal threads you can use.

Click to expand...

I do this in my kitchen sink when I cool indoors. I made 2 immersion coils, 20' each. I connect them with vinyl tubing. I put one in a bucket with ice bottles and the other one in the wort. It works very well.

AgentHubcap said:

I am not able to hook up a chiller to my sink, otherwise I'd use one.

Click to expand...

Look for a waterbed fill kit. They come with a little plastic adapter that uses the threads for the aerator and has threads that mate with a regular hose on the other end. You just unscrew the aerator, screw in the adapter and then hook your hose up to it. Probably cost you about ten bucks. Add another ten for a 10' hose, $25 for a 25' copper coil, couple of bucks for hose clamps and you're golden!

you can make a wort chiller for 30 bucks?

I did an extract batch and added water that had been chilled until it was "slushy". I know it won't work for your all grain batch, but for the extract batch it worked great.

Well, less than $50, anyway:
20' 1/4" copper coil : $16.46 (Lowe's)
15' 5/8" utility hose : $7.98 (Lowe's)
1/2" x 1-1/4" hose clamps (10-pack) : $9.91 (Hardware World)
Waterbed fill/drain kit : $11.84 (Amazon)
=====
Works out to $46.19. You might be able to get a better price on hose clamps if you run down to your local auto parts store, I just snagged these prices quick on-line. You might also be able to save some money going with vinyl tubing and a hose barb for one end, dunno what that would cost but you'd eliminate the hose and waterbed kit. I'm planning to throw one together soon, I'll take pictures and let everyone know how it turns out.

I'm the OP. I gave up on the frozen soda bottles. This weekend I purchased the materials from Lowes and made an immersion chiller.

• 20' of 3/8" copper coil: $19.86
• Hose repair kit with female hose thread on one end, other end will clamp onto 1/2" ID hose (tubing): $1.60
• Spring bender set for copper tubing: $9.48
• 5-6' of 1/2" ID vinyl tubing: had it on hand
• 1" length of 3/8" ID vinyl tubing to use as an adapter inside the 1/2" ID vinyl tubing to go over the 3/8" OD copper tubing: $0 (had on hand)
• 4' of 3/8" ID vinyl tubing for outlet of immersion chiller: $0 (had on hand for use with autosiphon)
• hose clamps: $0 (had on hand from my junk yard scavenging days)
• faucet aerator to hose thread adapter: $0 (had on hand for use with bottle washer)
• piece of copper wire to serve as a hanger for the far side of the immersion chiller: $0 (had on hand)

Total cost for immersion chiller: $ 21.46 parts plus $9.48 tools (both plus tax)

I'm doing stovetop brewing, so I can put the brewpot on the counter next to the sink (or even in the sink) and get away with the short tubing lengths.

I'm glad I read about the spring bender in a different post. I highly recommend it. No kinked copper tubing.

Just used it today. I do 2.5-gallon all-grain BIAB. 16 minutes to take the wort down to 66F! Wow!