I’ve decided my love of beer is ready for the next level. I want to make it myself. I’ve bought nearly all the necessary materials to start my first batch, and I have a kit with all the ingredients I need to start off as a first brewer. In doing some research I noticed I didn’t get a wort chiller. I was wondering if it’s possible, after my boil to put ice right into my wort as part of the process of bringing my final volume up to 5 gallons and at the time time helping cool my mixture even more rapidly. Of course the ice would be pre-boiled and frozen in a santizied container. Would this way work, or would it mess up my brew? Along with the ice added i’m going to have a sink full of ice water mixture.
I’m sure this is addressed elsewhere in the forums, and to a much better extent than I provide here, but here’s some quick info that might help:
People add hot wort to ice all the time to cool down the wort. It shouldn’t hurt your beer.
It sounds like you plan to put the boil pot into an ice bath in your sink and add ice to the boil pot. I doubt this is most efficient, because the boil pot holds a lot of residual heat which will tear through that ice quickly. Instead, you should aim to get your wort out of the boil pot asap. The problem is that people say you shouldn’t add hot wort directly to a plastic fermenter, even if it is food grade. That’s why you don’t just pour boiling wort into your fermenter. If you’re fermenting in glass, i’d imagine too hot of wort would crack the glass.
So, I think the more common practice is to put the boil pot into an ice bath in the sink like you plan, then maybe circulate the ice water around the boil pot in the sink for a few minutes, which will quickly reduce the temp from 212+ F. I don’t have a lot of experience doing this because I do have a chiller, but I’d say at least 10 mins in the ice bath circulating the water around the pot should cool it down significantly. Meanwhile, add the ice to the (room temp) fermentation vessel like your plastic bucket, then add the wort to the fermenter. That way, the ice isn’t battling to overcome the residual heat from the boil pot if you were to add the ice right to the pot. I believe that calculating final temp when you add hot to cold is a straightforward linear weighted calculation (equal amounts of 33F water and 133F wort should put you at 83F temp combined, I believe).
You can do the ice, but I think it’s easier to chill gallon jugs in the fridge and use it to top up the wort to 5 gallons. In my experience, if you let the wort sit in an ice bath to get down to about 130, you can add the cold water and generally get to pitching temps pretty quick. When I did this, I used gallon jugs of spring water from teh grocery store and had good results.
scruffymmh and podo thank you both. I was trying to find information on the web but everything keept leading me back to wort chillers :P Eventually when I get some more money I’ll probably get/make one.
Thanks again guys I’m sure I’ll be posting again. I wish these forums had a search bar to see if my questions have already been asked lol… O well i’ll just have to peruse through all the pages :D It just makes me more excited to get started!
IMHO, adding ice is the best way to chill wort from a partial boil. Cold water works, but an equal volume of ice gives you, on average, three times as much cooling. If you make ice with 2.5 gal of water, and add it to 3 gal of boiling wort, it will stabilize at ~69°F.
I use an IC to chill my starter worts but I’ve used ice baths and ice additions as well with no problems, just make sure your water source is free of chlorine and other potential contaminants.