Using ice in chilling wort

[catalanotte]

I moved to all grain full boils this year and miss the simplicity of topping up with ice or cold water for temperature control.

 

[IslandLizard]

Although you save water by using ice, how much energy are you using by making ice out of water? Carbonprint? Waterprint?

 

[catalanotte]

All comes down to a fixed number of BTU's of cooling. Depends on which resource is more important, the extra gallons of water (low BTU per pound) with no energy cost, or the energy cost to freeze just the right amount of water into ice (high BTU per pound) to get the job done.

Time for geek engineer numbers.

3 gallons of beer at 212 degrees needs to loose about 3550 BTUs of heat to cool it to 70 degrees. Every pound of ice melted and warmed to 70 degrees requires 182 BTU. That gives you 19.5 pounds of ice which yields 2.33 gallons with no wasted water.

 

[Talgrath]

Although you save water by using ice, how much energy are you using by making ice out of water? Carbonprint? Waterprint?

Well, assuming you freeze the ice in your already existent freezer, there's no increase in energy use. As far as waterprint, using ice probably uses less water than a wort chiller unless your tap/hose water is very cold.

 

[ong]

Well, assuming you freeze the ice in your already existent freezer, there's no increase in energy use. As far as waterprint, using ice probably uses less water than a wort chiller unless your tap/hose water is very cold.

Although, of course, putting room temp liquid in your freezer will increase the energy used by the freezer.

Once the wort is down to only 10 or so degrees above the chiller water temp, it takes forever to get it down much more. One thing I often do to get down to those last few degrees of cooling with full-boil recipes is place ice in a sanitized plastic bag and put the bag in the wort.