Beginner Chilling Wort

[tywelcome]

I am planing on my first attempt at brewing some Hex Nut Brown Ale.
I purchased a beginners kit with carboy and the stated recipe.

I am trying to find a nice way of chilling the wort after boil.

The two methods I have available are putting the wort pot into a tub of ice water or put some iced plastic bottles into the wort pot.

I would prefer the second as I heard it chills the wort faster which is important.
The bottles I have planned for this are just the store bought, like bottled water.
I am going to sterilize the bottles but I am wondering if store bottles have cheap plastic enough to cause damage to the wort.

Thank you.

 

[Skyforger]

I think any plastic bottles not specifically designed for high temperatures (and not even all of those) could cause problems. The question is: are they problems you will worry about?
Probably they won't effect the flavor of the beer. They might, but probably not. But they will certainly leach BPA into the wort, which is (probably) bad for you.
Of course, this will probably only matter to you if you already avoid BPA. If you heat food in plastic containers or bags, or re-use plastic bottles, you are already ingesting BPA and I doubt it would make a difference.

What you could do is immerse the pot in an ice bath, wait until the temperature has dropped a fair amount, then put in the plastic bottles. It's the last 50 degrees that take 3/4 of the time, anyways.

Sanitize the bottles well, I would advise. There shouldn't be any labels or glue or debris on them. If there is, I wouldn't use them for this, as you won't be able to sanitize them properly.

 

[tywelcome]

Skyforger,

Thanks for the tips. I can do that. I did just read some post on the internet about only boiling about 3 gallons with the wort and then adding the other 2 gallons at the end to cool the wort down. This sounds like it would not work due to the boiling amount of soaking the hops. Has anyone heard of this last way to chill wort?

 

[Boleslaus]

Here is what I do and I can cool my wort down to around 65 degrees.

I buy two bags of ice and stash them for later.

Fill your sink with cold tap water, put the pot into the sink and stir the wort.
Cool it off to below 160 this way, should only take 5-10 min.
Then drain and fill the sink, fill with ice too. Cool to below 100.
Repeat and cool as low as you want to wait for.
This whole process usually takes me between 20-30 min.

 

[Jsamp]

The ice bath method works for me. I do on average 3.5 gallon batches so ice can get the temp down somewhat quick. I do just the cold water first like the above poster said then I do a couple of ice bath cycles and its down to pitching temp.

 

[tywelcome]

you guys Rock.. thanks again..

 

[Skyforger]

If you're brewing extract, you can help cool it by doing a partial boil and adding the rest of the (sterile, cold) water after. This will effect how bitter the final beer is, so you need to compensate by adding more bittering hops (the ones you add at the beginning of the boil). If you can do that, that can help. The reason people do that usually is just because it takes less equipment - you don't need a really large pot and an unusually strong burner.

When I started, I just used the water bath method. It works. It is a bit tedious. But then, the bottles in the water isn't much better once you've gone through the effort of freezing bottles, sanitizing them, etc. It is a bit faster at actually chilling the wort. Your choice, really.

 

[djfriesen]

I would definitely advise against putting anything in your wort postboil. Obviously, you need to stir the wort while cooling, but the more things you put in there, the better chance you have of introducing contamination. This is the most vulnerable stage for your beer: post boil, but also pre-alcohol. Some people put frozen spring water made in sanitized containers in, and I have been known to top off with water if my boiloff was too vigorous, but I try to keep these occurences to a minumum. It may not be absolutely necessary, but I can't justify the risk. I have enough brainfarts anyway. The yeast don't need anymore hurdles to get over.

 

[Pilotpip]

I do full batches with an ice bath currently. I can cool 5 gallons from flame out to 70 degrees in about 30 minutes. I use a wash basin in my basement with water/ice. My girlfriend and I work hard to keep the wort in the pot moving as well as circulating the ice water to transfer as much heat as possible. When the first 20 pounds of ice melts, we drain the water and add the second 20lb bag. We probably didn't need the small bag of ice but we got it just to be on the safe side and dumped it in as the wort got down to 90.

My next move is building an immersion chiller. 50lbs of ice is expensive.

 

[ToddO]

Use your bathtub and fill it with cold water. Stick your pot post boil into it for around 10 minutes, swirling it around. This will save you a ton of ice. The initial fiery pot melts off too much ice right off the bat. Then stick into your sink full of ice/water.

 

[NeedsMoreHops]

Here's my cheapo ice bath method, doesn't require buying anything like bags of ice or plastic bottles. We save empty pint and quart plastic yogurt and salsa containers that we later use as cheap storage for leftovers. A few days before brewing I grab 4 of them and fill them about 2 inches deep with tap water and freeze them. This creates nice sized ice "pucks" in a few hours. I save plastic bags from loaves of bread and start filling them with pucks. If I put the containers in the freezer before work, they're ready when I get home. Put in another batch before bed, etc., and in a few days I've got a nice supply of free ice that doesn't melt as fast as cubes when I do my ice bath in the kitchen sink.

 

[midfielder5]

About 3 months of sink
cooling w/ an ice bath, I spent a lot of time getting a copper coil and all the fittings to make an immersion chiller. My kitchen faucet, however, was a difficult connection. So I said f* it. I just sanitized the boil kettle lid and let it "no chill" overnight. Pitch yeast the next day.
You do need to adjust hop schedules a bit; and honestly I'd prefer to finish clean up on the same day as brew day.
But the beer tastes good; and has netted awards in HBT comps w/o anyone criticizing my failure to immediately bring 6 gallons of 212* wort down to 60*.
Just a thought... no chill has other disciples here if you wanted to search around.

 

[lgilmore]

I think it's worth the money for the immersion chiller. It's one piece, fast and cleans up easy and allows you to do other things. To each their own. When I was researching starting up, it just seemed like a worthwhile purchase.

 

[tywelcome]

I cant get enough... thanks

 

[unionrdr]

I've learned that using maybe 2 cold water baths in the sink to take the high edge off wort temps before adding ice was good. Then,drain all the water out of the sink,& re plug it. I buy a 20lb bag of ice,filling the empty place in the sink around the BK with ice. Then top off with water. I get the wort temp down to 68F in 20 minutes flat. Takes about 10lbs of ice.

 

[kyleobie]

I think it's worth the money for the immersion chiller. It's one piece, fast and cleans up easy and allows you to do other things. To each their own. When I was researching starting up, it just seemed like a worthwhile purchase.

Yeah, same here. Actually, I did ice baths for years because it seemed adequate and I didn't really feel like getting a chiller. Then I decided to build one for about $20. I've probably more than made up the savings in bags of ice (not to mention time and effort).