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Patience/Cooling the Wort
Just bottled my first batch, a pale ale high on the IBU scale. So far, the hardest part of home brewing is having to be patient, which leads me to wonder: has anyone cooled the wort by adding a gallon of cold distilled water? I ask because this occurred to me while my batch was fermenting and I was trying to think of ways to cool the wort faster, because it seemed to take for ever.
are you brewing all grain or extract?
if you mean adding a gallon of water to bring the volume up to 5 or 10 gallons, then yes. If you mean adding an additonal gallon just to cool the wort, then no. I cool my wort by puuting my brew kettle in my sink filled with cold water. I usually have to change the water out a few times, but it cools in about 20 minutes.
I've been adding the wort (2gal) to 3 gallons of chilled water, dont know if its the best or correct way but it works well for me, usually brings the temp down to the 80 degree range.
I usually put a bunch of ice from the icemaker in my freezer mixed with some cold water, then add the hot wort to that in my fermenting bucket. Chills it right down. I've read that this can potentially introduce contaminants, bacterial or otherwise, but my icemaker seems pretty clean and I haven't had any trouble so far. And it sure does reduce my cooling time significantly, which I guess you could argue reduces the time the wort is exposed to the outside world.
i have a bucket about 4" in diamater larger than my brewpot [turkey fryer]and almost as tall ,i installed a drain plug in it ,on brew day i go buy a 20 lb bag of ice when its time i put some ice in the bottom first then the pot and fill around it with the ice almost to the top of the pot it took 20 min. to cool down to 85
two words: wort chiller
I just got one and used it on my last batch. I chilled the wort from boiling to about 90F in 10-15 min and then added that to my fermenter with about 2 gal cold water and filled to 5 gal with more cold water. I hit 78 F, aerated, and was ready to pitch 30 min after boiling. I should have bought a wort chiller when I began brewing...
1n1m3g wrote:
two words: wort chiller
I just got one and used it on my last batch. I chilled the wort from boiling to about 90F in 10-15 min and then added that to my fermenter with about 2 gal cold water and filled to 5 gal with more cold water. I hit 78 F, aerated, and was ready to pitch 30 min after boiling. I should have bought a wort chiller when I began brewing...
Which chiller did you buy? I have a 20foot coil, but was thinking of upgrading to the 50foot one that B3 sells.
Maybe use my 20 foot as a prechiller during the summer.
Next time I brew, I was going to fill a two liter soda bottle 3/4 full of water then freeze it, then sanitize and drop it into the wort while in my sink.
Its a trick I learned in one of my old restaurants to get 5 gallons bean dip (really thick) down from 212 to 70 degrees in about 35 minutes, should work stellar for beer.
-R
Just beware that if you are trying to make an IPA, you will want have a large boil volume for hop utilization. It wouldn't matter as much for a more malty beer or less bitter beer.
Drink up!
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