Chilling wort quicker w/o a chiller tips?

I'm kinda sick of buying 50 pounds of ice and waiting for 45 mins-1 hr to reach the pitch temp. For my next batch I was going add the wort to the primary, stir in the remaining 2-2.5 gals of water to the primary and maybe soak the bucket and a lot less ice. Am I wrong for adding the water while it's hot? Does anyone have any suggestions? This will be my third batch so I'm open to any tips. Please and Thanks in advance!

I've recently started using an immersion chiller. Before that, I was having decent success with an ice bath in the tub. Filled the tub with ice and cold water, stir the wort continuously in one direction while stirring the the bath water continuously in the other direction. This should get you down pretty quick. Just make sure you don't splash any bath water into the wort. It takes a little muscle, but it's drastically faster than just leaving it be.

I do my boil outside, so my method might not work for you, but... I leave the wort in the boil kettle (aluminum turkey fryer - excellent heat transfer), and have a rubbermade tote sitting nearby, with a garden hose running into it (hose end submerged so it doesn't splash). Water comes out of the tap at ~50° or so. Hit flameout, lift the kettle off the burner and set in the water. Once you've got your wort cooled (not all the way to pitching temperature - you have to figure out how much your top-off water will cool it down as well), you have a tote full of water that can be used for a quick wash-up after you pitch the yeast.

Adaman05 said:

I've recently started using an immersion chiller. Before that, I was having decent success with an ice bath in the tub. Filled the tub with ice and cold water, stir the wort continuously in one direction while stirring the the bath water continuously in the other direction. This should get you down pretty quick. Just make sure you don't splash any bath water into the wort. It takes a little muscle, but it's drastically faster than just leaving it be.

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I use the method described above.

Just put the boil kettle in a tub of ice, and as Adaman says, stir the wort in one direction and the ice in another. This gets you to pitching temp fast and aerates the wort.

If you are doing partial boils and adding top off water, I would suggest perhaps looking into freezing a gallon or two of the water you would use to top off with. This will drop the temperature very quickly. I've heard the argument that this isn't sanitary practice, but I've also heard of many people who do this frequently without problems.

I buy (6) 1 gallon spring water jugs to brew extract batches. I put 3 of the jugs in the fridge the day before brewing. I use the other three to do my steeping and boiling with. As I start my boil, I take one jug from the fridge and place into the freezer. By the time I'm finished with the boil, I will move the boil pot into my kitchen sink which has cold water in it and stir the wort around gently for about 5 minutes and then repeat in the other sink. Transfer wort into fermentor and pour that half frozen jug into the wort and continue with the other two cold jugs of water until top-off level is reached. Stir well and take temp, might be a little on the cold side, if so, throw the sanitized lid on and set aside while doing final clean up and put away everything. Come back every 15-20 minutes until desired pitching temp is reached and then pitch my yeast. Makes the brew day go by a little quicker and more efficient.