Your warm ground water will still get you down to 80-90 fast then you use your plastic bin with ice, water and submersible pump connected to your chiller. You should be able to get to 65f in 15 minutes or so.
How many batches before you bought a wort chiller?
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Your warm ground water will still get you down to 80-90 fast then you use your plastic bin with ice, water and submersible pump connected to your chiller. You should be able to get to 65f in 15 minutes or so.
kombat
Well-Known Member
I'm fortunate(?) to live in a region where the water stays cold pretty much all year round, but I think you could still chill your wort quickly with the right equipment, even with warm groundwater/city water.
First off, it looks like you're already collecting water bottles in your freezer. That's good, that's a cheap way to build up a supply of ice. A side benefit is that it's better for your freezer, since the more full it is, the less it has to work. And if you have a power failure, the extra thermal mass of having all that ice in your freezer will keep your food colder much longer.
Now, back to wort chilling, here's how you could get your wort down to lager temperatures in minutes. You'd need a coiled copper immersion chiller and a plate chiller. Take a camping cooler and put your IC in it. Pack inside and around the coils with your frozen water bottles, as much as possible. Fill it up with (admittedly warm) water. Give it a few swirls, the water should be ice cold very quickly. Then connect your hose to the "in" port of the immersion chiller, and connect the "out" to the COLD WATER IN port of a plate chiller. Open the faucet, run your wort through the plate chiller and into a fermenter, it should be nice and cold.
For extra efficiency, you could use your IC as you normally would, even with your warm faucet water temperatures, to knock the first 20-40 degrees off of that boiling wort pretty quickly, before switching things around and using the ice-bath pre-chiller to finish the job. This would allow you to make the most of your ice.
For bonus points, collect the hot output water from the plate chiller and use it to clean your equipment.
atgilbertson
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Built a 20' copper chiller after my second batch. Completely worth the time and money.
jpeebs
Well-Known Member
5 or 6. I'll never use ice again. Took my cool -down time down at least 60%. Way worth it.
Brewing_Butterball
Active Member
After my first batch, spending an hour and a half was waaay to time consuming. So I made myself one out of 25' of copper and various fittings, works like a charm and now I cool wort in 30mins
I've read nothing on if it matters if the wort is hot or cold when aerating but judging by how my beer tastes i'd say what i have been doing is just fine.
A cold break isn't important.
Now before all of you have a heart attack because of that last sentance i shall remind you that i am doing stout beers.
The reason behind the ``importance`` of a cold break has to do with clarity and not prodincing a certain chemical if i remember right called DMS (or something similar) however sinse i am making only stouts,2 things apply here.
1-clarity in a stout is pointless imho because you're NOT going to see through it.
2-stouts happen to be pretty much the most resistant to the DMS flavorings or shall i say large quantities in a stout aren't going to make a signifigant impact.
Now with that being said i would agree with you if i were making say a pale ale or some other style of beer but `for what i am making` making sure i get a good cold break for clarity/DMS restriction is an un needed step that i'd rather not bother with.
Hot Side Aeration doesn't really seem to be an issue unless you're brewing lots of fizzy yellow lagers on a big scale.
DMS (not DMT) is, again, usually a bigger concern in lighter beers utilizing Pils malts and at lagering temperatures. For light ales that use a large amount of Pils malt by percentage of grist, you may want to extend the boil to 90 minutes. Boiling without a lid and cooling as fast as possible are two easy ways to prevent DMS from reaching high levels. The wiki says you get a 30% increase per 60 minutes wort sits around hot.
It's worth worrying about if you're using any other base malt, IMO.
DMS (not DMT) is, again, usually a bigger concern in lighter beers utilizing Pils malts and at lagering temperatures. For light ales that use a large amount of Pils malt by percentage of grist, you may want to extend the boil to 90 minutes. Boiling without a lid and cooling as fast as possible are two easy ways to prevent DMS from reaching high levels. The wiki says you get a 30% increase per 60 minutes wort sits around hot.
It's worth worrying about if you're using any other base malt, IMO.
diodeart
Well-Known Member
Once. Then built my immersion chiller. 140 batches later built my CFC. What's next, harnessing the cold of space?
You can harness the cold of space? I'm in.
stevescott123
Well-Known Member
Well like I said I'm no expert but I regard John Palmer as one and page 71 of How to Brew explains why you shouldn't aerate hot wort. Page 83 covers the topic of cold breaks. I agree though, a lack of prompt cold break probably only produces cosmetic "faults" or at least ones which would be difficult for the average beer drinker to notice. I think we're all agreed that we need to get the yeast in the fermentor asap, seal it up and let the yeast get on with it before any bacteria gets in the way. You can't pitch yeast in to wort that's just off the boil; the yeast will not be happy. You need to cool it. So leaving the cold break argument to one side the sooner you can do it for these reasons the better. That's why, in response to a previous poster who said "when did this become a race", I feel it is. Not among brewers of course, but against the clock
And for the sake of convenience alone the chiller beats the ice bath without question.:rockin:
The title of this thread is a question which can simply be answered by a numerical value alone. But it's hard to answer the question without saying why...
Cheers!
Golddiggie
Well-Known Member
With my current configuration, I can chill ~7.5 gallons of wort from a boil to <55F in under 10 minutes. With how I have things configured, I don't expect summer to impact things much, if at all. For me, it's more about getting the wort to the pitching temp, so that I can set it to ferment and get on with other things.
stevescott123
Well-Known Member
Golddiggie
Well-Known Member
I think the last batch was to under 50F in maybe 8 minutes. I need to get better at changing over to going into fermenter with the chilling wort. So that I stay above 55F. Otherwise, I actually need to warm it back up so that the yeast is happy.
I know, first world home brewing 'issues'... lol
I think we're all agreed that we need to get the yeast in the fermentor asap, seal it up and let the yeast get on with it before any bacteria gets in the way. You can't pitch yeast in to wort that's just off the boil; the yeast will not be happy. You need to cool it. So leaving the cold break argument to one side the sooner you can do it for these reasons the better. That's why, in response to a previous poster who said "when did this become a race", I feel it is. Not among brewers of course, but against the clock
:
Cheers!
Like i had mentioned in an earlier post i put the hot wort into the fermentor and seal it with a sanitised airlock.The heat prevents any bacteria from messing with it and when it cools naturally i pop open the top and put my yeast into it.My beer tastes great and i just `relax,dont worry,and have a homebrew.`But also as i had mentioned previously i would not want to use this same practice if i were doing any other style of beer and indeed would want to use SOME form of chiller.
Cheers.
kombat
Well-Known Member
Not a glass fermentor (i.e., carboy), I hope?
CooperBrew
Well-Known Member
I've done 3 batches (my entire brewing history to this date...lol )using the ice bath in the sink method. I'm making my own immersion chiller tonight as a matter a fact, just have to pick up the copper tubing tonight at the local hardware store.
The more I think about NE Ohio weather,I'm still inclined to make a dual coil chiller. The 1st coil in an ice cream bucket of ice water coming in from the tap. Then up & over to the coil in the hot wort,then out to the sink. I've measured 80F in water from the tap in the heat of summer. gotta knock off 10-15 degrees imo to get a good pitch temp. Along with very cold jugs of spring water for top off.
Nope...I use the "Ale Pail" for primary of the beers.
The carboys get used for secondary racking if i bother doing it and for the ciders/wines i make.
ATM have a 5 gal, a 6 gal, and about 30 1 gallon glass carboys
(yes i went overboard on the 1-gal carboys but they were 2 bux each)
CooperBrew
Well-Known Member
I made myself a immersion worth chiller this evening. It probably wasn't any cheaper than purchasing a new one but I had fun making it and I got to support my local independent hardware store in the process. I didn't have a spring type bender and they were out of stock so the owner gave me his out of his tool box and told me to return it when I was done, don't get that kind of service from a big box store
Use a small coffee can to wrap the inner coils and a paint can to wrap the outer.
Use a small coffee can to wrap the inner coils and a paint can to wrap the outer.
