How long does it take to cool your wort?

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
This is my setup. I brewed yesterday. Air temp was 94*, my water coming out of my hose was 84*

I timed how long it took to go from boiling to 67*

12:32 ( I brewed alone and had to move the chiller and pre-chiller by myself. It probably would be faster with some help)

 
I use a CFC & recirculate water from a bucket w/ ice water using a submersible pump. I whirlpool the wort in my BK & it takes me about 15 min to get to under 68. I usually use 2 bags of ice on a 90+ day.
 
I know my method is unpopular but I put ice in my fermenter and dump the wort directly on it.
Boil to 70 in about 3 minutes.

I've switched from ice to very cold sealed bottles of distilled water. (I typically brew extract and partial mash batches. I'm lazy.Sue me.) I still can get my wort to pitching temp in five minutes, but I'm not running any theoretical ice risks. I say theoretical because I used ice for ten years and never had an issue with it.
 
10-15 minutes, depending on time of year, using an immersion chiller. Every couple of minutes I give the wort a gentle stir with the chiller to keep it moving, that speeds the process.
 
I'm trying to decide between buying a pump (another cool gadget) or just making the decision to pitch my yeast the day after brew-day to let the fermenting chamber cool the wort to pitching temp. At this point finances are probably going to win out ... will try the latter idea for a few batches to see how it works.

Thanks to all who contributed to this thread!
 
I built a CFC using the information on the DIY sticky, using 20' of copper since that was the longest roll available locally at the time. I can usually have a 6-gallon batch at the desired pitching temperature in about 8 minutes. I gravity feed from the boil kettle, into the CFC, and have a Thrumometer at the end to monitor the final wort temperature. I can then throttle the amount of water to reach my intended pitching temperature - so far the lowest I have been able to achieve was 52°, but that was with the valve fully open. If necessary I could slow the wort flow, and increase the water volume if I needed to get lower. I don't have the exact time available, but I had 11-gallons split between two fermenters in under 20 minutes last night.

Lots of great options available - I'm sure you will be able to find one that works best for your budget and your brewing system. I've been using mine for well over a year, and it freed up a lot of time and effort at the end of a brew session. Good luck!
 
kscarrington said:
I built a CFC using the information on the DIY sticky, using 20' of copper since that was the longest roll available locally at the time. I can usually have a 6-gallon batch at the desired pitching temperature in about 8 minutes. I gravity feed from the boil kettle, into the CFC, and have a Thrumometer at the end to monitor the final wort temperature. I can then throttle the amount of water to reach my intended pitching temperature - so far the lowest I have been able to achieve was 52°, but that was with the valve fully open. If necessary I could slow the wort flow, and increase the water volume if I needed to get lower. I don't have the exact time available, but I had 11-gallons split between two fermenters in under 20 minutes last night.

Lots of great options available - I'm sure you will be able to find one that works best for your budget and your brewing system. I've been using mine for well over a year, and it freed up a lot of time and effort at the end of a brew session. Good luck!

What are using for water, ice water in a bucket or hose water?
 
I use a 20' 3/8" prechiller in a cooler full of icewater, with a 50' 1/2" IC. I prefer to use all RO water with salts added back in for my chilling water. I've found if I get the sulfate/chloride ratio up round 5:1, like 300 ppm sulfate, really burtonize the water, it really helps cool things off faster. Also, you need 1 million cells/degree plato yeast in your chilling water, makes a huge diff. Do that, and I can cool to 64 in about 41 seconds. Also mash hops.
 
This whole thread would be very helpful if more information was provided, including volume of wort being chilled, ambient air temp and tap water temp.

My last batch was chilled with an immersion chiller, 50 (IIRC) feet of 3/8" copper. The batch was 8 gallons, the tap water temp was 65, and I used a chugger pump and a whirlpool port to whirlpool while chilling. Dropped to 70 in 9 minutes, but took 11 more to get to 68. Tons of cold break left behind in the kettle.
 
This whole thread would be very helpful if more information was provided, including volume of wort being chilled, ambient air temp and tap water temp.

My last batch was chilled with an immersion chiller, 50 (IIRC) feet of 3/8" copper. The batch was 8 gallons, the tap water temp was 65, and I used a chugger pump and a whirlpool port to whirlpool while chilling. Dropped to 70 in 9 minutes, but took 11 more to get to 68. Tons of cold break left behind in the kettle.

Crap. Ambient air was upper 70s.
 
This whole thread would be very helpful if more information was provided, including volume of wort being chilled, ambient air temp and tap water temp.

Most everyone seems to be working with 5 gallon batches unless they've stated otherwise. But temperatures do seem to be the rub. Our friend in Alaska has cold water on tap to cool his wort. My guess is that his ambient air temp (if brewing in the garage or outdoors) is somewhere in the 60's or maybe 70's F.

Here in central California my tap water in July-September is 78-80F and by late afternoon in my garage the ambient air temps are 95-105F.
 
I didn't time it but I think about 10-15 minutes to cool 5 gallons down to 80 degrees with my home-made Immersion Chiller. Worked way better than I expected! (20' 3/8" copper tubing)
 
I didn't time it but I think about 10-15 minutes to cool 5 gallons down to 80 degrees with my home-made Immersion Chiller. Worked way better than I expected! (20' 3/8" copper tubing)

You have about the same setup I have. I can get it down to around 85 in 20-30 minutes with my 78 degree tap water. I have an old immersion chiller that I screwed up and now use as a pre-chiller in a bucket of ice. With it in the circuit the cooling time drops to maybe 15 minutes and I can hit75 - 80 degrees.

And I am doing 5 gal. batches in my garage where the temps this summer have been in the upper 90's. Winter-time everything cools off, including the tap water. Wort chilling time drops dramatically.
 
With the warmer summer water temperatures - I cheat a bit and only cool it until it gets under 100. At that point it gets dumped in the fermenter and put in the fermentation chamber until the next day. Then I aerate and pitch the yeast at a perfect 66 degrees.

It used to take 30 minutes or so to get down to the mid 70s. Now it takes less than 10 and the chamber does the rest.

I tried this method with a batch of American Amber this last weekend. It did save a lot of time on brewing day. However, I noticed that my BRY-97 yeast really took a long time to get started. Much slower than usual and I also find myself concerned about the increased risk of bacterial infection during the protracted cooling period.

The brew is bubbling away nicely now and I'll just have to wait to see how this batch turns out. I doubt I'll do it this way again, even if it ends up as a successful batch. Just a little too much angst for me.
 
Like a dumb butt I kinked my ribcage chiller by laying it on it's side a little too hard. The tube that connect the two coils is kinked really bad and I don't want to bend it back because I'm afraid it will snap. I need to get a larger piece to braise over the sections to repair it. I first chill to within a few degrees of what ground water temp is (87 right now) and then switch to recirculating ice water through with a computer water pump. Now the poor pump can't get much water past the kink and that is why my times went up so much. Before this snafu it took me about 20 minutes to get 6 gallons from boiling to 64, now it takes over 30. :smack:
 
I've not got very specific data, but in PA summers, probably 3-45 minutes to chill 3-4 gallons down to 80ish. 20'x3/8" IC plus tap water bath for two pots. I get the rest by getting beer into ferm chamber, and pitching a little hot while it's cooling down. I'm starting to top off with pre-chilled water even though I do all-grain (I've never gotten my volumes just right) so I add less than a gallon to hit my 3-4 gallon volume. It's a lot faster in the winter/spring with cold ground water.

I am going to buy a covered ice tray or two to sanitize and fill with RO water and freeze the night before, and use this to top off--this should help me get those last few pesky degrees.
 
Today I did something different. I wound up my garden hose into a 18 gallon barrel with rope handles. I attached the hose to the normal faucet and the out of the hose to the copper chiller in the pot. I added water and 20 frozen water bottles to the barrel with some ice. The water going into the chiller was cold cold. I got the wort down to pitching temp in 15 min with awesome cold break. The water from the faucet was about 77 degrees. It was a great idea and worked great. I was chilling for about 40 min and then putting the wort in carboy and then in the fermentation fridge overnight. No more summertime blues for me.
 
Today I did something different. I wound up my garden hose into a 18 gallon barrel with rope handles. I attached the hose to the normal faucet and the out of the hose to the copper chiller in the pot. I added water and 20 frozen water bottles to the barrel with some ice. The water going into the chiller was cold cold. I got the wort down to pitching temp in 15 min with awesome cold break. The water from the faucet was about 77 degrees. It was a great idea and worked great. I was chilling for about 40 min and then putting the wort in carboy and then in the fermentation fridge overnight. No more summertime blues for me.

Cool idea! Kudos to you man. I gotta try that!
 
Well, for my first few batches using an IC, like a dummy I didn't read exactly how to use it. I thought that the way it worked is that the cold water went in one end, leached the heat from the wort, and came out the other end hot/warm; so I had my hose turned on to basically a trickle. This "seemed" to work fine for the first 30-40 degrees of temperature change but what I didn't realize is how much that was really hurting my performance. Pitching temp wasn't reached for close to an hour!!!

Well, this forum saved me, and jump forward to now and from the time I turn off my burner, the hose is cranked wide open and I'm chilling 5 gallons to pitching temp in about 12-15 minutes. (I'm on a well, and our groundwater is cold as hell year round).
 
Today it took 15 minutes to cool 5 gallons from boiling to 70 using my new submersible pump addition. Cooling wort when it's 105 out isn't fun. My 25' x 1/2" homemade immersion chiller can only get it down to 85 in this heat.

I bought a 264 gph pump from harbor freight and got some 5/8" silicone hose to go from the pump to the chiller. Cooled the wort from boiling to 100 using tap water then put the pump in a cooler with water and two bags of ice and recirculated that through the chiller. 100 to 70 in 5 minutes. Worked like a boss. Couldn't be happier with it.

Sweet! Picked this pump up the other day. Can't wait to use it.
 
Back
Top