After 8 batches of partial grain brews, I am anxious to try my hand at all grain brewing. I have a big enough pot for a full boil. My question has to do with cooling my wort. In the past, with partial grain recipes, I have chilled by adding 1-2 gallons of chilled H2O to my carboy before adding the boiling wort and then using an ice bath to bring it down to the proper pitching temp. I have been advised that with a full grain boil, however, a wort chiller will be necessary to bring the temp. down quickly. Not that I’m a cheapskate or anything, but is that $50 - $100 really necessary? What if during the last ten minutes of my boil, I kept a lid on the brew pot, turned off the heat and just let it sit until it cooled to the ambient temp. i.e. 70-80 degrees F? Is there something else going on in a quick cool down that is important and that I would be missing?
Keeping the lid off while boiling and cooling the wort down quickly reduces the chance that DMS will be perceptible in you finished beer.
Buying a chiller is for sure worth the $50 investment.
A cheaper option is to buy 5 - 6 1 liter bottles of water, remove labels, freeze solid, sanitize and drop in the hot wort. You should be able to get 5 gallons of wort chilled quite quickly this way with a little stirring with a sanitized spoon.
No-Chill has also been done with little reported problems. In this method you get an airtight heat resistant container (traditionally done with brand new plastic fuel cans) as soon as the boil is over run off into this container and seal. Let cool overnight.
EDIT
However it is important to remember that an ambient temp of 70-80 is still quite high for most fermentations. You could do a saison at that temp but just about any other ale you are going to want to figure out a way to chill down to the low 60’s and maintain that general range (60-68) for at least the first 3-5 days of fermentation
A wort chiller is something you will use on every batch you brew - extract, BIAB, partial mash and AG. I think this is a good investment and worthy of your money.
I suggest getting a chiller. It is really “that” piece of equipment that is worth getting when making the move to all grain. I will also suggest getting one that chills 10 gallon batches. It’s worth the extra 30 bucks… Unless you think you won’t ever brew that much. I got mine from morebeer.com… Free shipping over 50 or 100 bucks… I can’t remember which
I made an immersion chiller from 50’ of copper coil for just under $50. In the spring, when the tap water was colder, it got 6G of wort to 80*F in five minutes then below 70 after another 30 minutes. It takes an hour now but is still less of a hassle on brew day than an ice bath. I also made it for the same price or below what one would pay for an IC with only 25’ of copper. There are plenty of instructions on the interwebs.
If you are handy, this is the way to go.
a pre chiller with an pump to recirculate cold water hooked up with a counterflow chiller works very well. both pre chiller and cfc can be made easily. another option if you have water that needs to be added after boil to bring up to proper volume is to add ice instead of water to empty primary fermenter and dump wort into that. I never had an infection in 100 or so batches with the ice technique.
I’m the anthihesis of handy. I actually put off the project because I was intimidated. an immersion chiller was so easy I should have tried it sooner.
+1
I use an immersion chiller. I manually stir the wort with the chiller (poor man’s counter-flow?) and can usually get it below 70 in 20 minutes. So little hassle.
Check the web for copper tubing sales - for around $75 (USD) you can get a 100-ft coil of 3/8" copper tubing - close to what you’d pay for one immersion chiller. Don’t forget to also buy a $2 3/8" tubing bender. As mentioned already; there are plenty of sites offering help on how to build the chiller.
You can make two 50-ft ICs and sell one to a friend to recoup some of that cash, or - do what I did; make two chillers and put one in your kettle, and the other one in a bucket filled with ice and water - takes 6 gallons of boiling wort down to under 70 F in 10 minutes with the ground water hovering around 80 F!
I made my 50’ chiller with 2 separately fed 25’x3/8" coils, one stacked on top of the other. I figure, with a 50’ coil, you are just running hot/warm water through the second 25’. Even with 70f water, I’m below 140f in less than 2 minutes, <80f in ~12-15 minutes for 6 gallons. 10-12 minutes with 55f water in the cooler months. Works well for 10 gallons too. Cost me $80 to build.