Brewzilla G4 - use pump to run wort through ice bath?

[SaskBrewer306]

Hi all. Is this a dumb idea... I live in Canada, and I brew in my detached garage. There is no access to water during the winter.. and getting that outside would be a ridiculous cost and a lot of work.. I don't see that happening, the sewer connection would be insane costly.

Good news is that for several months a year snow and cold are free. Can I fill a cooler with snow and just run the wort throgh the chiller and back into the g4? Or would this take too long to chill? My other thoughts are a no chill option. Maybe even just putting a lid on the brewzilla itself and leaving it overnight sealed.

I generally keep the garage at 4C unless I'm working out there. Oh the lagering I'm excited to do in the coming months!

 

[JohnSand]

I haven't tried, but it sounds like it should work. Keep us posted.

 

[SaskBrewer306]

I will. It'll be a little while yet (thankfully) until I'm covered in snow here. Just put an email into my homebrew supplier to find the connectors I need... have to go from the 1/2" stainless to some sort of food safe silicon tubing. Failing that I have a larger copper wort chiller that might be easi to source parts from. Otherwise maybe I'll try the distilation lid with a bung in the hole for a no chill... and a cheap extract kit... and see if that works. So many fun experiements, so little time, so few fermenters I need a few more all rounders!

Actually that's my next issue to solve.. I still have fermenting buckets and carboys... I can't find a good way yet to fill my sanke kegs from those.. so I put co2 in the all rounder, siphon in, then transfer. I'm sure there's a better solution that I haven't thought of yet. This method is the least oxidized I can come up with so far, but requires im not fermenting in the all rounder at the time. Need more supplies!!

 

[BandonBrewingCo]

What about getting in a few fermenter buckets of snow to make very cold water? You could gravity feed it to your chiller.

If you couple that with a counter flow chiller a few buckets will be easily enough.

Is a hose from the house to the garage completely out of question?

 

[Grizwold1]

Larry (Beer-N-BBQ) has a video on making a chiller from a cooler filled with ice:


Not sure how it would work with snow but as long as you are able to shovel more snow it should work. I've used it as shown and it is effective, altho buying the ice adds a little to the overall cost of the brew. Took me about 10-12 lbs for a gallon batch.