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Chilling worth with ice?
The ice is added as part of the total volume to get the wort to cool more rapidly. SO you might boil to 3 gallons and add 2 gallons of water as ice to make 5 gallons.
I wouldn't worry too much about adding ice to the wort. That being said I wouldn't try to use ice to push the cooling all the way down to pitching temps, but if you add ice immediately after the boil and drop from 200 to 140 degrees and then immersion chill, ice bath or whatever, at 140 degrees your wort is still pretty hostile to anything that was in that ice.
What is the reason for using the ice?
To bring the wort down to pitching temp.
Marv.
What i have found that works best for me is boilin 2 gallons for my wort. I put the other 3 gallons of water in the refridgerator a couple days before and make sure they are nice and cold. Then i just add the 3 gallons of ice cold water with my 2 gallons of wart in the primary and we are at the proper temp to pitch the yeast.
I use bottled water in my brews, I'm on a well and don't want to risk bad taste in my brew.
I clean out and sanitize a half gal. jug. and freez bottled water. I add this to the wort just after knockout and do an ice bath in the sink to get the temp down. Since I use a 1/2 to 3/4 gal starter culture, I only use a half gal. block of ice. When I freeze the water I don't fill it up far enough for the water to freeze in the handle,(makes it easier to cut away) after it cools, I bring up the level leaving enough space to add my starter as part of the volume.
Well I think the whole boil everything or you can get an infection is a little over the top. If you have the time to boil all your water and then cool it back down, good for you, but I usually just use spring water and dump it in, never had any issues with infection.
It's also pretty easy to figure out what you can bring your temperature down to fairly quick. Think of it like this, if you have 2.5 gallons of 200° wort (X) and you add 2.5 gallons of ice at 32° (Y), you will then have 5 gallons of 116° wort (Z).
(X/2)+(Y/2)=Z
So this means your wort won't be cool enough to pitch the yeast into if you just use ice in the wort to cool. Using the formula above, you would need to get your wort down to 108°, before adding the 32° ice, in order to bring the temperature down to 70°. Now the forumla changes a bit when you change the proportion of wort to water, but you get the idea.
DT
Marv. wrote:
Since I use a 1/2 to 3/4 gal starter culture
Marv, I just want to be sure, are you using a starter or a culture? If you are culturing yeast, you are usually keeping it on a slant and pulling off a couple of cells, which you step up into a starter. Starter being a small amount of wort used to multiple the number of yeast cells. I guess I'm wondering if you are making a starter or if you're just rehydrating the yeast (using water, not wort).
DT
I'm using a starter.
The day before I brew, I make a mini wort, around half to three quarters of a gallon.
I also rehydrate the yeast( if using dry yeast) while making the starter wort.
This last batch I used WLyeast, so I didn't have to rehydrate, but I did make the starter and pitched the yeast to it the day before brewing.
It took right off.
So I guess it's called a yeast starter culture? AM I saying that right?
I'm giving the yeast a day to grow in a mini wort.
This is the rehydrated yeast after a little of the wort has been added to it.
Pitching it to the mini wort.
Starter culture, if I'm ot say this wrong, please let me know , lol.
Starter culture.
I fill my sink half full of cold water and top it off with ice. This usually puts it level with the place my wort reaches in my brewpot.
I put my covered brew pot in the sink and sprinkle rock salt on the ice. The salt reacts with the ice and cools more quickly than with plain ice or cold water. I find I can get an extract boil (about 2-3 gallons) cooled down very quickly (about 15-25 minutes).
You just have to be careful to keep an eye on the temp of the wort... you don't want it freezing and killing your yeast. I know that sounds insane at first, but if you consider that ice and rock salt makes ice-cream then you'll understand. I rock the pot occasionally to mix the really cool edges with the hot center part and it works great...
If you sprinkle the rock salt around the edges and keep the pot covered, you dont have to worry about getting salt in your beer!
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