Why boil the wort chiller?

Everyone knows the commonly accepted practice is to add your immersion chiller during the last 15min of the boil in order to sanitize it....but why? From all of the research I have gathered, it only takes about 30seconds of immersion in a liquid of 170 degrees or more to sanitize something. I have been doing the boiling method for years without questioning the practice, but I have a 50ft chiller and it totally kills the boil for a minute or two....which is really annoying.

why not just add it at flameout?

thoughts?

 

Agree. My last batch (Saturday) I added it at flameout for exactly that reason. I think I will continue to do so in the future.


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My first all grain batch I dropped the chiller in with 15 minutes to go and it killed my boil for at least 5 minutes. I went to a brew day (to watch) at my LBHS, and the owner just dropped it in after the boil. I asked why, and he said that those temps, anything will be killed off almost immediately. Made sense to me, so I have been doing it that way for 3 years now and have never had a problem. No sanitizer or anything, just drop it in, hook up the water and chill :fro:.

 

I always drop my chiller right at flame out...I get hot steam coming out of both ends of it for about 30 seconds....nothing that can harm your beer is going to survive a dunk in 210 F wort for several minutes before the wort drops below 180F.

 

I'm liking where this thread is headed. I feel like I have been mislead by dozens of homebrewing books.

Maybe it has more to do with just sanitizing? is there some sort of beneficial reaction that takes place between the copper and wort that needs boiling to occur?

There should be a good reason behind boiling the chiller in order for so many sources to recommend it.

I'd like to hear from someone who is a proponent of boiling and their reason behind it

 

I spray the chiller like crazy with my bottle of Star San and then put it in at flameout. Twelve batches no infections.

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It's very good that you are thorough with your but sanitizing practices, but I feel that spraying the chiller first is completely unnecessary.

 

Yeah, I figured this was overkill, but given that it takes ten seconds to spray it down I do it anyway.

 

I think some people like to boil things longer to let the steam work higher on the chiller where it won't be submerged but condensates drops of water? I know some people who like to boil starters for 15 min or whatever so the steam will help kill things on the walls of the vessel to avoid contamination when being poured out. All aside, I kill the heat and then dunk the chiller, no problems so far.


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I am a boiler
I figure not all of that thing is going in the wort do a boil with the lid on and everything gets steamed for 15 minutes that should kill all
but then this is one of those personal things
I doubt if there is a correct answer

 

I was thinking about the steam thing today when I put my chiller in at flameout, but the tubing itself was still too hot to touch so I figure it is good.

 

With a clean chiller, it would be incredibly difficult to contaminate wort with it. Between the 210 degree wort and the antimicrobial properties of copper, I think you'd be perfectly fine sticking it in at flameout.

 

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A good cleanup process and storage of your chiller should allow you to place the chiller in at flame out.


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I've gotten into the practice of letting my IC soak in the 5 gallon bucket of Starsan until it was needed. I've often wondered why the simple soak was not sufficient and often debated about not preboiling it.

If you'll notice in this picture, my hoses must go inside the pot for it to be submerged. OP, I appreciate you bringing up this question because it is something that I too have been thinking about recently.





As soon as it's done, I pull it and toss it in a 120 quart pot which is filled with dish soap and hot water collected from the cooling. By the time I get around to scrubbing the pots and pans, it's essentially clean enough to be rinsed off and stored for next time.

My personal problem is that when I made my IC, I made it to fit a Ball waterbath canner using only 25' of tubing. I did not think to allow for bigger pots with the top curve of the inlet and outlet. For this reason, I find the heat of the boil softens up the vinyl tubing. Two brews ago, I just did catch it before it would have blew off and potentially filled my boil kettle over with water.

The next one I make, I'll ensure the arms are long enough to avoid the problem, but till then, i'll either start dropping it in at flame-out, or not putting it in at all.

 

Could you post some links to your research sources?


Looking at info for a typical autoclave...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoclave

... at 250F your are looking at 15-20 minutes for sterilization.

Now I know we are not going for sterile, only sanitary is really possible - but considering we are at atmospheric pressure and at a lower temperature, then it does not strike me that 30 seconds in 170F is going to do much ...

 

Looking for sources also since the answer to this interests me also. So far only thing official Ive seen refers to preparing jars for canning food:

"All jams, jellies, and pickled products processed less than 10 minutes should be filled into sterile empty jars. To sterilize empty jars after washing in detergent and rinsing thoroughly,submerge them, right side up, in a boiling-water canner with the rack in the bottom. Fill the
canner with enough warm water so it is 1 inch above the tops of the jars. Bring the water to a boil, and boil 10 minutes at altitudes of less than 1,000 ft. At higher elevations, boil 1 additional minute for each additional 1,000 ft elevation. "

http://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/usda/GUIDE 1 Home Can.pdf

 

I just add the chiller and hop spider as soon as I put my boil kettle on the burner, one less thing to forget to add later on.

 

FWIW, I let my chiller soak in a bucket of star san for the length of my brew day, then add it to the kettle at flameout. I've done about 55 batches this way and never had an infected batch (this is where I furiously knock on wood!). The first time I used my chiller I added it with 15 minutes left and it took about 10 minutes to get back to a boil - wasted energy if you ask me.

 

I soak my chiller in Star san for 5-10 min before I use it.

 

I've found that putting the chiller in at the same time as the later hop addition works great. The chiller kills the boil long enough for the pellets to dissolve so I don't end up with a boil over and hops all up the side of my kettle. I just throw it in at 10 or 15 minute or whatever the particular recipe calls for.

 

Starsan soak in a 5 gallon bucket for about 30 minutes then add the chiller at flameout. Haven't had a problem yet with 10 batches so I'm going to stick with it

 

You can fix that. Get some more tubing and sweat a couple of couplings to each side. That should allow you to extend the arms of the chiller to hang over the sides of the pot. It'd proably cost you about $5 in materials. I did it with mine and was able to add an extra 20ft of coil.

I'd be nervous with that setup. If you ever develop a small water leak it's going to drip right into your nice sterile wort. You might not even notice it.

 

I have a question on this

I never used to boil my wort chiller - I did it last night for the first time. Do you run water through your wort chiller while the boil is on? I didn't, and when I put water through my wort chiller at the end of the boil the water was so hot coming out of it that I ended up blowing my outbound hose multiple times. It was a mess.

On the flip side, if I run water through my hose while the wort is boiling for the last 10-15, isn't that a little counterproductive?

 

Yes, do not run water through your chiller while you're still boiling the wort. It's a waste of water and will kill your boil.

On another note, if your tubing is coming off your chiller due to the heat, that's an indication that you're using the wrong kind of tubing. You should be using high-temperature silicone tubing for your wort chiller, at the very least for the "out" end.

 

It looks like I was one degree off, but the point is still the same...sanitization only requires temps of 171 degrees...

http://www.anfponline.org/CE/food_protection/2011_03.shtml

another that claims 171...

http://www.lincoln.ne.gov/city/health/environ/consumer/food/guide/hotwater.pdf

another that claims 171..

http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/eh/food/fs/safesan.html

another that claims 171 for 30 seconds..

http://www.profoodsafety.org/images/english/Three Compartment Sink fact sheet.pdf

another that claims at least 30 seconds of immersion at 171 degrees minimum..

https://www.adph.org/environmental/assets/CleanAndSanitize.pdf

 

are there any food service professionals or biologists out there that can offer their input on this?

...I am still thinking there should be some valid reason for the standard suggested practice to be boiling instead of flameout

 

And that is how homebrewing misconceptions survive for a decade until someone shoots them down. The homebrewing community has some magical thinking to overcome when it comes to pasteurization and sanitation in particular.

One infection due to totally unrelated causes and someone will convince themselves to boil their wort chiller for an hour, or spray their boil kettle with starsan, or something else nonsensical. Meanwhile the culprit yeast or bacterium would have been killed by a minute or two at 145-150F, and the person in question is racking to a (perhaps not even necessary) secondary right next to their kitchen trash...

If more homebrewers could cook, I think average knowledgeability about this would improve (not to point fingers, but I mean you "My 'SWMBO' owns the kitchen" folks).



Left side is 5-log reduction (1/100,000 of original germ count). Even a few seconds at 170F and a tool is very thoroughly sanitized. As the temperature goes up the time to pasteurize goes down really quickly. Homebrewing does not require anything close to sterilization, and the major infection culprits are sensitive to heat (unlike in fungiculture or food storage).

 

That's all the convincing I need, flame out it is!

 

Thanks for the chart, another useful tool in busting this homebrewing myth

 

Awesome. Never boiling my chiller again.


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Amen


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I soak my chiller in sanstar while brewing then put it in at flame out and no infections here! Also I used a shark bite coupling to extend my chiller extra 50 feet. Anyone have bad luck with shark bite couplings in the past??

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I can't believe this thread is still going. At first I was like who cares, 15 mins or 0 mins. But now Im thinking well, putting it in at 15 and dealing with the rubber hoses and keeping them out of harms way and how clumsy thing seem to get after I put it in, I think I am going to wort chiller at flameout too.

 

I have melted tubing more than once when it slipped from where I was securing it and having it fall into the flame or a hot portion of my burner.

 

yup. I just melted tubing the other night when I boiled the chiller. Putting a large piece of $50 cumbersome equipment into a pot of boiling water isn't exactly the safest of methods.

I'm not competing for Top Chef Masters or anything, but I used to cook in a restaurant during college and I was actually in charge of food safety:

- The highest temp of cooking meat to ensure food safety is 180 degrees for chicken/goose/duck. I'm in Denver with one of the lowest boiling points (202 degrees). Unless you're cooking on top of Mount Kilimanjaro, your wort is past 180. At flameout, I think you're fine to put it in at that point, so long as you're over 180.

- E Coli and most other bacteria cannot survive past 160. I've seen a lot of publications for starters that instruct you to dump in your malt once you've reached 170. Makes sense and they're erroring you on the safe side. So maybe 170 is the magic number and not 180....either way, at flameout you're over both of those numbers.

- The reason to cool down your wort fast is to avoid bacteria getting in. You want to make that jump from the 160/180 range to 75/70 as soon as possible. From 200+ to 180 (and maybe even as low as 160) you're not going to have any bacteria jump in and survive it.

 

I think cold break (and convenience) is the real reason to cool your wort fast, whatever the LHBS guy might say about pitching ASAP so your yeast can outcompete bacteria. Yeast do that quite well even with a 24-hour delay. Before I set up my current super-unfancy thermoplastic tubing chiller I often cooled overnight, loosely covered, in a rubbermaid outside and made good beer (no infections ever doing that method, in fact). I really think direct contamination from particles or accidental hand contact specifically in a kitchen is the main source of contamination in homebrewing, but maybe that's just an article of faith.

Just the duration and temperatures of a mash, especially combined with mash-out (if you do that) pretty much assure your raw wort is already sanitary (though all kinds of stuff near it might not be, since raw grain is full of bacteria). Meat safety temperatures are guidelines for quick cooking, they don't really translate to the long-sustained temperatures of mashing and brewing. It's more like sous vide, without the hipster pants.

 

Something to think about - When you pop it in at flameout, your wort will instantly loose temp as the copper and whatever is in your chiller (air or water or both) heats up. Depending upon the physical volume of your chiller, you may have a severe temp drop and I don't know where you would end up. It could be that dropping your chiller in at flameout brings the wort instantly down to the perfect whirlpool-hop-addition temperature. That might be an interesting side-benefit to the technique. N_G

 

I don't think anyone boils their fermenter for 10-15 minutes to sterilize it, do they? A good soak in Star San and most of the time there is no problem with contamination.

Why then does a clean copper coil need to be boiled for 15 minutes to sterilize it?

I think a quick spray/soak in Star San and toss the coil in in 212* water at flame out will kill most anything.

 

Sometimes it's like people dont even read before posting.... Haha

No need for the starsan.
Also, no, an IC will not drop your wort to pitching temps by just dropping it in at flameout. You may drop the wort a few degrees, but I doubt it would even take it to below 200 if the IC had been sitting in a freezer.


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