Putting ice directly in wort to chill it?

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I used to do that when I was doing extract ages and ages ago. However, ice does carry a decently high risk of infection (imo), so I would only use a tray or two into the pot right after the boil... I figured a little ice would help with the chilling, but only into fresh-from-boiling hot wort that would have enough heat left to kill any buggies hiding in the ice.
 
ok, should have proofread... meant to say ice contains a decently high risk of being contaminated and causing infection
 
I have to agree that it seems like adding a little more risk to the equation, but I have seen people do it, with tupperware blocks of ice, and it chills their wort from boiling down to pitching temps in the same time my IC does it. So...to each his own.
 
I buy a lot of ice for my vintage base ball team in the summer and I would never dump the store bought ice from one of those garage or grocery store coolers into my beer. I've emptied a couple of them down to the bottom, and you wouldn't believe the garbage I've seen down there, food wrappers, cigarette butts and god know what else. Plus who know where folks grubby little hands have been before the stuck their hands in there.

And most of the bags I've bought aren't completely sealed anyway, there's either a big gap at the top where the sting tie is, or there's drain holes in the bags, or they're just plain ripped,

Store bought ice is fine for cooling your beer if the ice is in an icebath on the OUTSIDE of your kettle, but unless you've made your own ice in a sanitized, sealed container, with preferably boiled water, then I wouldn't contemplate sticking it in my wort.

Just because somone's done it and hasn't had any issues SO FAR, doesn't mean they're not playing russian roulette with your beer. The one way to gaurentee there will be no problem, will be not to risk it.
 
I have always put ice directly into my work to cool it.

1, I only use ice I make from boiled water.
2, I freeze it in sanitized rubber made 1/2 gallon containers that are only used for this.

I am doing partial mash brewing, and not doing full boils, so tis works for me.

As it goes without saying, sanitation is so very important.

Like Revvy kinda said, commercial ice is gross at best. I wouldn't even put in a drink.
 
I just finally bought a wort chiller a few days ago but I had a pretty good system worked out when I didnt have it.

I would buy the 2.5 gallon water jugs to top off my wort to get to 5 gallons. Early in the day before I would start brewing i would throw that 2.5 gallon jug in the freezer. After the boil I would put my wort in an ice bath and only bring it down to about 100 degrees or so and dump it into my primary. I would then put that water jug from th freezer on top of the counter and open the spigot. Not only would the cold water bring my wort down to picthing temps but I got some pretty good aeration from the water falling out of the jug from counter height.
 
It is all about controlling where the ice comes from. Before I went all-grain with the club, many great batches of extract and partial mash using ice to quickly cool the wort. As Revvy said, "unless you've made your own ice in a sanitized, sealed container, with preferably boiled water, then I wouldn't contemplate sticking it in my wort."

My method: Starsan quart freezer bags, fill with distilled water, freeze; many times I used sanitized food storage containers with distilled water; these must be new and used only for brewing, as food odors can get into the plastic. The freezer bags are of course disposable.

I have also used distilled water in sanitized ice cube trays, but was less comfortable with that method since they are not sealed and who knows what gets circulated around in the refrigerator air.

here is a pic...

coolingthewort.jpg
 
Never use ice from the freezer, it is not worth the risk of contamination. I would freeze a few blocks of ice in tuperware containers and use them in an ice bath in the sink. First, I use straight cold water, drain and refill when it heats up, then start an ice bath. Works good for partial boils. Hope this helps!
 
Usually when I use top off water, it's RO in a gallon jug from the store. It's inexpensive and I know it's safe for the wort. Usually I do a ~2g boil then cool and dump 3 gallons of almost frozen RO water in to assist in aeration and get to the final pitching temp.

I've also heard of people freezing the jugs and cutting around them to dump the gallon of ice in the wort. This would work too, just use sanitized knife/scissors to cut the jug.
 
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