Ice in Fermenter?

I have been having trouble cooling my wort quickly. I sit the brew pot in the sink with an ice water bath. It takes a lot of ice and still doesn't seem all that quick to me.

Then today I saw a series of home brewing videos on YouTube with Jim Cook. (From Sam Adams) In these videos he used blocks of ice in the fermenting bucket. Onto these he ladled the wort.

I assume the Ice was boiled prior to freezing to prevent infection. Seems like a pain but it also seems cheaper (At least in the short run) than an immersion chiller.

Anybody here use this method? Do you recommend it?

 

Did it once. In the winter though so it didnt take up space in my freezer. 2L bottles froze outside overnight then I added them to my ale pale when I was adding in my wort, worked great but a lot of work to boil your top off water, especially if your going to do it the night before.

 

I would not use commercial ice, did it on my first batch and it was bad. I will never do that again. You may have better luck boiling then freezing your own ice but I would not trust it.
If you have a small pot, have a good amount of ice and water in your sink and you GENTLY stir the wort to maximize contact and heat transfer you can cool it pretty well. Otherwise I would recommend building or buying an immersion cooler.

 

How about buying some cheap bottled water from your local store and cooling them in the fridge? Then use the bottled water to cool down your wort in the fermenter.

 

Depending on the volume that can work, you just don't want to be aerating boiling hot wort by pouring it into a fermenter. You do want to aerate, just after the wort has cooled.

 

Hmmm....good point there. I wonder how much oxidation and how will it affect the overall taste of the beer.

 

I took this one step further and put a 2-1/2 gallon (sealed) jug in my spare freezer. 4 hours later, it was about 35 degrees and I put it in my primary. Added the wort to it, checked the temp and it was about 83 degrees. 15 minutes in cold bathwater later and I pitched.

For the record, however, I do not intend to make this a habit - probably too easy to screw up! I'll be investing in a wort chiller.

Cheers...
-Paul

 

I add frozen gallon containers of spring water from the store to my fermenter, pour the hot wort over that, and have had no problems with my batches. Maybe in the eyes of some I've just been lucky but I don't intend to change my plan until I have a problem with it... if it's good enough for Jim it's good enough for me.

 

I am very confused about this. How do you do that? You pour hot (near boiling) wort over the frozen plastic containers?

 

You would have to cut off the plastic container, and just use the ice.

 

In the video it appears that the ice was made in the fermentor. If you have the room to freeze the bucket then it should work well.

 

*Not suggested with glass carboys. Thermal shock + boiling hot wort = enormous mess and 1st degree burns.

 

I got back late on this, sorry. Yes, I cut the frozen jug containers away and just put the big ice chunks (shaped like the jugs now!) into my plastic fermenter and pour the hot wort over the ice. Gets me down to 60 deg F very quickly.

 

Could you just freeze the water bottles, put them in star-san for few min, then place them in the boil kettle to chill faster along with the ice bath?

Tim

 

That would help. It'd be best to get something like restaurants use to cool soups, sauces, etc. Here's an example.
They're star shaped so there's more surface area for cooling.

 

Then today I saw a series of home brewing videos on YouTube with Jim Koch. (From Sam Adams)

 

Hmmm... Nearly as easy as my CFC! Actually, I have thought of doing this, but never remember to freeze my boiled water ahead of time. Which reminds me to get started on that starter if I want to brew this weekend...

 

I don't think it would be any issue at all to use distilled or bottled water that has been pasteurized to make the ice. I would, however, caution against using tap water or commercial ice. If you are worried about the mineral content of the additional water, you could boil a batch of your own tap water, allow it to cool a bit, add two gallons to the sterilized fermenter and freeze that. But I just find that it was more fun to get some copper tubing (fill it with sugar so it doesn't crimp) and bend it around a coffee can to make a wort chiller. After the boil, I simply siphon the wort through the wort chiller in an ice bucket right into my fermenter. It comes out around 70F, just right for pitching yeast.