Advice On Cooling Wort

[davidamerica]

Cooling the wort for me has been a pain in my you know what so far. I basically crash cool it the best I can with Ice, constant sturring and time, lots of time. Normally about a half hour or more to cool.

Can I let time cool it or is that too long for the wort?

Is there a better faster way?


Thanks for help


Dave

 

[Bigeb]

Without a wort chiller 30-45 minutes a really good time. I believe a wort chiller, assuming you have cold tap water, will chill a 5 gallon batch in 15-25 minutes.

So far, all I use are frozen, ziplocked bags of ice (sanitized of course) and it works OK.

Assuming you're good with your hands, you can easily build your own chiller. There are plenty of instructions on this forum and youtube.

 

[monty3777]

I suspect from your post that you are extract brewing (lack of an immersion chiller and the fact that you can bring temps down in half an hour). My first response is that half an hour for an ice bath isn't too bad!

When I brew with extracts here's what I do. I get three gallons of water that is sanitized and I put those jugs in my fridge over night - let them get nice and cold. Then when I get the boiled wort (usually I do a 2 gallon boil) into the ice bath I try and cool it to 100*. When I get to 100* or 90* I pour a gallon of the cold water in the fermenter. I add the wort then I add the other two gallons of cold water. This brings my temp to around 69-70* Easy peasy

 

[TheWeeb]

Dave, as one who is also in the Desert Southwest, I agree, it is a pain in the arse. My cold tap water is around 85 degrees, and ran into the same problem you have with the traditional ice/water bath in the sink. Some here will recommend a coil immersion chiller, but unless you rig it up through an ice cold source first, if your cold water temp is as high as mine it will not be as useful.

What I do is freeze half gallons of distilled water in sanitized food storage bags, then drop these huge ice cubes directly into the wort. The ice, as distilled, is pure; sanitizing the inside of the bag and outside prior to opening (along with you hands in latex or plastic gloves of course) will prevent any contamination. On monday i brewed a hefe and was able to go from boiling to 60 in under 10 minutes using this method. I have also frozen distilled water in sanitized ice cube trays and dropped them directly into the wort; though the melt very quickly.

Here is a recent pic of one of these two quart blocks of ice cooling the wort:

Of course, the ice as it melts adds volume, which is good if you are doing partial boils.

 

[monty3777]

To those of you who add ice to the cooling wort - do you whirlpool? If so, does adding the ice disturb the "cone of ****e" that I'm trying to keep out of my fermenter? That's the only reason I have not used this method. Just wondering what your results have been.

 

[TheWeeb]

I do stir, the large block of ice seems to add momentum to keep the whirlpool going.

 

[GaryJohn]

+1 to freezing water. I buy plastic gallons of distilled/spring water and refrigerate them the day before. When I start the actual brew, I put them in the freezer to get them real cold. By the time its time to cool wort, they are just shy of frozen. Cools the wort nice and quick.

 

[mosquitocontrol]

I may have to cop out and go the ice directly in the wort route. My tap water comes out around 80 and its taking me over 40 minutes to get down to temp. Using a prechiller at the end. I simply can't make enough ice in my small freezer and I don't want to start buying it.

Any reason not to add ice direct (so long as it was frozen in a sanitized container)?

 

[TRainH2o]

I like the ziplock bag idea. Even though I do full boils, I may have to go to this method for summer brewing. My last brew day was 4 weeks ago. I couldn't get my wort below 80˚F with my 50 foot immersion chiller. Now that we have had temps in the 90's, I bet my ground water temp is above that.

The trick for me is working that into my evaporation rate. Not to mention that my next batch will be AG.

 

[TheWeeb]

Any reason not to add ice direct (so long as it was frozen in a sanitized container)?

The only problem that I know of is when the ice is not from a known source, like that purchased from a gas station. The Alton Brown "Good Eats" series had a show on home brewing where he dumped a large bag of store-bought ice driectly into the wort; the criticism was that the ice could be contaminated and thus ruin the beer. This is why I spend the extra $2 and use distilled for the ice; boiled and cooled tap water to then top off to the 5-6 gal mark.

I firmly believe that if you know what water you are using and sanitize inside and out of the plastic freezer bags the chance of contamination is no greater than that from whatever water you are adding anyway.

I would think that the faster chill time would increase the success of "hot break" as well, and result in less cloudy brew.

 

[merddyn2002]

I've just started using the method where you add sanitized ice directly to the wort. I have a few bugs to work out in my procedure but it works very well.

I'm in texas so our tap water is in the 80's .... not really all that useful for chilling.

 

[dotnetdotcom]

I did the freezing water in a ziploc technique last week and it worked great. I used sanitized bags and put them in a sanitized food storage container before freezing because I was worried about them leaking or picking up microbes.
My tap water is pretty cool, about 60°F, so this worked well for me (extract 3 gal boil):
-Boil pot in full bathtub for 20 min brought temp from 212° to about 110°. The boil pot was actually floating just off the bottom so convection moved it around the tub, but it was close enough to the bottom so it wouldn't tip over.
-Moved boil pot to kitchen sink ice bath and added frozen water from ziplocs.
It was at 70° within 30 minutes total.

2 things to watch out for: the bags have a 1/4 inch lip outside the ziplock and they pick up a lot of condensation on the outside that can drip into the wort, so hands and the outside of the bags should be sanitized.

 

[davidamerica]

Thanks guys you all have been a great help.

Cheers!

 

[homebrewer_99]

I've done a lot of small boils and late addition brewing since 1994.

I always start with a few gals of pur filtered tap water placed in the freezer for 4-5 hours prior to brewing. I use it as top off water which also cools the wort down in to the 60s at times.

If you want to add ice directly, I do no recommend using ice cubes from the fridge because of anything lingering in the freezer.

If you sanitize a couple of 2 liter bottles and place filtered water into them then freeze them you could re-sanitize the out side and cut the bottom off so the ice can slide out of the bottle. These will chilling your wort and top it off. :rockin:

 

[Bswope]

Good info guys!! Thanks.....

 

[ben229]

What if you did a full boil and didn't need to top off? How risky would it be to drop your temp to, oh..150F, or so and then toss in a milk jug....pop jug..whatever....with frozen water in it....sanitizing the outside of the jug...etc. Anyone ever try this?????

Thanks!