An ice bath will do the job just fine in 30-45 minutes on average. A wort chiller is a bit quicker,but a "rib cage" chiller is said to be even faster. Greater cooling area from the doubled up coils. Here's a video I found on them;
I was thinking of making the rib cage chiller myself.
Well,that's the thing;the rib cage chiller looks to use twice the length of tubing to achieve the desired shape. The one in the video shows this. Using the same length as the single coil would've made the rib cage one much smaller than it was. Where the single coil would use 25',the rib cage would fit 50' in the same space,being doubled up.
I only have a 5 gallon kettle. Will I be able to get by using the kitchen sink when doing an ice bath, or should I use something else? Thanks a bunch for the tips, the brewing community seems pretty awesome.
wilserbrewer said:Ice bath will work fine for batches 5 gal and less IMO. Unless you have a lot of ice, i feel it is very helpful to chill once or twice with just tap water. Tap water will knock down the temp from boil pretty quickly, and then use the ice. If you use the ice immediately, there is a good chance your ice may disappear prior to a full chill. Another note, w/ warm summer tap water, even an IC will not bring you down to pitching temps...say 65.
TopherM said:I did a group brew two Saturdays ago with a guy that has a immersion chiller. It took him 25 minutes to chill his wort to 80 with his IC. It took me 18 minutes in an ice bath.
Here's my secret: I bought my propane burner in a turkey fryer kit. It came with a 7.5 gallon aluminum pot. This pot is WAYYYY to thin to use as a brew kettle, but because it is so thin and made of aluminum, which conducts temperture like crazy, it is an asset in the ice bath.
So I go through a normal brew day in my 11 gallon SS brew kettle, then I transfer it to the 7.5 gallon aluminum just for the ice bath. Cools almost twice as fast as it would in the SS pot.
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