First time to brew in a year and half...

That's right...I haven't been able to brew in a loooong time. I've finally gotten settled in and had everything ready to get my brew on! I ordered three all-grain ingredient kits from Northern Brewer; Bavarian Hefeweizen, Cream Ale, and an Oatmeal Stout. Today I went with the Bavarian Hef since it's a pretty simple process and only one hop-in.

Everything went off without a hitch...until I got to the cooling process. I swear, everytime I get to that point in my brew process I hate it. I have a pretty decent immersion chiller and the water temp here is between 40-50 from the tap but I feel like it takes forever to get my wort down to pitching temps and yes, I whirlpool and all of that. It takes me close to 40 minutes everytime I brew to get the temps down to where I want them. Is there something I'm missing with an immersion chiller? Different rates of waterflow? I'm about fed up with it and just going to try my luck with a CFC. I know most people here love those things but I don't have a pump which means I would need a way to get the wort from the bottom of the CFC into the carboy.

Hey! Either way, I've got about 5.5 gallons of Bavarian Hef fermenting in the lagerator right now...STOKED!

 

Congrats on getting back into brewing. Cant you just use gravity to go from kettle to CFC to carboy.(I dont know your setup, so maybe that is not a possibility) Anyway..., welcome back.

 

I've got just enough height in my boil kettle to go gravity straight into carboy but not much more than that. This could change soon since I'm planning on putting my whole rig up on wheels so I can move it around to whereever I need to.

 

40 minutes is not too bad, still a lot quicker than what it would take to cool down with a ice bath. What I would do is cover the wort while it's cooling to lesson the chance of infection (that way it's not the biggest deal if it takes to long). Also, get a good long stainless steel spoon that you can sanitize and stir with. Stirring around the wort will help circulated it and cool it down quicker.

 

I just read on here sometimes that people get their temps down within 20 minutes using an immersion chiller but if 40 is good then I'm doing ok I suppose. I'm still going to look for a way to speed up the process.

At any rate, my Bavarian Hef is fermenting like crazy today!

 

I get mine down in about 30 minutes with an ice bath. I do partial boil of about 2.5 galons, then top it off with sterile water.

i so a 3 step ice bath.
1: 10 minutes with just cold tap water
2: 10 minutes with cold tap water and a couple handfulls of ice
3: ~10 minutes with cold tap water and all the ice my icemaker has left

I have concidered an imersian cooler, but will probably not get one unless i change out about half of my equipment and do 5galon boils.

 

True, but he is doing an all grain batch so he is dealing with the full 5 gallons. Is this sterile water you add cold or boiling?