Using a fridge to cool wort

[worlddivides]

So, the last time I used an ice bath was probably back in 2014. I think I only used an ice bath once, but it took so long to cool the wort that I switched to an immersion chiller for my second brew. It's been over 10 years since then and I've been planning on trying to cool wort after the boil using an ice bath, but this time it would be 3-5 times more ice than I used back then.

But if you've looked at my thread in the kegging forum, I've decided to start kegging for the first time, but the fridge that I have can only really fit one keg. One thing I DID notice, however, is that my smallest fermenter and my boil kettle can fit in the fridge (and the keg does not currently contain beer, so I'm free to use the fridge for whatever in the mean time). So I thought that I after I cooled the wort from boiling temps down to, say, 80F/27C or so, I could just put it in the fermenter and put the fermenter in the fridge (which is around 40F/4C) and cool it from there.

But that got me to wondering. If I set the fridge temp as low as it can go, could I also just put the kettle in there? Not when the wort is at boiling temperatures or so, of course, but after it's cooled down a bit? I would still imagine an immersion chiller or an ice bath would cool the wort faster, but I also often hear about how homebrewers reach a limit of say 85 or 80 in the summer and can't get the wort cooler than that, but that shouldn't be a problem in a fridge, right?

Just a thought I had, and I have to imagine that people who regularly cold crash or lager have tried it before.

 

[fluketamer]

right now in the middle of summer its been averaging 90 degrees almost everyday. the last few batches i brewed outside have given me trouble getting my worts down to pitching temps with my immersion chiller. so after getting it down to anything below 90 degrees, i have just been throwing it in the ferm chamber set at 40 to do the rest of the chill. my 5 gallon batches take just a few hours to reach 65 to 70 (my usual pitching temps) . dont place an airlock until after pitching or you will get suck back from contraction.

this hasnt seem to have affected my beer.

putting hot hot water like in a kettle( even if its not boiling) is going to prolly take a long time to chill to pitching temps and make your fridge work really hard.

aussie brewers invented the no chill method to save on water.

they fill the hot wort into a chill cube.

fill it up as high as you can. squeeze out a little air even if you have to then just leave it overnight and viola pitching temps in the morning.

 

[worlddivides]

It's been around 97-102F pretty much every day here too for the past few weeks. Really brutal temps. Even though I usually have the 1st floor AC set to around 78-80F (which I'd normally think is warm, but it almost feels cold when outside is 100 degrees), I'll open the cupboards and find the temps there are around 86-90F.

It does make me feel that an ice bath might be more effective than an immersion chiller just in that the water moving through the chiller will be a lot warmer than the ice water and ice surrounding the kettle.

Though... even then, I wonder if several 1-liter bottles of ice in a cooler bag would be faster than the fridge. The fridge is around 40F, but how does that compare to 4 liters of ice? Hm.... What if I put the fermenter in the fridge AND added 4 ice bottles?

I don't know if I could ever try the no-chill method just because it's been drilled into me since even before I started brewing that you want to get the wort cool as fast as possible.

 

[sibelman]

you want to get the wort cool as fast as possible.

This is a truth. But another truth is that, with good sanitation, you can make good beer even if you must accept slower chilling.

As with so many aspects of brewing, we must each find a balance between best practices, cost, and convenience.

 

[worlddivides]

This is a truth. But another truth is that, with good sanitation, you can make good beer even if you must accept slower chilling.

As with so many aspects of brewing, we must each find a balance between best practices, cost, and convenience.

No arguing with that.

 

[hotbeer]

The amount of heat in even 80°F wort is considerable for your little fridge to cool further and will work the compressor more. And putting your fridge to a low setting to cool it down more prior will be even more work for it.

And likely not a lot of change in the amount of time it'll take to cool to the number you want it to be at for pitch. So essentially, not much bang for the effort or risk of wearing out the fridge.

If you get the wort down below 100°F with your water as it comes out of the tap, then switch to water you've put a bag or two of ice in and pump it through your IC. Then you'll cool your wort fairly quick. Or quick enough to not get too bored.

Put a aquarium or other water pump in a big container that you can keep filled with water from another source. I put a big bucket or canner in the utility sink in my laundry room. With the pump connected to the IC, just run water from the tap into the container which gets pumped through the IC. Then after the wort is cooled enough, you can dump in some ice that will continue to cool the wort to pitch temp or lower.

When the outflow water from the IC is cool to your feel, you can just recycle that water back into the container instead of sending it down the drain.

Or read up on the no chill beer brewing procedures and wait till the next day to pitch.

 

[Witherby]

So, the last time I used an ice bath was probably back in 2014. I think I only used an ice bath once, but it took so long to cool the wort that I switched to an immersion chiller for my second brew. It's been over 10 years since then and I've been planning on trying to cool wort after the boil using an ice bath, but this time it would be 3-5 times more ice than I used back then.

But if you've looked at my thread in the kegging forum, I've decided to start kegging for the first time, but the fridge that I have can only really fit one keg. One thing I DID notice, however, is that my smallest fermenter and my boil kettle can fit in the fridge (and the keg does not currently contain beer, so I'm free to use the fridge for whatever in the mean time). So I thought that I after I cooled the wort from boiling temps down to, say, 80F/27C or so, I could just put it in the fermenter and put the fermenter in the fridge (which is around 40F/4C) and cool it from there.

But that got me to wondering. If I set the fridge temp as low as it can go, could I also just put the kettle in there? Not when the wort is at boiling temperatures or so, of course, but after it's cooled down a bit? I would still imagine an immersion chiller or an ice bath would cool the wort faster, but I also often hear about how homebrewers reach a limit of say 85 or 80 in the summer and can't get the wort cooler than that, but that shouldn't be a problem in a fridge, right?

Just a thought I had, and I have to imagine that people who regularly cold crash or lager have tried it before.

I pretty much put all of my lagers in my temp controlled chest freezer to finish chilling after I get the wort down to 70F. I do transfer to a fermenter and use a thermowell so the temp control is more accurate. And even then I set the temp to at least 5 degrees higher than what I am aiming for so I don't overshoot my pitching temp (figured this out after way too many attempts!). It usually gets me to 48F in a few hours.

So this is a freezer, not a fridge, but in terms of the delayed chilling, I haven't had infected beer or anything like that. If it were me, I would try it.

 

[fluketamer]

i have used the pump with the ice bucket method and it also works i just hate messing with ice. in the spring i have used my swimming pool which cools the wort and heats the pool and really makes for a great brewing day with swimming, homebrew drinking, and beer brewing , etc. (alcohol, hot liquids, water and electricity: the real ingredients for a true disaster)
anyway , once the summer really hit the pool wont cool my wort anymore.

another method i have used is to use the cooling coil in my fermzilla to chill the wort with my chiller. for those last 20 degrees or so. but i basically switched over to pressure fermenting in oxebars so i dont use fermzilla anymore.

 

[Deadalus]

I've done what you are saying for lagers with varying temperatures in the seventies probably the highest after using all types of chillers, whether IC, plate, or CFC. Since I often start not early, this takes overnight but probably 4-8 hours in my minifridges. Sometimes I stay up late and pitch late but sometimes I go to bed. I rarely need to put an ale in there unless it's really hot and the basement is above 68F, like summer only and that's mainly because I want to temperature control the ale. With a plate chiller or CFC, you can recirculate as you cool in the situation where your groundwater cooled water supply is unable to cool the the wort sufficiently low in one pass. Technically you can go as low as your faucet output temp with an IC but you may have to wait a while. In a hot climate or depending on your water supply you may still not reach ale temps. I get closer to and sometimes I have reached lagering temps in the winter maybe even spring or fall. I could do the ice thing with the IC but only recently got an fridge that makes ice properly.

I always use a thermowell with the temperature controller driving the fridge. I have all used minifridges and none have busted. Most people would only be doing this sporadically. I had three and the last one I just trashed but it was "working". I got a glycol chiller, needed the space, and didn't have anyone locally that may have wanted it as I had already hacked out the thermostat and carved up the door. I made the person a deal when I bought it and the wine chiller one I have and so it was only $25 or so and had served me well. I would have had to buy a new temp controller anyway as that was what broke and I still have two. I'm so guilt ridden, don't judge me! I did say thank you to it. Now our Samsung fridge that was still sort of working, I gleefully paid the removal fee for and I hope that POS gets melted down after getting crushed in a compacter.

 

[mac_1103]

I've done it. It works. But in terms of getting from ~85F to ~65F I'm not really sure there's much difference between 3-4 hours in the fridge and overnight in the basement. I have recently come into a couple of used ICs for free, so next batch will use a them in an ice bath as pre-chillers and hopefully get down into the 60s faster.

 

[worlddivides]

Thanks for all the input, guys. I had a feeling that might be the case, but I thought it was worth considering. I did have the thought that simply putting a ton of 1-liter PET bottles of ice in a cooler bag makes the air feel more like a freezer than a fridge (though in summer time, it usually only maintains a fermentation around 66-68F, which is obviously way warmer than a freezer or a fridge), so it felt like tap water and ice would be the way to go. I've had a habit of just keeping every ice pack used for packaging that's been sent to me, so I have a pretty huge number of them, along with maybe 6 1-liter bottles of ice. I'd probably also want 2 bags of ice. This might seem like overkill, but the last time I did an ice bath, it took such a long time to cool the wort down, that I feel I need to hit it with a lot more ice this time. I suppose the fridge might only be useful in chilling the wort a few degrees when it's already gotten into, say, the 70s.

 

[Dancy]

How about ice paddles which can be purchased at a restaurant supply store?

 

[IslandLizard]

As you noticed, chilling wort using tap water becomes very inefficient when the temp difference becomes less than 20-40C.
You can then switch to using pre-chilled water. 4 gallons of ice water will bring 5-6 gallons of wort down to yeast pitching temps within 20 minutes.

 

[hotbeer]

I think ice paddles have been shown to be ineffective for large volumes. When the outer layer of ice melts, it just serves to slow the rate of cooling to a crawl again. If you had several and change them out, then sure that'd work.

Maybe if one figured the SG needed and the dilution amount of water to get to a desired OG. They could just freeze that amount of water and drop it in to cool and dilute the wort to the proper OG.

 

[IslandLizard]

Maybe if one figured the SG needed and the dilution amount of water to get to a desired OG. They could just freeze that amount of water and drop it in to cool and dilute the wort to the proper OG.

Partial boils (in contrast to full volume boils), with top-up in the fermenter using cold (or ice water), are a recommended workflow for extract brews, for that very reason, in addition to not having to use a larger kettle and associated heating/chilling requirements.

But it doesn't work well for all grain brewing, as one would take a (big) hit on mash and thus brewhouse efficiency.

 

[Bassman2003]

Chilling at the homebrew level can be complicated. You need to get the heat out of the wort as much as putting cooler temps in. Putting a large container in a fridge does not work very quickly because their is no movement and the heat stays in the center of the liquid. You will put a lot of strain on the fridge as it will work non-stop to chill the wort.

I and others have found success with a decent length & diameter immersion chiller, some motion in the wort and a schedule of ground water switching over to chilled or ice water at the 90F - 100F point. It always takes longer than we want but you do the best with what you got.

 

[hotbeer]

But it doesn't work well for all grain brewing, as one would take a (big) hit on mash and thus brewhouse efficiency.

Agreed. But to me it's a better solution than the ice paddles. And both my suggestion of using just ice and the use of ice paddles will be among the very least things I'd resort to.

Pumping ice water through the IC or just doing no chill brewing will be high on my list to do. In between the two extremes would be just getting a better chiller. I'm realizing that my home made IC is made from copper that is too thick walled. And though copper is a good heat conductor, that extra thickness does slow down it's effectiveness.

But still, this is just my preference. Not necessarily what the OP's will be or any other person. I'm only offering options and opinions. Not necessarily the best thing that one must do.

 

[worlddivides]

As you noticed, chilling wort using tap water becomes very inefficient when the temp difference becomes less than 20-40C.
You can then switch to using pre-chilled water. 4 gallons of ice water will bring 5-6 gallons of wort down to yeast pitching temps within 20 minutes.

That's something I've never personally tried but that I first read about a few weeks ago. On one site it mentioned just putting a large amount of water in the fridge (gallons, for example) a day or two before brew day, while another one mentioned putting a decent amount of water in the freezer the morning of brew day and taking it out when you need to chill the wort (since it would still be almost all liquid still at that point, but extremely cold). I do think those are both awesome ideas.

I think I probably have around 2.5 gallons of ice water in my freezers spread across 6 1-liter PET bottles and a ridiculous amount of ice packs. I'm kind of on the fence on whether I should freeze another liter before my next brew day (which I'm currently planning for the day after tomorrow). I also plan to buy 1 or 2 of those big bags of ice to use too.

I'm pretty sure I'll eventually just buy some kind of wort chiller that's an upgrade over what I've had before, but in the mean time, I want to see just what I can do with a much much much larger volume of ice than I used in my previous ice bath.

 

[sibelman]

Re @IslandLizard 's mash efficiency comment: one might leave the mash and lauter unchanged, but boil longer to get heftier wort, then dilute with ice or ice water.

Longer boil could change other things of course, but leave efficiency unaffected, I think.

There are many ways to accelerate chilling.

 

[BongoYodeler]

During the summer my tap water runs in the 70's. I use a Jaded Hydra IC and in about 6-8 minutes can get the wort down below 100° but then it takes another 10 minutes or so to get to ~80°. At that point I transfer to my 30L Speidel fermenter and seal it with both the upper and lower caps. I stick the fermenter in a Cool Brewing insulated bag and place five 1.5L frozen water bottles around it and zipper the bag closed. My last 5 gallon batch, about 4 weeks ago, took about 8 hours to get down to pitching temperature, about 67°

Between December and March, when my tap water is much colder, I can usually get my wort down to 70° in less than 10 minutes just using my Jaded Hydra.

 

[DVCNick]

I've been chilling from ~10x degrees to pitching temp using my chest freezer fermentation chamber since pretty much the day I got it.
I haven't run the numbers, but it just seems better to me than running large amounts of water down the drain once the chiller is becoming inefficient.

Your fridge is either on or off, and it is designed to run a lot. Personally I wouldn't worry about strain on the fridge.
This usually has me pitching either late at night or first thing the next morning depending on brew day schedule, but no negative effects that I can note so far.

 

[fluketamer]

forgot to mention you dont need a pump for ice water chiller. i saw a post where a member uses two coolers and gravity via a siphon to move the water through the chiller. then just keeps putting water from the bottom cooler back into the top cooler.

 

[kevin58]

90+° temperatures in the summer time is why I use Kveik yeast. Rather than fight the temperatures I decided to change up my process to take advantage of it.

 

[worlddivides]

During the summer my tap water runs in the 70's. I use a Jaded Hydra IC and in about 6-8 minutes can get the wort down below 100° but then it takes another 10 minutes or so to get to ~80°. At that point I transfer to my 30L Speidel fermenter and seal it with both the upper and lower caps. I stick the fermenter in a Cool Brewing insulated bag and place five 1.5L frozen water bottles around it and zipper the bag closed. My last 5 gallon batch, about 4 weeks ago, took about 8 hours to get down to pitching temperature, about 67°

Between December and March, when my tap water is much colder, I can usually get my wort down to 70° in less than 10 minutes just using my Jaded Hydra.

That's exactly what I did when I lived in California too (down to the 30L Speidel fermenter, Cool Brewing insulated bag, and 1-2L frozen water bottles). I found it pretty effective. I both miss that fermenter and that Cool Brewing bag. I did buy the biggest food delivery insulated bag I could find, which I probably won't be able to zip shut because of the airlock (if it didn't have the airlock on top, I likely could fit the whole fermenter in it. I haven't used it yet, but even if it isn't as effective as the Cool Brewing bag, it should be pretty effective.

 

[worlddivides]

90+° temperatures in the summer time is why I use Kveik yeast. Rather than fight the temperatures I decided to change up my process to take advantage of it.

I had considered either making a saison or trying out the Kveik yeast, but I ended up making what my girlfriend wants to drink. I'll be using US-05, so it should still be pretty clean even if I can't perfectly manage the temps, but I've been doing what I can (with the insulated bag, ice bottles, and so on) to manage a temp that's maybe 30 degrees Fahrenheit lower than the outside temp. Getting it down to that temperature first, though, does seem like a bit of a challenge.

 

[BongoYodeler]

That's exactly what I did when I lived in California too (down to the 30L Speidel fermenter, Cool Brewing insulated bag, and 1-2L frozen water bottles). I found it pretty effective. I both miss that fermenter and that Cool Brewing bag. I did buy the biggest food delivery insulated bag I could find, which I probably won't be able to zip shut because of the airlock (if it didn't have the airlock on top, I likely could fit the whole fermenter in it. I haven't used it yet, but even if it isn't as effective as the Cool Brewing bag, it should be pretty effective.

For the cost of the Cool Brewing bag, (both initially and also the fact that it doesn't cost anything to use since you don't plug it in), you're miles ahead financially. Of course the downside is you do have to babysit it. I use it because I already have a house fridge, a beer fridge in my garage, and a 4-tap keezer. I just don't have space for a 4th cooling device to be used only as a dedicated fermentation chamber.
If anyone is wondering if you can ferment lagers with it the answer is yes. Back in April I brewed a lager and fermented in "the bag" at 52°f. I even had to remove frozen water bottles to hold it at 52° otherwise temperatures would easily have dropped deep into the 40's, or lower.

 

[IslandLizard]

I think I probably have around 2.5 gallons of ice water in my freezers spread across 6 1-liter PET bottles and a ridiculous amount of ice packs. I'm kind of on the fence on whether I should freeze another liter before my next brew day (which I'm currently planning for the day after tomorrow). I also plan to buy 1 or 2 of those big bags of ice to use too.

Big chunks of ice and frozen soda bottles exchange heat rather slowly, due to their small surface area.

If you have an ice cube maker in the freezer you can start collecting those a few days to a week before brewing.

I keep 4-6 1-gallon milk jugs filled with water in my keezer for chilling the last 40-60°F down to pitching temps. I use an old bottling bucket with a spigot in the bottom to dispense it from an elevated position. Works better than anything else I have tried.

 

[Deadalus]

That's exactly what I did when I lived in California too (down to the 30L Speidel fermenter, Cool Brewing insulated bag, and 1-2L frozen water bottles). I found it pretty effective. I both miss that fermenter and that Cool Brewing bag. I did buy the biggest food delivery insulated bag I could find, which I probably won't be able to zip shut because of the airlock (if it didn't have the airlock on top, I likely could fit the whole fermenter in it. I haven't used it yet, but even if it isn't as effective as the Cool Brewing bag, it should be pretty effective.

I just made this cozy if you are interested in making something insulative on the cheap. The material is a 1/2" sleeping mat from Walmart $15+duct tape. There's a carboy inside. I've got a lager in it right now. It's closed cell foam and doesn't absorb water.

 

[worlddivides]

For the cost of the Cool Brewing bag, (both initially and also the fact that it doesn't cost anything to use since you don't plug it in), you're miles ahead financially. Of course the downside is you do have to babysit it. I use it because I already have a house fridge, a beer fridge in my garage, and a 4-tap keezer. I just don't have space for a 4th cooling device to be used only as a dedicated fermentation chamber.
If anyone is wondering if you can ferment lagers with it the answer is yes. Back in April I brewed a lager and fermented in "the bag" at 52°f. I even had to remove frozen water bottles to hold it at 52° otherwise temperatures would easily have dropped deep into the 40's, or lower.

Although I never actually fermented a lager with it, I was interested to see if you could, so after the fermentation finished, I just started overloading it with frozen bottles. I think I got it down to 48 or so, but it did make me think that it would theoretically be possible to ferment a lager in there, but it would take a lot more ice and babysitting than it usually took.

 

[worlddivides]

Big chunks of ice and frozen soda bottles exchange heat rather slowly, due to their small surface area.

If you have an ice cube maker in the freezer you can start collecting those a few days to a week before brewing.

I keep 4-6 1-gallon milk jugs filled with water in my keezer for chilling the last 40-60°F down to pitching temps. I use an old bottling bucket with a spigot in the bottom to dispense it from an elevated position. Works better than anything else I have tried.

I do have an ice cube maker, and I also plan to use the massive amount of ice packs I have in my freezer as well and plan to buy 1-2 bags of ice cubes. When I lived in Michigan, I was able to get wort from boiling down to a pitchable temperature in the winter pretty quickly, but it was always a serious challenge in the summer (wherever I lived).

Since brew day is tomorrow, I should probably chill some water in my fridge down into the low 40s too.

 

[Bassman2003]

I am with Lizard here. For ales, I have found great success with storing cold water in my lager fridge to use on brewday. I have three 3 gallon tubs that I keep filled with water. I then put the water from chilling right back into them and they go back in the fridge. So a little bit of conservation going on.

For lagers I use whatever it takes to get down to 80F ish then put ice cubes in my reservoir and recirculate the water back out from the chiller into the reservoir. The key is to only have enough water in the reservoir to keep the loop going. You want the cubes to melt because the melting water is the coldest. If you have too much other water in there the melting water temp is wasted on the water, not the wort. So you have to have a glass or container to catch and remove the return water to keep the level low.

I have lowered a lager wort to 44F in my garage on a 100F day using this method. It works!

 

[IslandLizard]

For lagers I use whatever it takes to get down to 80F ish then put ice cubes in my reservoir and recirculate the water back out from the chiller into the reservoir.

Depending on your chiller performance, keep an eye on the temps of the chiller output. Especially in the beginning when the wort is still quite warm, you don't want to "pollute" your chilling reservoir with warm water, losing its effectiveness.

I throttle the flow down to have "optimal" heat exchange, and recapture the warm effluent. It let it chill (outdoors) and either reuse for the next batch (after rechilling), or use for cleaning, watering plants, etc.

BTW, I use a plate chiller.
I've been thinking about getting a 2nd for the final chilling stage, to bring the wort down from 100-120°F down to pitching temps, in a single pass to the fermenter.
I don't do many Lagers.

 

[Bassman2003]

Yes, great point. Chilling has been quite a journey for me over the years. I enjoy the engineering aspect of building the best mousetrap I can think up!

My current routine is hose water first. I pour the first 8-9 gallons of hot output water into my HLT for PBW water. I then switch to recirculating the hose water for a bit. Depending on the time of year and style of beer, I will introduce the chilled water into the reservoir (I put the chiller water into my Anvil Foundry which is my mash tun) and recirc it. I then go to ice if needed. My chiller is a NY Homebrew 50ft 1/2" ID SS immersion chiller with the Anvil Foundry chiller hooked up inside as well. So two chillers tied together in one. More surface area.

 

[worlddivides]

Thanks to the ridiculous amounts of ice, I was able to get the wort down from boiling (212F/100C) to 167F/75C in about 5 minutes, then down to 122F/50C in about 20 minutes, then down to 95F/35C in about 40 minutes, then down to 77F/25C in about 60 minutes. All in all, it took me a little over 1 hour to go from 212F/100C to 77F/25C. I pitched the yeast at 75F/24C and managed to get the wort in the fermenter down to 16-17C / 60-63F in about 6-7 hours after that. As is typical of US-05, no airlock activity yet, and hell, knowing this strain, I might not have any activity when I wake up tomorrow either. I slightly surpassed my estimated starting gravity, even though the wort sample tasted WAY less bitter than I expected for all the Centennial and Idaho 7 I boiled, but it's probably just the sweetness of the malt covering up the bitterness (hopefully at least). I mashed at 65.5C / 150F for 1 hour, so I expect a relatively crisp, dry end result. The lactic acid and gypsum additions should also help emphasize those hops.

In the end, I got the wort in the kettle down to 77F/25C, despite it being 96F outside and pretty hot in my kitchen too, so I didn't even entertain the idea of sticking the fermenter in the fridge after all.

 

[T Murph]

It is an evolving practice we all experience learning as we go in this hobby. I have been homebrewing 30+ years and along the way I have employed many different ways to cool wort. I have utilized immersion chillers and plate chillers. In my opinion both do a decent job getting your wort down to pitching temperatures. However, either method can be substancially improved by utilizing an ice and water vessel with a pump to push ice cold water through the chiller instead of relying on water from the faucet. I use a 20 gal ss vessel with a small pond pump connected to an immersion chiller. I have a dedicated double door fridge for my brewery where I freeze 5 small hotel/steam table pans of water. Additionally days before brew day i remove the blocks of ice store them in the freezer and refill the pans to make more ice. The pans make blocks of ice approximately 6 inch cubes. When it is time to chill my wort i put about 4 gallons of cold water and 2 blocks of ice in the pot. I then turn the pump on and the cooling begins. I generally takes about 20 minutes to get down to 60 degrees for lagers and only about 15 minutes to get down to 68 for ales.

At the beginning the water coming out of the ic is boiling hot. So I pump that hot water into a bucket for clean up. I usually end up with at least 4 gallons of hot water. Cold water and additional ice blocks are added as needed. By this time the quick chill slows considerably as the temperature of the wort is around 100 degrees. As the wort temp reduces the chill slows also. Now I let the runoff feed back into the ice water pot to finish chilling. This allows me to chill my wort without wasting a bunch of water unnecessarily.

 

[hotbeer]

Thanks to the ridiculous amounts of ice, I was able to get the wort down from boiling (212F/100C) to 167F/75C in about 5 minutes, then down to 122F/50C in about 20 minutes, then down to 95F/35C in about 40 minutes, then down to 77F/25C in about 60 minutes. All in all, it took me a little over 1 hour to go from 212F/100C to 77F/25C. I pitched

What method did you use? And how much wort?

1 hour seems a tad long. And ridiculous amounts of ice unnecessary.

 

[worlddivides]

What method did you use? And how much wort?

1 hour seems a tad long. And ridiculous amounts of ice unnecessary.

Like I said, just an ice bath. It was a little over 4 gallons of wort.

I don't have a wort chiller anymore and I'm not even sure if it'd be possible to attach it to my sink at the place I just moved to since the kitchen sink's faucet is completely flat with no visible place to screw in an attachment (I did look into sprinkler adapters, since those often work well with sink faucets for enabling you to attach a wort chiller, but all the ones I saw screwed into something), so I don't see how I'd be able to attach it. Also, while in most places I've lived before the sink and the stove have been right next to each other, in this house, there's a decent amount of space between the stove and the sink.

The last time I tried an ice bath was maybe 10 years ago and it did not go very well, taking an absurd amount of time to get down to a reasonable temperature, whereas this time I was able to get it to the limit of what most wort chillers can get the wort in just 25 minutes. In the past, it's taken something like 3-4 hours to get the wort from 80F/27C to pitching temperature, but this time that took only 30-40 minutes.

It definitely has showed me that even in the middle of the summer when it's in the upper 90s F outside, around 100 degrees, and the kitchen is also super hot, I can get wort from boiling to pitching temperature pretty quickly. I used 6kg (13 pounds) of store-bought ice that I got for about $3.50 and the rest from my ice maker or ice packs I had in my freezer.

Granted, if I had a wort chiller connected to a reservoir of ice water, it probably would have gotten down that far in half or one third the time.

EDIT: I'll also add that I did a hop stand with 10 grams of Idaho 7 at 77C / 170F. I had intended to start it at 80C / 176F, but I chilled it down faster than I expected. I did the hop stand starting at 77C / 170F and did it for 15 minutes, so pulled the hops out at a little above 50C / 122F. So I suppose that's one benefit of it being fast but not crazy fast.