Cooling the wort, I learnt something yesterday

[p_p]

I am new to brewing and so far, cooling the wort has not been an enjoyable task on the brew day (not that I like cleaning though!).

I brew in my kitchen, I have no access to a garden hose and the kitchen tap is difficult to interface with.
To overcome the limitations I feed water into a container and pump it to the wort chiller using a cheap pump I got from eBay.

So far this has worked fine, although the flow rate from the pump is low, which increases the time needed to cool the wort.
On top of that, my tap water often comes slightly below my pitching temperature so knocking down the last few degrees takes forever.

What I did last time is to use the water fed from the tap up to the point where the delta between water going in, water coming out was ~5°C and then just closed the loop (fed the water out from the wort chiller back to the container) and filled the container with ice. The ice brings the water in the closed loop down to 3-4°C and keeps it there, which allows me to reach pitching temperature quite fast.

Now, you are probably thinking why didn't just put the ice in the container in the first place and keep feeding water from the tap instead of closing the loop. Well, my heat exchanger isn't great, so even at a low flow, the water that comes out is not at wort temperature (specially when the delta between wort and water is small). If I kept feeding tap water to a bucket of ice, I just melt the ice away and then send cool water down the drain. If instead I close the loop and drip the return water on top of a pile of ice, the ice acts as a buffer keeping the water temperature down at ~3°C (I bet it would be even lower if I put more ice).

On a previous batch, I kept sending the water down the drain and run out of ice well before I reaching pitching temp. On this batch I closed the loop and ended up overshooting my temperature as all happened much quicker than expected. I didn't even melted half the ice I put in the bucket, which was a smaller quantity compared to what I used before.

Anyway, maybe not a problem for you, but if you are in a situation like mine, hopefully this info helps somehow.

 

[DanMurphy]

Yeah, as a semi-noob cooling the wort has been a real nasty business. The first few times I tried brewing I had a "brilliant" idea that wasn't exactly the best. I bought 3 plastic gallon jugs of distilled water and stuck them in the freezer until they were just starting to freeze up but still pourable. After boiling the 2 gallons of wort I thought adding the near frozen water to the hot wort would cool it down to the proper 70 degree mark, but thanks to the thermal capacity of water, even adding those 3 gallons didn't get it down all the way and I was stuck with 5 gallons of still too-warm wort, and as I learned, the closer the water is to room temp, the slower it cools. I was then stuck with trying to cool 5 gallons in an ice bath, but it was such a big container that things started to get really hard to manage in a hurry. After a couple times doing it that way I got "smart" and coughed up for a copper coil wort cooler, but even managed to use that the wrong way. I did the dumb thing of adding my standard near-frozen water to the wort and then trying to cool it the last few degrees with the chiller, which didn't work because the water from the tap was so close to the wort temp that it didn't drop the temp at all! After stewing on that for a while I realized that I should have used the wort chiller on the wort before adding the cold water.....

I plan on starting a new batch this weekend, and I am feeling that I have finally fixed that annoying problem (but I am sure more will pop up in its place...)

 

[p_p]

Oh man, not an easy ride at the beginning.

I decided to brew my first batch without a proper kettle and did it during the night to avoid my 3yo son getting in the way. I managed to produce 8 ltr of wort in about 9 hours of work and had to repaint a wall after spilling god knows how much stout on it. I still don't know where I lost 5 ltr, I was supposed to end up with 14 ltr in the fermenter. After I finished, all I could think was about getting the next batch going. :rockin:

 

[okiedog]

I finish cooling in the sink to bring down to pitching temps. I use bags of ice cubes and frozen 1 liter water bottles. One thing that helps speed the cooling is periodic stirring. Just make sure the stirring utensil is sanitized. I sanitize my big stir spoon, then rinse in boiling or boiled water every time before stirring.

 

[hockeybrewer]

I do all grain biab batches and still don't have a wort chiller, I know I'm a cheap b*stard.!! Its on my "next list" but the one I want jaded is still out. I have a big plastic tub I fill half way with hose water to handle the high hit twice. That usually gets it down into the140s. The water goes into the garden or washer depending on the time of year. I then fill half way again but add 9 lbs of ice(18 lb bag of ice is $3 at wegmans.). That usually gets it down into the 80s with a lot of stirring. Then siphon into fermenter and into fridge till pitch temp with ice jugs around it so fridge is running like crazy. Don't know if that'll help but that's what I do.

 

[okiedog]

If you can keep it sanitary, try stirring the wort a couple times after you add the ice. Moving the wort around the cool outer surface of the kettle speeds up heat transfer, and should drop your wort temp down lower.

 

[scb44]

OK... So this will make the regulars cringe.. But this has worked flawlessly for me on 7 batches.... I throw 3 gallons of boiling hot wort on 14 pounds of gas station bought ice... $3.98 and 60ish degrees in 10 minutes... Pitch 05 and keep fermentation temps in the 60s... Delicious so far... I am happy to continue at least until I have a bad batch YMMV

in order to keep it sanitary I dip the whole unopened bag of ice in a 5 gallon bucket filled with Star San... Don't fear the foam...

 

[JaDeDBrewing]

Hey Guys,

We have posted this before, but thought it might be worth it again as it could be helpful in your situations, JaDeD's Extract Chilling Table.

Happy Brewing!

 

[scb44]

Nice information... Thanks Jaded!!

 

[zam216]

When I was first starting out I had the same problem with no access to a hose so what I did was attached the wort chiller to my sink foset. It made things much easier for me living in an apartment. Remember when your chilling the goal is to get it below 80 as quick as possible so if you cannot get it all the way down to pitching temp that is fine. I usually transfer to my carboy at around 79 and then pitch the yeast shortly after and set my temp control to the desired temp. Transferring will also cause heat loss so when I transfer at 79 I am most likely down around 75 when I pitch and my freezer will get it to the right temp within an hour. If you don't have a means of temp control you can transfer it, aerate and let it sit for an hour or two and then pitch your yeast.

 

[theseeker4]

OK... So this will make the regulars cringe.. But this has worked flawlessly for me on 7 batches.... I throw 3 gallons of boiling hot wort on 14 pounds of gas station bought ice... $3.98 and 60ish degrees in 10 minutes... Pitch 05 and keep fermentation temps in the 60s... Delicious so far... I am happy to continue at least until I have a bad batch YMMV

in order to keep it sanitary I dip the whole unopened bag of ice in a 5 gallon bucket filled with Star San... Don't fear the foam...

This is like any other unsanitary practice; it always works until it doesn't. It has worked for 7 batches for you, that is great, it might work for another 70, but to me, it is nowhere near worth the risk of infecting an entire batch, and not only losing the ingredients of that batch and the work going into making it, but also possibly losing all my equipment on the cold side to infection, along with possibly losing subsequent batches through contamination if I don't immediately replace my equipment. My suggestion to you is, quit that practice before you have an infection, not after.

It is possible to safely use ice to cool, you simply need to sanitize your water by boiling, then store it in closed, sanitized containers in the fridge until you use it. A little more work, but much, much less likely to infect your beer and equipment.