Cooling Wort

[Elderfi]

Hi Guys,

I intend to put a brew down tonight. I have a 15ltr pot that I do my boil (only using kits and bits still) Im going to do 30 min boil for a DSGA tweek. I was intending to cool back to pitching temp in the sink with some ice water, just curious is there an infection risk here (via air borne wild yeast?) and if so how to minimise it?

thanks!

 

[Black n Tan]

Do you have a lid? If so just put that on after the boil.

 

[Not For Horses]

Yes, there is a risk.
How great is that risk? Depends what nasties (not just yeasts) you have floating around your kitchen. Probably fairly low risk. I cool my wort in the sink all the time and have never had an infection in the primary. This in no way means it is not possible however.
How to minimise it? Make sure that lid is sanitised. You wouldn't want condensation dripping back in off a dirty lid.

 

[Elderfi]

Yeah i have a lid so Ill definetely use that! I also have a dog :unsure: I think things will be fine. Im well past the everything i do will give me an infection stage in my brewing career. Just though id check

 

[Adr_0]

it works reasonably well, and you typically have some steam coming off into the lid so the main thing is that it's clean. Try and let off steam frequently while it's coming off.

The main issue with cooling in the sink or a bath is depth of water/ice vs level of liquid in the pot, which can be a major problem if you don't have a lot of room to move and jiggle the water and pot. If you don't have enough movement or your levels are too far off, you will get stratification and a layer of hot wort sitting on top of the cold stuff that has been in contact with the water/ice. There isn't any mixing over these two layers unless you jiggle everything around, or have your cooling bath/sink big enough.

Not the worst thing that can happen, but basically just adds heaps of time and probably isn't that good for protein dropout and DMS buildup.

 

[damoninja]

The main issue with cooling in the sink or a bath is depth of water/ice vs level of liquid in the pot

I stick mine in the laundry trough. I save up ice in the freezer in a plastic bag for a week or two between brews so that I've got a good amount of ice without having to buy it.

Another thing you can do is boil some water to sterilise it, let it cool and put it into some 2L PET bottles (sterilise the inside first of course) and stick a few of these in the freezer.

If/when you need to add water to your wort and cool it down, sterilise the outside of the bottles and a knife and cut the bottom off of one and slip the ice block into the wort. Keep stirring constantly until it's fully melted.

 

[bmarshall]

Cooling in a sink couldnt be any worse than shoving a coil of copper pipe in the wort!

 

[boybrewer]

Yeah but the coil of copper pipe has been sitting in boiling wort for the last ten to fifteen minutes being sanitised . :blink:

 

[Rodolphe01]

Lay out a tea towel on your kitchen bench, once you have cooled the wort put the pot on it and wipe the sides of the pot down (obviously stay away from the top edge of the pot). Drips of disgusting sink water from the outside of your pot might run into your fermenter when you transfer.

 

[manticle]

Cooling in a sink couldnt be any worse than shoving a coil of copper pipe in the wort!

Really?

 

[Elderfi]

I just had in the sink full of napisan water. let it cool and the threw it the fermenter. think it was ok... guess i wont know till tommorrow or so if things go sour at least ill have a cool contribution to the infection thread!

 

[manticle]

Once it's not super boiling, you can throw a layer of glad over which will seal and protect. Too hot and the gases will pop a hole in the glad but just cooler than boiling should be OK.