Hot Climate Wort Chilling

[goplayoutside]

Hey HBT crew,

I am thinking about getting back into brewing after a move from western Montana down to Houston TX and a couple of years hiatus.

The warm climate has me a little concerned over two things:

1) Fermentation temperature control: I have a chest freezer which I plan to outfit with a thermostat controller so this should be no problem

2) Wort chilling: the tap water here is warm especially in summer, I am afraid it will take FOREVER to get the wort down to pitch temp. Since I will be doing a 3 gal partial boil I was thinking I could probably get away with cooling the pot in ice water in the sink down to a certain temp and then adding two gallons of bottled distilled water that have been in my fridge overnight, with the addition of the cold water causing the final temperature drop to the desired pitching temperature. Here is the question:

Assuming I have measured the temperature of the refrigerated water, how do I calculate the temperature I need to get my wort down to before adding the cold water if I am aiming for a pitch temp of 65 deg. F?

 

[DerekJ]

If you have a temperature controlled fermentation chamber I wouldn't worry about it. Cool the wort as much as you can with the tap water and then put it in the chamber to finish the job. It will only take a few hours in the chamber to reach good pitching temps.

 

[gmcapone]

There are calculators out there that will help you with this, but I don't like the idea of watering down my beer. I generally just cool my beer down to 80-90 with the wort chiller then transfer it to a fermenter. I then put the fermenter in the chest freezer for a few hours with an airlock. Works great for me, and never had any ill effects.

 

[gmcapone]

If you have a temperature controlled fermentation chamber I wouldn't worry about it. Cool the wort as much as you can with the tap water and then put it in the chamber to finish the job. It will only take a few hours in the chamber to reach good pitching temps.

Beat me to it

 

[goplayoutside]

Thanks for the tips fellas. I am sure something will work, just figured that as long as I am limited to a partial boil by my equipment situation and adding water to my beer regardless, I might as well add it cold and take advantage of the resulting temperature drop. I was hoping somebody might have a link to a formula or calculator for this kind of thing, I'm sure it isn't complicated I just am having trouble getting the right thing to pop up on a google search.

Any takers?

 

[Waynep005]

You can get a second wort chiller put it in a bucket of ice and run the water through it and then into the chiller that is in the wort. I am going to it thus summer.

 

[goplayoutside]

Waynep -- I thought of that too, but I don't have any immersion chillers and I have spouse-imposed budget restrictions that will prevent my buying 2 of them and also the fridge thermostat and fermenter. The fermenter is not optional and I consider fermentation temp control to be one of the major factors for producing predictably excellent homebrew so that is where the cash is going. I was thinking I could use math to be able to still nail my O.G. and pitch temp...

Anyways, I will keep looking. If I find something that works for me I will post it up here so it can help others too.

 

[Ravenshead]

There's a bunch of brewers here in the Houston area that can help you deal with our warm temps. What part of the Houston area are you in?

 

[GilSwillBasementBrews]

Waynep -- I thought of that too, but I don't have any immersion chillers and I have spouse-imposed budget restrictions that will prevent my buying 2 of them and also the fridge thermostat and fermenter. The fermenter is not optional and I consider fermentation temp control to be one of the major factors for producing predictably excellent homebrew so that is where the cash is going. I was thinking I could use math to be able to still nail my O.G. and pitch temp...

Anyways, I will keep looking. If I find something that works for me I will post it up here so it can help others too.

I would just boil water the same volume you would use in your batch of beer then add the ice and normal top off volume of chilled water and see how far off from your target temp you are.

Then in theory you would need to be that amount of degrees below boiling temp to chill to the desired temp after adding ice and top off water.

No experience with it. But that's how I'd approach it before doing it with a batch of wort.

 

[looneybomber]

I mostly brew in the summer months here in KS and this past year, we had a couple weeks straight of triple digit highs. In the summer, I only did extract batchs, so I had partial boils. What I did was put about 12-14gal of water in a 20gal tub and put my kettle in there. I also dumped ice into the wort.

Normally I'd buy 1gal jugs of distilled water and put those in the freezer 6-8hrs prior to brewing. When it was time to cool down the wort, I'd spray them off with sanitizer and with a sanitized razor blade, cut the top of the plastic jug away from the frozen water. When they're frozen solid (think over night) they take forever to melt, but if you only freeze them for 6-8hrs, they're usually a little slushy. You can pour off the excess slush/liquid by beating on the outside of the jug to break up the ice. It then melts very quickly due to having exponentially more surface area and drops the wort temp much quicker.

The idea is to get it below 100deg quickly and then you can relax after that, however, if you let the tub cool it down quite a ways, you can add in 2gal of ice to get it to pitching temp no problem.