Cooling wort with soda cans, not bottles?

[Dara]

Hi all, I'm a new brewer from Chapel Hill, NC. I saw some threads about using plastic bottles to chill wort and there was some concern about the plastic melting.....but what about freezing a six pack of coca cola cans, sanitizing them and dropping them into the working so they work like 6 giant ice cubes that don't melt? Also, the foil of a can conducts the cold better than the plastic bottles.

Has anyone tried this?

Thanks,

Dara

 

[Beezy]

First of all the cans will explode in your freezer. You arent trying to put them directly in the wort are you? What I do is the ice bath method but when it's hot I just fill it with water and dump it a couple times. Get it down to 120 or so and then apply ice and salt and whatever. I freeze water and juice bottles. It's no problem.

 

[Durhamite]

Yeah, what a lot of people do when starting out is to put your brewpot (with the wort in it) in the sink or a tub and fill the tub/sink with ice and water. Then you gently stir your wort and wait for it to cool. The ice will gradually melt, you'll probably need to add some more ice at some point.


Even better though, is to use an immersion chiller. (a coil of copper tubing that can be sanitized and dropped directly into your wort.) You hook this copper tubing up to a garden hose and let cold water flow through it.

 

[DrJerryrigger]

hummm... I've never heard of that, but it would work. I don't know about the paint on the cans though.
If the cans do freeze they will usually pop open, so it would only work if you froze them to just the right point. You could also go with something that doesn't freeze as well like beer, but they will still freeze if you leave them for a long time.... AHA! a use for Four Loco! That stuff is 12%ABV and comes in a can. That will have a freezing point of about 22F. Still above your freezer temp, but it will be easier to pull them in time.

I would suggest you use the bath chilling system mentioned already, but if you want; combine the methods for faster results. If you were to just use cans you'd need a lot (unless your making a 1 gal batch).

 

[JonK331]

Freeze a gallon of water, sanitize the whole thing when you're ready to cool, then cut off the plastic with a sanitized blade on a sanitized surface. Add frozen gallon to wort. We were just talking about this on another thread. I used to do this before I had an immersion chiller, works great.

 

[Durhamite]

Umm....if he adds the frozen gallon directly to the wort, he's going to essentially be adding 1 gallon of water to his wort and lowering his OG. Which is fine, but make sure you adjust for this in your recipe.