# Crash Cooling Wort Using Dry Ice (frozen C02)



## pokolbinguy (24/2/09)

G'day guys,

just wondering if there are any issues with crash cooling a freshy boiled batch of wort using dry ice basically by just chucking it in.

I have access to dry ice at work and thought this might be a great quick and oxygen free way of dropping the wort to pitching temp super quick. Would reduce the need for a chiller and the time taken to cool via no-chill.

Anyway any feedback would be great and if this has been discussed before a point in the right direction would be just as helpful.

Thanks a bundle.

Now time for bed....damn vintage hours....its killing me and my chances of finally doing that 1st Ag..bloody 70-80hr weeks.

Cheers, Pok


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## Ross (24/2/09)

how well does dry ice cool a liquid? my memories of using it as a kid, is it just bubbled about on the surface & not cooling very efficiently - there again wasn't looking to cool with it, so could be totally wrong.

cheers Ross


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## FarsideOfCrazy (24/2/09)

One problem I can see is what would that Co2 do to the oxygen levels in the wort for the yeast? But if you give it a good splash into the fermenter or re-oxygenate It should be fine.

But I'm sure that if there is something else that might go wrong it will be said here.

farside.


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## raven19 (24/2/09)

There is only one way to find out! Give it a whirl and let us know how it went.

My experience of using it is for producing smoke in smoke machines at wedding receptions, etc. Cant comment on cooling ability though, it should cool to some degree though. use in a well ventilated area, you dont want to breathe in all CO2...


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## Zwickel (24/2/09)

forget about dry ice.
Its very dangerous to put dry ice into hot liquid, the CO2 will expand like an explosion. Can you imagine what exploding hot wort can do?

Anyway, the specific heat capacity of dry ice is not very high, that means the cooling effect is not as much as youre expecting.

Cheers :icon_cheers:


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## brewerben (24/2/09)

raven19 said:


> There is only one way to find out! Give it a whirl and let us know how it went.
> 
> My experience of using it is for producing smoke in smoke machines at wedding receptions, etc. Cant comment on cooling ability though, it should cool to some degree though. use in a well ventilated area, you dont want to breathe in all CO2...



Just be careful with your fermenter (or whatever you plan to hold the wort in during cooling) though dry ice has a habit of making plastic rather brittle.

The solubility of a gas is proportional to it's partial pressure and this does not change in a mixture of gases, so the presence of CO2 should not remove O2 from your wort. 

However in the wine industry they do sparge wines with N2 to remove CO2 before bottling (amongst other things) so if your dry ice is below the surface and forcing CO2 through your wort as it sublimates then this _may_ remove O2 by a similar mechanism... but I don't know for sure... I reckon if it's on the surface you wouldn't find much different, I'd be interested to hear your results as I too have access to dry ice


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## Offline (24/2/09)

Id have to agree with Zwickel.

What I have noticed however when adding dry ice to a beverage, like whisky, is that it forms a frozen shell around itself that cracks when the gas pressure builds up a little in side it. 

Im sure there is some way of using it for rapid cooling but I wouldnt go chucking it in the wort.


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## hoppinmad (24/2/09)

Just to add my bit....

I work at a small winery on the Bellarine Peninsula and when our red ferments start to get a little hot (say above 32c) we whack in a couple of kilos of dry ice and plunge. In a 1 tonne vat the temperature goes down by up to 3 to 4 degrees celcius. 

Now given that dry ice has a temperature of about -80c... a big handful in your boiler will chill it down fast!... when i say handful i don't mean literally measure it out with your hands of course. A coffee mug or something would be fine.

You may want to add it bit by bit at the beginning to bring the temperature down a bit slower and avoid huge clouds of CO2 being released in your face... and best done outside for that reason too. 

IMO it will work well.


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## clean brewer (24/2/09)

> time taken to cool via no-chill.



Pok, its only going to be 48hr min. to wait for no chill.. Worth it..



> its killing me and my chances of finally doing that 1st Ag



You still havnt got there yet hey Pok? No wonder its killing you..


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## dr K (24/2/09)

Sorry...it fits well in the "Eureka" basket (its a bottomless basket BTW).
It just ain' going to work, and when you consider that some of the major producers of straight CO2 are the major breweries who recycle this very CO2 to carbonate their beers, well I will let someone else do the math.
You could use your "liberated" dry ice to pre-chill water going into an immersion chiller.

K


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## Adamt (25/2/09)

This came up a week ago in a thread somewhere and I came to the same conclusion as Zwickel... plain stupid!

Whatever you do, don't "give it a whirl and see what happens". We're talking boiling hot liquid here. Have you seen what happens when you put a frozen turkey in a pot full of hot oil? Though different, the result may likely be the same, boiling hot liquid going everywhere. The best result is you may just lose some wort. 

It's not often someone thinks of an idea that is completely new to the brewing community. It's most likely the idea has been thought of before and dismissed as unviable, unsafe, or just too expensive.


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## himzol (25/2/09)

dr K said:


> You could use your "liberated" dry ice to pre-chill water going into an immersion chiller.
> 
> K



On long fishing trips it was always good to have a brick of dry ice at the bottom of an asky with water ice on top. This slowed the melting of the water ice. Perhaps you could use this trick to do the above, i.e. pre chill your cooling water.

As for putting dry ice into very hot liquid... bad, very bad...

If you try it can you video it for us please,  

Himzo.


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## seravitae (25/2/09)

dry ice is probably not a good idea due to the fact that dry ice sublimes, such that upon heating it creates a protective insulative layer of carbon dioxide gas, meaning that the thermal conductivity is greatly reduced. using cryogens like liquid nitrogen and dry ice are usually not very useful for this reason. 

if you need to do an extremely quick cooldown, may i suggest you make friends with a refrigeration mechanic, find or buy an old fridge/freezer, ask him to ungas it, remove the fridge bits, then reassemble the unit with a copper jacketed evaporator/condensor and lock the thermostat on full duty. essentially chill your wort cooling coil with a heat pump rather than with just tap water. Most fridge pumps in this design will easily cool a tube quickly down to -15C, they will remove heat very effectively and power efficiently.


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## t_c (25/2/09)

Sounds like an awsome idea. And its on u-tube.





looks pretty safe.


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## bconnery (25/2/09)

The best thing to do with dry ice is put some in a 2L coke bottle with a small amount of water, seal, place in an outdoor area and stand well away...

Admittedly it won't cool your wort this way though...


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## Yorg (25/2/09)

sera said:


> dry ice is probably not a good idea due to the fact that dry ice sublimes, such that upon heating it creates a protective insulative layer of carbon dioxide gas, meaning that the thermal conductivity is greatly reduced. using cryogens like liquid nitrogen and dry ice are usually not very useful for this reason.
> 
> if you need to do an extremely quick cooldown, may i suggest you make friends with a refrigeration mechanic, find or buy an old fridge/freezer, ask him to ungas it, remove the fridge bits, then reassemble the unit with a copper jacketed evaporator/condensor and lock the thermostat on full duty. essentially chill your wort cooling coil with a heat pump rather than with just tap water. Most fridge pumps in this design will easily cool a tube quickly down to -15C, they will remove heat very effectively and power efficiently.



Not being overly knowledgable about this, this sounds very interesting. But what are you saying exactly - ungass it? How will it then cool? What would the "copper jacketed evaporator / condensor" look like. Can you draw a pic / sketch, including the fridge and how this would all relate / connect?
This would possibly be a one pass cooler, with the wort pump speed dictating the output temp of the wort - just dial in lager or ale temps, yes?
Do please elaborate, because what I am contemplating right now is a cooling approach, and I might just have a crack at your suggestion instead.
Cheers.


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## hoppinmad (25/2/09)

t_c said:


> Sounds like an awsome idea. And its on u-tube.
> 
> 
> 
> ...





How cool does the second video look! wish my dad had let me do stuff like that when i was a kid!

Does actually make you realise how dangerous it could be though


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## pokolbinguy (25/2/09)

Rightio so not such a good idea. But one must ask these questions before doing something stupid. So no need to flame me.

Anyway thanks for the feedback.

Cheers, Pok


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## seravitae (25/2/09)

Yorg said:


> Not being overly knowledgable about this, this sounds very interesting. But what are you saying exactly - ungass it? How will it then cool? What would the "copper jacketed evaporator / condensor" look like. Can you draw a pic / sketch, including the fridge and how this would all relate / connect?
> This would possibly be a one pass cooler, with the wort pump speed dictating the output temp of the wort - just dial in lager or ale temps, yes?
> Do please elaborate, because what I am contemplating right now is a cooling approach, and I might just have a crack at your suggestion instead.
> Cheers.



Yorg, i can't draw a pic at the moment, but basically, if you consider an entire refrigeration loop in a standard fridge - when you remove the cabinet, you're left with a standard heat pump cycle. instead of cooling the huge volume of a fridge, you can just omit the cabinet and choose to cool a much smaller container - either an immersion chiller, or run the refrigerant through a tube-in-shell style condensor.



note it is illegal to vent gas and/or work on fridges without a license, so you should find a fridge mechanic friend willing to ungas, strip a fridge, solder it back together and regas for you.

Basically you'd be making one of those refrigerated water coolers.


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## hoppinmad (25/2/09)

pokolbinguy said:


> Rightio so not such a good idea. But one must ask these questions before doing something stupid. So no need to flame me.
> 
> Anyway thanks for the feedback.
> 
> Cheers, Pok




Check this link Pok:




Something for you to teach the cellar hands when the boss is away :lol:


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## jayse (25/2/09)

dry ice works well for songs like 'hallowed be thy name' and 'rime of the ancient mariner'


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## bill_gill85 (26/2/09)

A chemistry experiment I remember from my school days, bubble CO2 through water & you end up with carbonic acid, ok when carbonating beer, but not sure what it would do to the ph of the wort, could end up too acidic. Maybe two coils used as a heat exchanger with a small inline pump with one coil in either an ice/water bath?


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## FarsideOfCrazy (26/2/09)

What if you put the dry ice in a metal pot and sterilised the outside and let that hang in the top of the kettle? The ice will chill the pot which the heat from the wort will then transfer into the metal pot.


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## Tim (25/3/09)

You can use a small copper tube as an extreme heat exchanger if you place it in a dry ice/methylated spirits slurry. You would have to use glycol as the coolant, but it would be an excellent way to make a recycling cooler or prechiller


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