Cheap means of cooling wort

[richfei]

I had a lot of problems cooling my wort with ice and didn't have a wort chiller for my 5 gallon partial boil. I had to actively monitor and cool it down over several hours. In the end, I had to come back to it the following morning

I've read some inventive means to cool down a 5 gallon boil i.e icing PET bottles, used iced paddles and some concerns over putting iced bottles into hot water and if the wort is left in the open air.

If I'm looking at a very cost effective and hands off, easy approach, what about the following

1) Sanitize the inside of a gallon milk jug, fill with water, and maybe some rock salt and put in the fridge overnight prior to brew day
2) After wort has boiled, cut open the frozen milk jug, drop into the brew pot
3) Cover brew pot to avoid any bacterial contamination
4) By the time morning arrives (if not sooner) it should have reached 70 or below, but essentially room temperature and ready to transfer to the primary fermenter

In other words
1) No need to deal with a messy ice bath and constantly stirring i.e hands off approach
2) Water is already sanitized and ice is not contaminated
3) Ice is inside the brew pot and therefore should be faster to cool than an outside ice bath
4) Since brew pot is covered, it's not open to contamination
5) Easy approach with no cleanup
6) Minimal cost i.e milk jug would have been thrown away anyway

Sure I have to wait and it may be overnight, but everything is covered and it's minimal hassle and ultra cheap

 

[h22lude]

I think you are making it more complicated than it needs to be. If you are going to let it sit overnight, you will most likely not have to do anything to it besides add top off water. It will come down to room temp over night.

Buy spring water for your top off water. Put the jugs in the fridge overnight. When boil is finished put kettle in ice bath when you get other equipment ready for transferring and what not. When temp has gone down a little use cold top off water to bring down the temp to pitching.

If you are trying to avoid an ice bath, you can sanitize a few ice trays and freeze water. Cover with sanitized tinfoil and use a bunch of ice cubes as top off water. You will still need a jug of cold spring water. This might be quicker than the first method.

You can chill overnight but the quicker you chill it the better.

 

[jperry]

after almost dropping and spilling all 6 gallons of my hot wort, while trying to lift my really heavy kettle, into an ice bath... I think a copper wort chiller IS the cheapest/safest/hands-free method of cooling wort. Thats is just my own experience as a noobie brewer. I have never topped off before, but that sounds easy also.

 

[charliefoxtrot]

I've brewed dozens of batches with ambient cooling (i.e. letting it sit covered overnight). Never had an infection or an off flavor (though I'll be honest, I don't know what they taste like fast chilled because I've never had the chance to try it; however I've never had the commonly reported off flavors). If you can't afford a wort chiller and you want a hands off approach, you can't go too wrong just letting it cool. Any other thing you do will only slightly quicken the cooling and introduce potential for contamination. If you santize well and you leave the wort covered every moment it's off the heat, you'll be fine.

 

[nbrack]

+1 ^

I made a cheap wort chiller with parts from HD a couple months ago. I think it cost me ~$25 and cools a 5 gallon full boil in less than 30 minutes. Highly recommend it if you can afford it. Its a 25' x 3/8" copper tube, so not the bigest one, just what I could afford at the time. The copper was $14, the hose adapter was $9 and I picked up a couple hose clamps. I just used some old vinyl tubing. It's not the prettiest, but it works!

 

[sirmeowsalot]

I completely agree with Perry. I've done partials for a while now and while the topping off does help (as well as become heavy, took me 4-5 batches to be able to avoid spilling) even with the topping off of refrigerated/ almost frozen water it took me at least 40 mins or so with the use of ice.

once I switched to a wort chiller (a 50' copper coil in my case) I found my wort being chilled in about 15-20 mins without the use of additional ice.

I didn't calculate how much making ice in terms of freezing actual water versus buying ice changed. But I know for a 10-20 pound bag of ice I would spend 3-6 bucks. While a 50 foot chiller (which is more than enough for 5 gallons and perfect for 10 gallons) cost me about $80, which is equivalent to about 12 batches, which to me is worth the investment.

 

[richfei]

Based on the above, I'm inclined to go with a wort chiller or do nothing and leave it till the morning

 

[histo320]

I used a 3 gal kettle then moved on to a 5 gal kettle.

I used the following method and it only took about 30 - 45 minutes.

-Fill up sink or a Party Tub (swamp cooler) with a mixture of Ice and Water (mostly Ice)
-Let sit while observing temperature every 5 - 10 minutes, if you want have a plastic sanitized spoon and stir the wort each time you check on it
-Rack Wort into primary fermenting, at this point it should be cooled off enough to pitch your yeast. If it isn't down put the fermenter in the ice bath or outside if it is cool out.

or break down an buy a wort chiller. I will be doing my first full boil here in a few weeks and I am anticipating buying several bags of ice to use my previous method but I am sure I will break down and get a chiller sooner than later.

 

[grem135]

I was given about 40 ft of 3/8 copper and made my own IC, total cost was about $8 for the brass hose end. First batch I used it I went from 200 to 68 in 15 minutes.

I had bought a pump and was going to use ice and a cooler to recirculate the water once i got to about 90-100 but the ground water temp had dropped so much I didnt' need to... guess I'll save it for next summer

 

[Pickettj]

Based on the above, I'm inclined to go with a wort chiller or do nothing and leave it till the morning

I have a 5 gallon kettle and while I have only brewed one batch, it only took me 20 minutes to bring the wort down to 80. I filled my sink about 1/3 of the way with cold water and added ice. I dropped the kettle in the ice bath until the water was warm then moved the kettle to the other side and drained/refilled the ice bath. After doing that three times (the entirety of my ice tray from
My built in ice maker in the fridge) I was just above 80. After adding my water to top it off to 5 gallons we were at perfect pitch temps. For me, it's not worth $50-100 and more mess to clean up for 5-10 minutes saved in chilling wort. When I brew tomorrow ill be employing Mother Nature for a wort chiller. Brew kettle is goin in the snow!

 

[djt17]

I have no chilled several batches, works great. Here is 132 pages of details https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/exploring-no-chill-brewing-117111/

 

[unionrdr]

Even though I now do partial mash as well as extract,I still do partial boils of no more than 3 gallons in my 5G SSBK. Now this part is where the difference lies. Put the kettle in the sink & bring cold water up to nearly the top of the sink bowl. This'll take some of the high temps off. I keep a floating thermometer in the kettle at this point too. Drain the water when it gets warm,only a few minutes to get there. Then fill the sink around the kettle to the top with ice,then add cold tap water to the top of the ice. This way,you have more ice than water & should chill down to about 70F in 20 minutes. I keep gallons of distilled or spring water chilled overnight to top off with. Got the 70F or so wort down to 66F in no time flat. Produced a small amount of cold break too,so that was good.
So just fill sink with ice first,then top off that with water makes for a colder ice bath.

 

[grem135]

^^^this plus lightly stirring the wort helps get the temp down faster

 

[MikeInMKE]

The short answer: If you're doing partial boils, chill down your top-off water to as close to freezing as you can.


I've tried two different methods, both using a sink and bags of ice.

The first time, I put the 200+ degree brew kettle right into an ice bath. It worked quite well, but I went through four McDonalds bags of ice (99 cents each) to chill it down to 70 degrees, and then topped off with tap water.

The second time, I tried to be smarter about the whole thing.

Keeping in mind I'm doing extract with partial boils, I put 3+ gallons of top-off water out in my garage to chill down to the low 40's a couple of days ahead of brew day.

2*X + 3*40 = 5*70

That's two gallons of wort at X degrees, plus three gallons of top-off water at 40 degrees, trying to achieve 5 gallons at 70 degrees. Solving for X, I need to chill my wort down to about 115 degrees.

I put the 200+ degree brew kettle into a tap-water bath, with one spoon kept in the brew kettle to stir the wort, and another spoon in the sink to stir the water. As the wort temperatures go down, the sink water will go up, until they're too close to have any significant heat transfer, so I empty the sink of the now warm water, and refill with cool tap water. Stir, stir, stir. Drain the water, fill sink with one bag of ice, add water, and just like that you're at your target temperature in less time, and only one bag of ice.

 

[unionrdr]

I wind up using 1/3 to 1/2 of a large bag of ice. That's about $2.50 per bag. And filling the sink to the top with ice,then topping that off with cold tap water gets the wort chilled down faster. Plus keeping a few gallons of whatever type of water I'm using cold overnight in the ol' flintstone fridge works really well in combination.

 

[Pickettj]

I wind up using 1/3 to 1/2 of a large bag of ice. That's about $2.50 per bag. And filling the sink to the top with ice,then topping that off with cold tap water gets the wort chilled down faster. Plus keeping a few gallons of whatever type of water I'm using cold overnight in the ol' flintstone fridge works really well in combination.

I just put it in the snow for 10 minutes then an ice/snow/water bath in the sink for 15. i actually got it too cold...it's 60 so now I have to wait for it to warm up. Best thing about this method...The ice cost me about a nickle, the snow was free and the water maybe another nickle. So $0.10. It'd take thousands of batches to make a wort chiller worth the investment. I'm sure i'll still buy one eventually but for now I'll stick with ice bathes.

 

[unionrdr]

Yeah,same here. It's cheap & works well. I want to eventually build a dual coil chiller,so the first coil rests in an ice bath before going into the second coil in the hot wort then out to the sink.

 

[hoppyhoppyhippo]

Personally I've never had problems with an icebath, best I did was in a plastic tub filled it with ice some water and a healthy pinch of rock salts settled the kettle in and it was down to temp in maybe 20 minutes.

 

[unionrdr]

That's good for an ice bath. It's the same time for me. I just had a homer moment once,realizing that instead of filling with cold water & adding ice,reverse it. All ice to the top of the sink,then top off with cold water. The salt thing didn't work to wel with me. Maybe rock salt would be better. Regular salt just melted the ice faster,with no positive chilling effects to speak of.