Chilling the Wort

[bs22619]

So I am planning on doing my first all grain batch of beer as soon as i accumulate all of the necessary equipment, as well as completely understand the brewing process. Now i pretty much learned to brew through Charlie Papazian's "Joy of Home-Brewing vol. 3" When he talks about mash extract brewing he doesn't put much emphases, or any that I can recall on cooling the wort as quick as possible before adding it to the fermenter. However he puts cooling the wort at a very high priority when he talks about all grain brewing. So is it more important to do this when one is all grain brewing? And while I have your attention..........Are there any other ways of chilling wort quickly besides a copper wort chiller or ice baths?
-thank you

 

[SuperiorBrew]

Even an ice bath wont cool a full boil very fast, you should really have a chiller when you are chilling 5-6 gallons of boiling hot wort.

 

[Joker]

The cooling is important no matter how you make the wort. At the time of cooling both AG and extract are the same liquid. The wort chiller is mandatory.

 

[IowaStateFan]

Not mandatory, but extremely helpful. It takes me about 45 minutes to cool 5 gallons of boiling wort to 70 degrees in my bathtub. Of course, I have very cold well water (approx 45 degrees in the winter). I have sped up the process by putting a frozen 2 liter soda bottle directly into the wort, but all the crackling scared the hell out of me. Thought the whole bottle might break and then I'd have 2 liters of unsanitized water in my wort. A chiller is very high on my wish list.

BTW, the reason Papazian doesn't mention cooling when talking about extract is because he's doing concentrated boils and dumping it into a fermentor of cold water. That'll cool your wort pretty quickly.

 

[bs22619]

"BTW, the reason Papazian doesn't mention cooling when talking about extract is because he's doing concentrated boils and dumping it into a fermentor of cold water. That'll cool your wort pretty quickly." yeah your right, that makes sense. So its looking like i might want to invest in a couple more items before I can take the plunge into AG brewing.

 

[BrianP]

An immersion chiller with 50F well water can get the wort to 70F in about 10 minutes. It's a good investment in terms of getting a better cold break, and saving time during the brew day.

 

[kaptain_karma]

A basic immersion chiller is fairly cheap to buy/build, and the payoff is absolutely worth it. Rapid chilling inhibits contamination, enhances cold break coagulation, and saves lots of time.

 

[avidhomebrewer]

Agreed. You need at least an immersion chiller. They can cool the wort to pitching temp in about 10-15 minutes. I thought about a plate chiller, but didn't want to deal with the 'potential' clogging of the plates from the proteins, etc. in the wort. Go with either an immersion or a counter flow for cooling AG batches.