Can't I cool wort by adding cold water?

[iswenson]

I just Googled it and I found the podcast. This is what it says in the description:

"Dr Bamforth explains some of the myths and legends surrounding the controversial topic and instructs brewers on how to deal with HSA based on his own extensive research"

It says he explains some of the myths, not that it's all a myth. I honestly don't have the time right now to listen to it but all I'll say is there are dozens of articles about it. If he says it's all a myth then I wonder why the whole brewing community hasn't accepted and adjusted to it and why books still teach the same thing. Not saying I don't believe it, just that every time we turn around someone else is stating something is a myth due to their experimenting. When I get a moment I'll give that podcast a listen.

*EDIT - This is from Palmer's book and is still in the latest edition albeit written a little more thoroughly in the book:

"You should not aerate when the wort is hot, or even warm. Aeration of hot wort will cause the oxygen to chemically bind to various wort compounds. Over time, these compounds will break down, freeing atomic oxygen back into the beer where it can oxidize the alcohols and hop compounds producing off-flavors and aromas like wet cardboard or sherry-like flavors. The generally accepted temperature cutoff for preventing hot wort oxidation is 80°F.

Oxidation of your wort can happen in several ways. The first is by splashing or aerating the wort while it is hot. Other beginning-brewing books advocate pouring the hot wort after the boil into cold water in the fermenter to cool it and add oxygen for the yeast. Unfortunately the wort may still be hot enough to oxidize when it picks up oxygen from the splashing. Pouring it down the side of the bucket to minimize splashing doesn't really help either since this increases the surface area of the wort exposed to the air. Thus it is important to cool the wort rapidly to below 80°F to prevent oxidation, and then aerate it to provide the dissolved oxygen that the yeast need. Cooling rapidly between 90 and 140°F is important because this temperature region is ideal for bacterial growth to establish itself in the wort."

Again, I'd like to know why it's a myth when it's still claimed today supposedly using science as a result - in this example the oxygen binding chemically to certain compounds and later breaking down into the beer.


Rev.

Even you must know your full of **** right?

 

[Rev2010]

Even you must know your full of **** right?

And how on Earth am I full of **** for quoting something on Howtobrew.com?? Btw, you should learn some manners.


Rev.

 

[IceFisherChris]

Man people make this so complicated!!! Just carefully pour some cold water in there. Better yet, freeze water in ziplock containers and put the ice into your kettle. Sanitize if you want. I never did though.
Ice will always cool wort better compared to water. Ice requires a LOT of energy to melt.

However, I HIGHLY suggest making a wort chiller or you could buy one if you are more comfortable spending the money that way. It's the best way to cool wort and it saves a lot of time that otherwise would have been wasted.

 

[BelgianKing]

In one of Charlie Papazian books he states in every recipe that is a partial boil to pour your hot wort into your fermenter with the other amounts of water to equal your total volume. Then submerge into an ice bath. Nothing in there states whether to stir or not to stir. I mix the crap out of it for 2 reasons. 1. cause I want it to cool faster. 2. cause it helps when pitching my yeast. I do this everytime and I havent had a problem yet. If its good enough for Charlie then its good enough for me. Seems like people are forgetting what we are doing. Brewing Homebrew for fun! Its not supposed to be this complicated and insulting to others. Yes we all want to make better beer (I do too) but for the rest of us, just relax cause everyone is allowed to have an opinion. If you dont have anything nice to type then keep your fingers off the keyboard.

 

[adagiogray]

Seems like we need to chill more than wort in this thread.

 

[Captain Damage]

With all respect to Charlie Papazian, there are 3 reasons I strongly recommend chilling your partial boils before pouring them into your fermenter:
1) If you are fermenting in a glass carboy, hot wort + room temp glass = broken glass; if that doesn't do it, then hot wort + room temp glass + ice bath = broken glass. Broken glass = no fun (no beer and possible trip to emergency room).
2) If you are fermenting in a BetterBottle, hot wort can soften the PET and damage your BB and cause it to become misshapen.
3) If you are fermenting in a plastic bucket, these buckets have poor heat transfer qualities, and will therefore have to spend much longer in the ice bath, and it might be nice to be able to use that sink sometime today.

So I chill my partials in the kettle, in an icebath and get to pitching temp in less than 15 minutes.

 

[J187]

I stumbled across this old post and found it both informative and interesting. Personally, for my extract brews, I use a combination of ice bath and added cold water. I am a little concerned with HSA, but I am comfortable with my tap water after experimenting with a few brews without boiling my tap. My tap is very good drinking water and I've made at least 4 brews with it straight from tap with nothing but great success. So, I use an ice bath for the initial cooling - boiled wort goes in the sink with icy water and gets stirred.. stirring might be underrated, it drops the temp a TON... and once the temp has fallen to something like 100 or so, I start adding cold water from the tap to get down below 80, usually 75 or something. Then I simply pour into my fermentation vessel, aerate, and add enough water from the tap to bring it to just over the 5 gallon mark. At this point it's pitching temp and I haven't really aerated it at too hot a temp. I also add the water from the tap with a measuring cup or something to minimize the aeration effect. Maybe now that I've jinxed myself, I should start boiling the water before adding to the wort, lol.

 

[Golddiggie]

Not sure if it's the same water supply/source as I've had (in Natick, MA) but I won't drink the tap water, so I don't use it for brewing/fermenting. I have a really good under-sink water filter system that I use on all water I'll drink or will be used for cooking (even boiling pasta). There have been more than enough times where I've smelled chlorine in the water to NOT use it.

As for HSA being a reason for not using a chiller... That's more than just lame. I can chill my wort very quickly using my plate chiller. Even recirculating the wort into the keggle (through the chiller) both while boiling (to sanitize it) and after flame-out hasn't done any harm. I typically recirculate for 5-10 minutes, after flame-out, (depending on the season/ground water temp) and then run it into my fermenter. Doesn't take me long to chill ~7 gallons of boiling hot wort this way.

 

[rs4life]

Not sure if it's the same water supply/source as I've had (in Natick, MA) but I won't drink the tap water, so I don't use it for brewing/fermenting. I have a really good under-sink water filter system that I use on all water I'll drink or will be used for cooking (even boiling pasta). There have been more than enough times where I've smelled chlorine in the water to NOT use it.

As for HSA being a reason for not using a chiller... That's more than just lame. I can chill my wort very quickly using my plate chiller. Even recirculating the wort into the keggle (through the chiller) both while boiling (to sanitize it) and after flame-out hasn't done any harm. I typically recirculate for 5-10 minutes, after flame-out, (depending on the season/ground water temp) and then run it into my fermenter. Doesn't take me long to chill ~7 gallons of boiling hot wort this way.

Its probably natick labs that is making the water awful....

 

[Golddiggie]

Its probably natick labs that is making the water awful....

Wouldn't put it past them... Moving to Nashua, NH this month.

My rule of thumb, for water is if it's good to drink, it's good to cook with, and it's good to brew with. Never been disappointed with this method.

 

[evrose]

The reason you don't want to add cold water to a hot wort is hot-side aeration. You will probably introduce oxygen into the beer. .

Is that a good thing just prior to pitching? Proper aeration of the wort just before pitching is an essential step in getting the yeast off to a good start. Oxidation LATER isn't good... but at that stage it's actually desired.

 

[MuddyCreek]

I made an IC that I use backwards. I actually run sanitizer the inside of the copper tubing, then immerse the coil inside an ice bath in a cooler. Then I siphon the hot wort through the inside of the tubing and down into the carboy.

Admittedly it is a bit of a pain getting it set up and going, but I feel better about not wasting gallons and gallons of water cooling my wort through a standard IC. It works pretty well. I admit though that this system needs to be really carefully flushed, rinsed and sanitized before and after every use. So far I haven't had any contamination bogey's but I would have to admit the possibility.

 

[J187]

Not sure if it's the same water supply/source as I've had (in Natick, MA) but I won't drink the tap water, so I don't use it for brewing/fermenting. I have a really good under-sink water filter system that I use on all water I'll drink or will be used for cooking (even boiling pasta). There have been more than enough times where I've smelled chlorine in the water to NOT use it.

As for HSA being a reason for not using a chiller... That's more than just lame. I can chill my wort very quickly using my plate chiller. Even recirculating the wort into the keggle (through the chiller) both while boiling (to sanitize it) and after flame-out hasn't done any harm. I typically recirculate for 5-10 minutes, after flame-out, (depending on the season/ground water temp) and then run it into my fermenter. Doesn't take me long to chill ~7 gallons of boiling hot wort this way.

I assume your under sink filtration is a reverse osmosis triple filter system, like they sell at home depot? I had that same thing as well. However, I have since disconnected mine. I was finding that the water, although good tasting, was leaving my mouth particularly dry. I did some research and found that reverse osmosis and the membrane used actually filter out electrolytes whereas the minerals are not small enough to permeate the membrane. I have gone back to buying spring water to drink, although my tap is fine to drink as well.

 

[Golddiggie]

I assume your under sink filtration is a reverse osmosis triple filter system, like they sell at home depot? I had that same thing as well. However, I have since disconnected mine. I was finding that the water, although good tasting, was leaving my mouth particularly dry. I did some research and found that reverse osmosis and the membrane used actually filter out electrolytes whereas the minerals are not small enough to permeate the membrane. I have gone back to buying spring water to drink, although my tap is fine to drink as well.

Nope... Using the Omni Filter system. My mother has a RO system at her place (in Methuen) and my brew-buddy has one in Sudbury. Neither one gives the 'dry mouth' effect you describe. I suspect it's something unique to either the system you purchased, or you.

I refuse to pay what they charge for spring water in stores. With the system I've been using, it costs me a few cents per gallon of water.

 

[J187]

Nope... Using the Omni Filter system. My mother has a RO system at her place (in Methuen) and my brew-buddy has one in Sudbury. Neither one gives the 'dry mouth' effect you describe. I suspect it's something unique to either the system you purchased, or you.

I refuse to pay what they charge for spring water in stores. With the system I've been using, it costs me a few cents per gallon of water.

Definitely not "me", it's widely known that RO systems filter out electrolytes.

 

[Golddiggie]

Definitely not "me", it's widely known that RO systems filter out electrolytes.

It's never been an issue for either myself, family members, or friends that have RO systems in use. I don't have a RO system myself due more to space limitations where I've been living. I'm looking at a new filter system for where I'm moving to thought. Something that will be easier to change the filters on, compared with the system I've been using. If I do that, I'm thinking about setting up the current two filter system for 100% brewing water filtration. Just a matter of adapting the in and out ports to work as I want (pretty easy with 'off the shelf' parts).

 

[J187]

It's never been an issue for either myself, family members, or friends that have RO systems in use. I don't have a RO system myself due more to space limitations where I've been living. I'm looking at a new filter system for where I'm moving to thought. Something that will be easier to change the filters on, compared with the system I've been using. If I do that, I'm thinking about setting up the current two filter system for 100% brewing water filtration. Just a matter of adapting the in and out ports to work as I want (pretty easy with 'off the shelf' parts).

Sounds good. I wonder if there was ever a mention of it on the brewstrong water podcasts... I think I listened to them but don't recall.

 

[kombat]

I've made a few kits in the past, but last weekend I built a 2-stage immersion chiller and used it on 2 batches of kit extract brews. I bought 2 20-foot coils of 3/8" copper piping from Home Depot, plus some clear tubing, some screw-down pipe clamps, and a fitting that attaches to my garden hose (with a barb tip on the other end). I coiled both copper lengths around my Corny keg and connected them with a 4' length of the tubing. The other end the first coil connected to more tubing with the hose fitting on the end, the other coil has some tubing to just drain the warm "waste" water away.

For the past few days, I've been filling used 2L plastic juice bottles and 500 mL Gatorade bottles with water and storing them in my freezer. On Saturday (brew day), I took a camping cooler and filled it with water and dropped in those frozen bottles of ice. I dropped in the first stage of my IC, and sanitized the other stage and put it in the wort. Connected to my garden hose, turned the water on (just a trickle is needed), and 15 minutes later, the wort was down to 75 degrees. Worked like a champ.

It's really neat - I touch the "in" part of the copper coil in the wort, and it's freezing cold. Touch the "out" end and it's piping hot. That means it's working!

 

[MuddyCreek]

That is a cool chiller.