Cooling Process

[Hastings]

After my wort is complete and i now I'am up to cooling the wort down, then adding yeast. I don't have a wort chiller yet but, would i be able to put my wort in a refrigerator rather then a ice bath to speed it up??

 

[l1ranger]

an good ice bath will cool it faster than the fridge

 

[Tinga]

one trick is to do an ice bath but add a lot of salt to the ice bath. doing this can make the temp of your ice bath drop dramatically.

 

[Hang Glider]

Yup. Ice bath is a good idea. Did that for years.

Try to get it down to about 62 -65F, then pitch, and try to keep the temps in that range - a water bath helps hold temps from fluctuating. Frozen water bottles help keep things cool...

 

[haplo]

The fridge would be better than nothing if you don't have a sink big enough. I've used my bathtub in my apartment because the sink isn't deep enough. I even did it one time with just cold water from the faucet and no ice and it worked pretty good. That was in the winter though.

 

[BendBrewer]

one trick is to do an ice bath but add a lot of salt to the ice bath. doing this can make the temp of your ice bath drop dramatically.

Isn't chemistry cool? Making ice colder by melting it. Go figure huh?

 

[malkore]

Ice bath, and stir the inside every couple minutes. the outside wort touching the walls will cool but the center will stay warm, so you have to keep mixing the two to really cool everything uniformly.

do this and an ice water bath will cool 2 gallons of wort to pitching temps in 15-20 mins, especially if you use aluminum kettles (wicked thermal conductivity)

 

[TheWeeb]

I may catch a lot of flack for this, but for the last two of my first four brewing scenarios I added ice directly to the wort. My problem here is that my cold tap is 80 degrees; ice bath burns thru so much ice and the process is what I perceive to be too slow.

The method is fairly simple; you add ice directly to the wort. Now, you should NOT use ice from a retail store or even your own tap water unless it is sanitized first.

One week ago I did my first lager, and needed to get the temp of the wort down to 60 or less as fast as possible. I sanitized two 2-qt freezer plastic bags, filled them with distilled water (1/2 gallon each), and put them in the freezer two days before. When it came time to use them, set them out on the counter during the boil to loosen the bags up. I sprayed the outside of the bags with sanitizer just to be safe; and when the pot hit the sink, removed the bags and dropped these two huge ice cubes directly into the wort. Using a sanitized long spoon, I stirred them until they dissolved, which took about 12 minutes. The frozen water not only cooled, but of course helped increase the volume to the required five gallons.

This really worked well for me in getting the temp down as quickly as possible. I believe if you follow your sanitation procedures and use water that is also pure you will not risk contamination.

Good luck !

 

[haplo]

I've added ice directly to the wort before, too. I boiled the water then added to sanitized plastic tupperware and freezing. Didn't seem to have any problems and it worked pretty good.