Brewing problems last night

So last night I was brewing a 10 gallon all grain, Cream of 3 Crops brew, and everything was going well, I mashed right on temp, got between 85-90% brewing efficiency, and everything was going great. When it was time to start cooling the brew i set up my immersion chiller, and the outflow went to a sprinkler in the yard. I kept the top open and stirred the wort trying to get more contact with the cooler to get it to drop temps fast. after 15 minutes, it seemed that the temp hadn't dropped at all. I checked the connections, looked at the sprinkler - it was still going strong; there was plenty of water going through it. I have no idea why it wasn't cooling, granted, the water is warmer, but it is still around 70F trying to cool 212F wort... so after drinking, we decided we'd put ice in a zip-lock bag, sterilize it, and submerge it to help cool it down. Well I got the bright idea to add salt to get it colder faster, all was going well until my bag opened while submerged in the wort... so... I now had a 10 gallon batch of beer that wasn't cooling, had a TON of salt in it, and watered down slightly.... I gave up and dumped it out, completely dejected...

next time I am thinking of having two immersion chillers, one going into a bucket of ice water to cool the water before it goes to the chiller in the wort, then to the sprinkler... thoughts?

 

Wow, that sucks. The salt idea was not a good idea BTW. It won't help it chill faster. Salt lowers the freezing point of water, that's all.

The pre-chiller will help a lot. Stirring your wort constantly is necessary unfortunately.

 

Sorry for your loss

I made a prechiller and it has helped on these hot days.

 

I found this battery powered pump at Walmart and put it in a big cooler of ice water. I pumped cold water through the IC and back into the opposite end of the cooler. Dropped the temp very quickly. originally thought I would need a secondary IC but it didn't seem necessary after I set it up.

 

i suppose a pump and a bucket of cold water would also work... ill have to look into that.

 

I've been back at all grain brewing since moving into our new house. Our cold water seems to be a little warmer then other places that I've brewed. I made an pre immersion chiller that sits in a 5 gallon bucket with solder less fittings that connect to the copper and then a hose fitting with plastic tubing. I made the outlet of the pre immersion chiller long enough that it just connects right to the immersion chiller sitting in the boil kettle.

 

by the way.. about the salt... i was getting a few too many into the beers by that time of the night... decision making powers weren't my strong suit at that time.

 

I use a counter flow chiller. works pretty good. sorry for your loss.

 

70 degree water is cool enough to chill your wort pretty quickly. I don't know exactly what your setup was but my initial guess is that the sprinkler provided an awful lot of back pressure which reduced the volume of water running through your chiller. This would have caused it to cool much slower than if the water had been flowing at its normal rate. Have you ever had success in the past running your wort chiller with a sprinkler?

 

Pot, meet "Kettle".

 

Hell yes, that's true. I think you are referring to one of my many stupid episodes documented elsewhere.

 

I'll pour a 40oz in its honor!

 

Never done a 10 gallon boil, however, I have suprised myself at how fast I can cool 5 gallons with the cheapest immersion chiller available. The key is to stir, stir, stir, taking short breaks it usually takes me 15-20 minutes. Create a whrilpool that goes against the chiller's flow, that creates a kind of "counterflow" effect. Better luck next time, and sorry to hear about your salty batch.

 

He said salty batch...

 

Normally I would recommend keeping the batch since you got that far, but once I read about the ton of salt...

 

well, it was a handful, but literally, a hand - full... as for the sprinkler, I have done it many times and it works great, i get a decent height from the sprinkler so I know that there was a decent flow.

 

I'm really leaning towards a partial-chill method due to the time it takes to chill and shortening my overall brew day. My plan is to chill down below 100, rack, then put lid/airlock on and throw it in ferm chamber at 60, also putting my yeast in the ferm chamber so it's at the beer temp when I pitch later. I think that way I don't have to stress about how quickly I chill and I can clean the kettle during the time I'd normally be waiting for it to chill.

Stirring is a MUST though.

 

That's exactly what I do. I've got a big plate chiller that gets the wort down to the chilling water temp in a matter of minutes. Buy my chilling water is almost 90F in the summer. A couple of hours in the chest freezer and it is to temp.

 

Have I mentioned how much I LOVE having a craigslist fridge plugged in to a STC-100 DIY temp controller?!?!? $82 total investment ($40-fridge, $30-STC, $12-PVC junction box) and I can maintain just about any temp from freezing to the 70's.

 

Pumping ice water through the IC is much more effective IME, and that was the consensus on a recent thread as well.

Think about it. You can't get the water anywhere near as cold by using a pre-chilling IC as you'll have with a bucket/cooler full of icy water. And the money spent for a pump is pretty close to that for another IC.