Using Ice

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tomek322

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I plan on brewing my second batch. I guess I should of asked this before my first. Here goes. On my first batch I saved about two bags of ice from my fridge ice box, dumped the ice into my primary, filled with water up to about 2 gallons. I then strained my wort into the ice bath. Should I not be using plain ice to cool my wort?

The down side was when the wort mixed in with the water. The solution was actually about 55 degrees. I boiled some water filled it up to 5 gallons, it then got up to 68 and pitched my yeast.

Can I use the same technique to cool my wort on my second brew? Use less ice so I end up at around 70 after mixing.

Flame away... what do I need to differently?
 
I would be hesitant about having ice come directly into contact with my wort unless I knew it was steril.

What I do is put my brew kettle into an ice bath to bring the temp down to about 75-80deg. Then I strain the wort into my fermenter and top off with chilled bottled water. I usually end up in the 66-68 deg range and can pitch immediately.
 
Ice from an icemaker or trays in the freezer are full of potential infections. Get some cool whip or chinese food soup containers and sanitize them, fill them with water and put them in the freezer with a sanitized cover. That's if you must use ice. You can also hold your topup water in any sanitized container in the fridge which you won't have to wait for it to melt.
 
TheJadedDog said:
I would be hesitant about having ice come directly into contact with my wort unless I knew it was steril.

What I do is put my brew kettle into an ice bath to bring the temp down to about 75-80deg. Then I strain the wort into my fermenter and top off with chilled bottled water. I usually end up in the 66-68 deg range and can pitch immediately.

When you have this in an ice bath, do you stir the wort occasionally? Or just let it be? How long does this take? I thought time is of the essence once you stop boiling your wort.
 
tomek322 said:
When you have this in an ice bath, do you stir the wort occasionally? Or just let it be? How long does this take? I thought time is of the essence once you stop boiling your wort.

I shake the pot a bit with the lid on to get some movement of the wort. It typically takes me 20 minutes and 2 5lb bags of ice to get 2 gallons of wort cooled to 80deg.
 
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