wort chiller question

I did my first batch in my keggle last night and everything went very smoothly EXCEPT chilling the wort. The chiller does not set all the way down in the wort due to the pick up tube. The efficiency was cut way down so here is what I did and I want to know if there is any issue with this..... I put the chiller in the boiling wort for the last 15 minutes then chilled the wort down to under 100 degrees but could NOT get it to go much lower due to half the chiller being above the wort level. SOO I put the chiller into my sanitized fermentor and opened the ball valve on the keggle and ran most of the wort over the chiller into the bucket, letting it splash to oxygenate.. Then I attached a sanitized hose to the valve and drained the remainder into the fermentor and then removed the chiller. The fermentor was way too full so I poured through a sanitized strainer into a sanitized carboy ( bigger) and pitched the yeast. The carboy was unplanned, but other than that does anyone see any issue with the chiller in the fermentor?

 

The more you introduce new things to the cooled wort the more chance for infection, but as long as everything was sanitized, you're probably ok.

 

I too am wanting to continue to use my IC with my new keggle (Ekeggle). My idea is to prechill the water going into the IC. Using a cooler of ice water and a cheap imersion pond pump from HF. If that doesnt cut it I will be going with the therminator.

 

I use a 50 foot IC, It is 1/2" OD (3/8 ID) and it works fast. It is usually down to pitching temps in 10-15 minutes.

 

Splashing the wort at that temperature more than likely will cause hot side aeration and could cause the batch to taste like wet cardboard. Get your boiled wort down below 70 degrees at least before you splash anything. For ales you want to get your wort down to about 60 degrees, transfer and pitch. (Some yeasts for certain Belgian ales like it really warm though, like low to mid 80's) Lagers you can transfer at the same temperature but don't pitch your yeast until its in the low to mid 40's, some lager yeasts like it in the low 50's. Keep the actual wort temperature in the proper range, ale wort should be roughly 60 to 67 degrees while fermenting, lagers have quite a range but generally mid to upper 40's. Otherwise you're flirting with producing fusel alcohol, headache city.

 

Be careful not to scratch the fermenter with the wort chiller. The chiller should be smooth but a rough edge could end up scratching it which redisposes the fermenter to infection (I've heard).

 

So these commercial breweries like Sierra Nevada where they literally drop their mash runoffs a couple of FEET to the boil kettle (where it splashes at the bottom like a waterfall), or all the brewers using spray balls for sparging - they must have horrible hot side aeration problems, right? (Instead of seeing those words in bold, just image it being spoken with a reverb effect.) To date, my opinion on the HSA debate is that it's kind of a boogeyman.

OhioSteve - As long as everything was sanitized you are fine. You might want to look in to a different IC or maybe a counterflow though to replace your current one.

 

heat rises, so chiller actually does better near top of hot wort. even with mine at top of wort, bottom gets cool first.