# Wort Chilling In Summer



## Phoney (7/11/11)

Now that the temperatures are finally heating up, the only downside I have about the warmer months of the year is that I can never seem to be able to get my wort cool enough for ideal pitching temperatures.

The last couple of batches I've done have only brought it down to 30C! I stick it into my fermentation freezer and it takes nearly 24 hours for it to drop down to 18C. I don't like pitching yeast into 30C wort, but I'm too paranoid about infections to leave the wort sitting there in the for 24 hours before I pitch the yeast.

I use a Mashmaster Chillout Mark 3 plate chiller and drain the urn using gravity - and have tried running the hose on full-blast but it doesnt seem to make a difference.  . Other than forking out $180 odd for a march pump and recirculating the wort back through the chiller for a second time which may knock off a few more degrees until it reaches the water temp, does anyone have any ideas on how to improve the efficiency of the chiller? Ice bucket perhaps?


Will the first 24 hours of being over temp put out off flavours? (I cant seem to tell)


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## Dave70 (7/11/11)

Mash a bunch of ice and water into a slurry in a big esky and shove the chiller into the middle. 
I'll bet that works a treat. Just have plenty of ice on standby.

Don't know about off flavors, but since I gone down the chilling path, those late hop additions just seem to shine through a lot more.


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## dent (7/11/11)

I used to go to some effort to get to pitching temperature quickly. My previous setup included two plate chillers, one with tap water, the other fed with 2 degree water from a sealed-up chest freezer. While that worked well enough, it was a bit of fuss and added waste water. Nowadays I forgo the other chiller and tap-chill only, then just refrigerate for as long as it takes - the last 50 litre batch took 36 hours as I had put it in the crappier fridge that evening. Another fridge I have set up with an internal fan will work much more quickly, I can expect 30 degrees down to 5 overnight. 

I'd find it preferable to wait that extra time to get the wort cold than pitch into warm wort - many undersirable yeast flavours are a result of the yeast growth phase which will be exacerbated if the wort is warm.

Really so long as your sanitation is as good as you think it is you shouldn't have any problems - plus it gives you the extra time for your yeast starter if you're not so organised to have it prepared days before.


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## mfeighan (7/11/11)

yeah i noticed last year perth's water got hotter and hotter in summer too, couldnt get below 30 and dont wanna wear out my fridge(s)
i was actually thinking of grabbing myself another plate chiller and putting it in series with my existing one and recirculating ice+ water in the second one so

Kettle 100c ->
Chiller 1 (tap water) -> ~30C
Chiller 2 2x bags of ice + a bit of water in the MT recirculating -> ~ 12C as i like my lagers 

its either that or getting a hopback


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## Thefatdoghead (7/11/11)

I just bought an emersion pump to run ice cold water through the same plate cooler. Pump was $30 from bunnings. So ill just have ice slurry in my esky and pump the first 10L away then recirc back to the esky.


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## argon (7/11/11)

I used my Mashmaster Chillout Mark 3 30 plate chiller for the first time on the weekend, wort via gravity and water under tap pressure, throttled by a ball valve.

I had about 2m of annealed copper spare that i put in my BigW pot with some ice blocks... i ended up getting the 43L into the fermentors at about 30C...but used a bitch load of water... way more than i'm comfortable using. I ended up putting both fermentors into my fridge which had been at -1C with a few 2L frozen bottles... about an hour later it was at 23.5C when i pitched the rehydrated yeast. While not ideal and a bit of a PITA it got to a reasonable temp. Next morning it was actually at 14C cause i left the frozens in there...oops, but was back up to 17.5C shortly after.

The whole time i was thinking how much easier No-Chill is.  

I have a cheap brown pump on the way via ebay that i'll be using to recirculate back into the kettle next time and also will be beefing up the pre-chiller with an ice slurry. Hopefully i'll be able to get the temp down to ideal that way.


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## Phoney (7/11/11)

Dave70 said:


> Mash a bunch of ice and water into a slurry in a big esky and shove the chiller into the middle.
> I'll bet that works a treat. Just have plenty of ice on standby.
> 
> Don't know about off flavors, but since I gone down the chilling path, those late hop additions just seem to shine through a lot more.



Good idea. I might freeze half a dozen take away containers full of water and tip the blocks of ice into a mop bucket and sit the chiller in that. Ill report back with results!



And ditto; Late hop additions is why I moved away from no chilling. I may as well stick with it and get it right.


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## komodo (7/11/11)

what about prechilling your cooling water using an immersion style chiller in a bucket of ice.


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## Maheel (7/11/11)

Gav80 said:


> I just bought an emersion pump to run ice cold water through the same plate cooler. Pump was $30 from bunnings. So ill just have ice slurry in my esky and pump the first 10L away then recirc back to the esky.



how do you reckon it would go using tap water 1st to drop the temps down to say 40' then the last bit chucking the pump into the esky water ?

eg 
pump in bucket and running garden hose into bucket to do 1st cool water just running to waste / garden / tank / pool etc
once dropped down pull pump out and chuck into esky and recirculate back into esky


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## stux (7/11/11)

There's a reason no-chill just makes a lot of sense in the australian context

http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...;showarticle=56

If its going to take 24 hrs to come down to pitch temperatures anyway, then you might as well just no-chill and save all the water and hassle


Batch I did last night... was 33C all day.. the cube was at ambient this morning... *when* I want to pitch it, I will put it into a ferm fridge at 2C below ferm temperature the day before I pitch... 

Now I'm going to spin up a starter with a Real Wort Starter


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## Phoney (7/11/11)

Komodo said:


> what about prechilling your cooling water using an immersion style chiller in a bucket of ice.



Well that would require the purchase of a 50L vessel, a pump and an immersion chiller. 

I'm hoping to do it on the cheap.  




Stux said:


> There's a reason no-chill just makes a lot of sense in the australian context
> 
> http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...;showarticle=56
> 
> If its going to take 24 hrs to come down to pitch temperatures anyway, then you might as well just no-chill and save all the water and hassle



Except in summer when the ambient temperature is 30C you still have to chill down your cube in the fermentation fridge by the same amount anyway.

Then by the time you fiddle around adjusting your recipe for late hop additions, doing your 5 min additions on the stovetop or whatever, it ends up being more of a hassle. (unless you don't care about flavour & aroma)

Good for wheat beer & stout. Not so good for IPA's, APA's etc in summer.

The only thing I cube is the hot water that comes out of the chiller. Perfect for cleaning the brewery and the rest goes on the garden.


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## donburke (7/11/11)

phoneyhuh said:


> Well that would require the purchase of a 50L vessel, a pump and an immersion chiller.
> 
> I'm hoping to do it on the cheap.



has anyone tried running the chilling water through a temprite then through the immersion/plate chiller ?


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## Thefatdoghead (7/11/11)

Maheel said:


> how do you reckon it would go using tap water 1st to drop the temps down to say 40' then the last bit chucking the pump into the esky water ?
> 
> eg
> pump in bucket and running garden hose into bucket to do 1st cool water just running to waste / garden / tank / pool etc
> once dropped down pull pump out and chuck into esky and recirculate back into esky


That would work if you were recircing back to kettle and got the temp down a little.


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## Maheel (7/11/11)

Gav80 said:


> That would work if you were recircing back to kettle and got the temp down a little.



ohh yeah good point forgot about that issue..... doh 

looking at chilling ideas myself


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## Parks (7/11/11)

Maheel said:


> how do you reckon it would go using tap water 1st to drop the temps down to say 40' then the last bit chucking the pump into the esky water ?
> 
> eg
> pump in bucket and running garden hose into bucket to do 1st cool water just running to waste / garden / tank / pool etc
> once dropped down pull pump out and chuck into esky and recirculate back into esky



Yeah, you definitely want you hottest water to hit your wort first for maximum heat transfer.


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## Phoney (8/11/11)

*Update*

Just finished my first CIAB (chill in a bucket).





The result: 22.5C

Better. Much better. That's actually the exact current ambient temperature right now, therefore I would be comfortable to pitch a starter into this wort and let the fridge do the rest. But as I am top cropping with another batch that's sitting pretty at 18C now, this guy will have to wait until the morning. 

It's an extra step, but it didn't add any additional time to the brew as I prepared the ice bucket while I was waiting for the last few mins of the boil. Afterwards, the remaining ice blocks & water went back into the takeaway tubs and stacked into the freezer for next time. Problem solved


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## MaltyHops (8/11/11)

Great idea,

You did have water in the bucket as well? It ought to work pretty
well if the ice and water slushie was prepped well before using it to
chill.

T.


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## Phoney (8/11/11)

Yep, started with just enough water to cover the chiller. By the time the kettle was empty the bucket was half full, or half empty, depending on your worldview.


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## pk.sax (8/11/11)

Good solution. I've seen a local brewer just dump a bag or two worth of ice in a pail on top of an immersion chiller and use that as a pre chiller for chilling his water going into the plate chiller. It worked. Got him to 18 on a hot cairns day. Your's seems fewer steps and less equipment though. I might coil up the couple of meters of my copper tube and use it in a Paul as a short pre-chiller and dump a plate chiller in the same pail.

That's if I can get around to giving up my cube


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## ekul (9/11/11)

What about pumping the cooling water through a small radiator then have a fan blowing on it? Maybe it would bring the water temp down a little bit.


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## pk.sax (9/11/11)

ekul said:


> What about pumping the cooling water through a small radiator then have a fan blowing on it? Maybe it would bring the water temp down a little bit.


air is a bad conductor of heat. Expecting the radiator to cool by circulating room temp air will do nothing. Need the heat loss of evaporation/melting to make it work.

If you had water flowing on to the radiator, that would help much better. In fact, cover the radiator with a wet towel and then have that evap and cool the radiator. Anyway you look at it, the temperature drop would be negated pretty quickly unless you can chill down a big heavy radiator with a lot of thermal mass that can absorb enough heat out of the chilling water. Which brings us back to - use an immersion chiller in an ice bucket.


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## popmedium (10/11/11)

I fill a couple of two litre coke bottle with water, freeze them, sterilise them and drop them in to the pot once cooling seems to slow down. So usually the first one goes in at 35C, then the next at about 27C. I haven't had any infections or anything yet and it gets me down to pitching temp...

joel


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## sim (10/11/11)

Prechill chill water in an old fermenter to what ever temp in the fermentation fridge the day before. Works for me.


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## Maheel (10/11/11)

sim said:


> Prechill chill water in an old fermenter to what ever temp in the fermentation fridge the day before. Works for me.



and run the cold water in the chill plate with a pump or ?


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## pk.sax (10/11/11)

he's talking kit brews..... I would assume.


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## sim (10/11/11)

practicalfool said:


> he's talking kit brews..... I would assume.



no, sorry, imersion pump $30 or what ever from bunnings ect through chiller (imersion in my case). I use air temp tap water to start with.


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## sim (10/11/11)

Maheel said:


> and run the cold water in the chill plate with a pump or ?



Yeah. You could gravity feed actually, but pumps are pretty inexpensive.


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## pk.sax (10/11/11)

do you run tap water through the chiller for the bulk of the initial chilling? I'd have thought just dumping a few blocks of ice in the water would do the trick.


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## sim (10/11/11)

for a 40 litre batch i use 90 litres air temp then 50 litres at 5 degrees. All is reclaimed and used again and again (mmm tasty) the firrst 60 litres super hot soaks the chiller coil at clean up.

takes about an hour to get down to 18 degrees. i think its 20 meters of 1/2in copper coil. Could be faster but i usuallyt need that whole hour to clean fermentors etc.

Obviously this works year round and gets a double use out of the fermentor fridge, booyah!


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## sim (10/11/11)

practicalfool said:


> I'd have thought just dumping a few blocks of ice in the water would do the trick.



ive plenty of fridges, but a bit light on with freezers.


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## reVoxAHB (10/11/11)

I use my dedicated herms vessel as a water pre-chiller. 






I drop the (herms vessel) hot water just after mash, and at end of boil fill it with a bag of ice and tap water. I use a pump for the wort so it's a matter of throttling wort or water flow but can always dial to ale pitching temp. It's been a while since I've dropped to lager. Got it pretty close from memory and let the ferm fridge sort out the last few C. 

My measured tap water temp is usually around 24-26C during summer months. I've got a lot of uninsulated external copper running to my brewing area where it sucks the heat in. 

Cheers


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## KillerRx4 (10/11/11)

Mikey said:


> yeah i noticed last year perth's water got hotter and hotter in summer too, couldnt get below 30 and dont wanna wear out my fridge(s)
> i was actually thinking of grabbing myself another plate chiller and putting it in series with my existing one and recirculating ice+ water in the second one so
> 
> Kettle 100c ->
> ...



This is what I do for lagers. 2 plate chillers. 
1st gets tap water, for bulk heat exchange. second gets water recirculated from mash tun with a few ice bricks from ice cream containers chucked in.

Ales, get down to tap water temp with the 2 chillers hooked up in series. 

Single pass at fairly high flow rate, something like 10l/min.

Note. this setup requires 2 pumps. & 2 plate chillers. probably not the most cost effective solution, but very easy & reliable.


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## Thefatdoghead (10/11/11)

My 30 plate plate chiller runs the wort out of the kettle and into the fermentor from 95deg to 25 deg with 24deg tap water. I reckon if I hook my $30 immersion pump up and run ice cold water through the cooler the wort would be 18deg or less going into the fermentor. I still have to try it but I reckon it's going work great for lagers as well. 50L eski full of ice and water should do the trick. I think a couple of bags of ice is $5 maybe?


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