Getting wort to lager pitch temp

I brewed my first lager today and wanted to use my new fermentation chamber (chest freezer with Johnson controller). In my head I thought I'd get the wort down to ale temps then let the chest freezer do the rest. But after a few hours at 50 degrees the wort seems to be still really high (78).

So what is the usual strategy with lagers? Bring the temp down more during the initial wort cooling? Or wait more than a few hours for the wort to cool?

I have some sanitary foil on top of my carboy in the chest freezer to protect the wort but I still prefer to add my yeast as soon as I can to start the process. But 78 is way too high from what I read to pitch the yeast.

 

You want to set the controller in liquid, such as sanitizer (to better reflect the temp of the beer), not the ambient air temperature of the freezer. Or, attach the temp probe to the outside of the carboy.

That way, the freezer will freeze until the wort is cooled, and you can pitch.

 

I use my immersion chiller with tap water until I get my wort down to around 90 degrees, then I switch the hoses to an ice water re circulation setup to bring it down to lager pitching temps. Simple setup using a small submersible pump, a five gallon bucket and a few bags of ice. I can easily get my wort down to under 50 degrees in no time this way.


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I think we live in different temp zones. I use an immersion chiller and a pre-chiller that is in a bucket of ice to get my wort to 80. I can't imagine how much water it would take to get my wort to 50 using an immersion chiller here in TX.

 

My probe is in a carboy with some water but that just makes sure the freezer stays at 50, which is good but doesn't get my wort cold fast.

But attaching the probe to the carboy might help.

 

I have two ICs.

I put one in the BK and use tap water to bring the wort from boiling to about 100F fairly quickly. Then I put the other one in a bucket of ice and connect it to the one in the BK, turning it into a prechiller for the tap water. I then bring the wort down to ~50F.

Takes about 15 minutes to chill 5 gallons this way.

I pitch my yeast, tape and insulate my temp probe to the fermenter, and set the fermentation temp to 45F. I have a desk fan in the bottom of my freezer and a panal of computer fans in the top.

With good air movement, the wort will drop down to 45F in an hour or two.

 

I think we have the same setup but with an immersion chiller and a pre-chiller but in 15 minutes I'd be lucky to get to 80 degrees, and there is no way I could get to 50.

 

I think what I should have done is get my wort to 80 as best I could then transfer to the chest freezer and tape the probe to the side of the carboy and set the controller to 50. Then maybe in an hour or more it would have been ready to pitch.

I'm also thinking I should have just stuck with ales.

 

I'm in Texas too. I usually get the wort down to 85-90F before I feel like I'm just wasting water, both with and without a pre-chiller. I then put the wort into my fermenting fridge and let it sit until it's at a proper pitching temperature, which is often the next day. I've been doing this with no problems or infections for a long time now. I just make sure the fermenter is covered well and I keep my fermenting fridge clean. I spray it with bleach and wipe it down before every batch that goes in there.


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He is no longer using tap water but using a pump to recirculate the ice water in the bucket, I do the same thing, works great!
IMO using a IC as a precooler for tap water doesn't cool the water down nearly as much as recirculating the ice water and wastes a lot of water.

 

I think you may have misunderstood. I only use my tap water through the IC to get down to around 90 degrees. Then I hook the immersion chiller's inlet hose to the discharge of a submersible pump sitting in a five gallon bucket of ice water. The chiller's outlet hose goes back into the ice water bucket and is recirculated until I get the wort down under 50 degrees. I only need a couple of bags of ice to do this, and it takes no time. Works like a charm.


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I guess we are lucky that our water source is from snowmelt. So it doesn't matter if it's 105F outside, our tap water is still 55F. But getting from 100F to even 70F with tap water takes a long time.

The next step up for an IC is to do like johnsma22 said, hook a pond pump up to the prechiller and recirculate ice water. I'm trying to decide if I want to do that when I step up from 5 to 10 gallons.

The other options are recirculating the wort through a counter-flow chiller or a plate chiller.

Also, stirring the wort helps an IC be more efficient.

 

Your problem is that your freezer is holding at ~50F or whatever you've set it to. Cooling to that will take forever. So you have two options: (1) bypass the t'stat or simply set the probe outside the freezer; this will make the freezer cool down to 10F or whatever it runs at. Or (2) use a thermowell, which will do the same thing. Taping to the side won't be as effective.

By doing this, your 5 gal will cool from 80F to 50F in around 4 hours.

 

I agree with the pump + ice water - if anything I only run a bit of water out at the beginning before I put the outlet hose back in my ice water bucket. I think the submersible pump I got from harbor freight was somewhere in the neighborhood of $30-40.

I would think pump + possibly more copper sq ft on your chiller would do better at this gap than your lagerator.

 

Well shoot. Reading about the submersible pump makes me regret the plate chiller I just bought.