Using ice to sparge and cool down wort?

[fluidmechanics]

The other day I was reading a thread written by a new brewer who I think was confused about an ice bath for his BK and wanted to add the ice to his BK to sparge and cool post boil. everybody was explaining to him how he was mistaken. It made me think, if you boiled water and made purified ice would this be such a crazy idea? Has anybody tried this? This could be a cool solution for those who can't afford a wort cooler.

 

[Scut_Monkey]

It would be kind of hard to keep sanitary and it would also be kind of hard to know the volume of water you are adding. I suppose technically you could do it however it means you are doing a partial boil when you probably have the boil kettle size to Do a full boil which yields much better beer. Also this would have nothing to do with spraging the grain bed.

 

[fluidmechanics]

It would be kind of hard to keep sanitary and it would also be kind of hard to know the volume of water you are adding. I suppose technically you could do it however it means you are doing a partial boil when you probably have the boil kettle size to Do a full boil which yields much better beer. Also this would have nothing to do with spraging the grain bed.

Your right I misused the word sparge.

 

[weirdboy]

I used to do this way back before I started using an actual wort chiller, doing partial boils.

I would make ice by putting sanitized water in tupperware containers, then dump them in the fermenter and rack the wort on top to chill it. I had the math worked out so that I would do, say, a 2 gallon boil and then put in 3 gallons of ice and end up with my wort at pitching temps when all the ice had melted.

If you have a kettle big enough, then I agree you are better off with a wort chiller and doing full volume boils.

 

[skimo281]

Lol are you talking about me?

I ended up adding the ice simply because the Midwest instructions said you could add ice directly to your wort to bring the volume up, and it states 8 lbs of ice is approximately 1 gallon of water. I ended up with around 3 gallon boil and 2 gallons of ice.

I'll let you know how it turns out but so far it looks fine. I was kind of worried about infection but I read a thread where people had made sanitation mistakes like not sanitizing tools before touching the wort and it all turned out fine. I'm not saying nothing can happen but I feel pretty confident my beer will turn out fine.

 

[Scut_Monkey]

Yeah I guess you could add the ice to the fermenter which would work ok if you know the water volume added.

 

[dgremark]

When I'm in a hurry I put a 16lb bag of purified ice in my wert and it is about a gallon of water! Works great imho!

 

[JJL]

The way I used to cool my wort when I was doing partial boils was to put 3 gals of water in the freezer right as I started brewing. I would take them out just as they were starting to crystallize. I'd add pour the hot wort into my primary that had 2 gals of cold water in it already and then top it off with the last gallon. I would be below 70F every time. You could use RO/DI or tap water for this for extract. Makes little difference.

 

[dfc]

The other day I was reading a thread written by a new brewer who I think was confused about an ice bath for his BK and wanted to add the ice to his BK to sparge and cool post boil. everybody was explaining to him how he was mistaken. It made me think, if you boiled water and made purified ice would this be such a crazy idea? Has anybody tried this? This could be a cool solution for those who can't afford a wort cooler.

I do it all the time for partial boils.

 

[overdbus]

I used ice(froozin water bottles) today to cool down sparge water
to get ready to sparge ,worked nicely.

 

[thrstyunderwater]

When I'm in a hurry I put a 16lb bag of purified ice in my wert and it is about a gallon of water! Works great imho!

That's 2 gallons, fyi.

 

[skimo281]

I do it all the time for partial boils.

So like me you added the ice directly to the brew kettle to cool and meet your total volume?

If so how do you like the results vs doing it another way? When I did it, it cooled the wort damn near immediately. I thought maybe I added to much ice but it would seem all is normal with my beer so far and if it gets good results I would rather throw ice directly in instead of giving it an ice bath and waiting that much longer.