Using Ice To Chill Wort

[symphony1975]

hi there

i am doing full wort boils (extract) and use an immersion chiller and thought to help drop the temp can i drop some ice directly into the wort? if i ensure i am a couple of litres short when i finish the boil then add the ice. the water would be the same tap water i used to top up to get full volume in the fermenter.

or is there some scientific reason like the adding of frozen to hot can seperate the protein molecules and turn the beer to cider?!

 

[Banshee]

Make sure you boil the ice first to sterilize it.

 

[Goat]

Hey Symph75,

I know someone who used this several years ago with the desired effect - direct cooling.

You might would want to boil the water before you freeze it though - thawing unclean water in your post-boil wort could potentially result in infection.

 

[MHB]

No and as so often in brewing But
You want to think it through, unless the ice is sterile, at some point the wort is cool enough (i.e. under 70^oC) for you to introduce an infection.
That time between when the wort is infectable and the yeast hasn't taken a hold is really the danger zone.
I once heard brewing described as "Making the world's most infectable substance then trying to control what lives in it"

MHB

 

[symphony1975]

thanks for the replies, just wondering though......so what i do at the moment is that i have a small tank of water that i use to cycle through my immersion chiller and i get it down to 35-40 degrees before it doesnt drop much more as the chiller water warms. so my thinking is if i drop the ice in at knock off it will drop the wort temp a few degrees before i use the immersion chiller therefore i should get more temp drop from the chiller water before it warms too much. so i hoped the hot wort would kill any bactertia in the iced water....prior to this i was doing part boils and was using about 10 litres of tap water straight into the fermenter to top it up to the full volume. and from a bacteria point of view which is worse? or have i been doing it totally wrong? does everyone pre boil their top up water? thanks again for helping

 

[ekul]

What i used to do is boil up 15-17L of water the day before my brew and put it in a cube. When it was coldish i would chuck it in the fridge to bring it down to 4C or thereabouts for brewday. The next day i would make up the rest of my wort (5-8L depending on recipe). I would add the cold water from the cube to the fermenter then put in the boiling wort. This would bring me to pitch temp. When i was doing extracts i only did ales so it got me to around 18C, usually a little lower.

Alternatively you could make a prechiller and utilise the ice that way.

 

[Hatchy]

I did about 25 kit/extract batches & used tap water to top all of them up. Last summer I did some with some frozen take away containers. I had 1 infected batch due to a dirty tap (I think) but the rest were fine. I'm certainly not suggesting that this is best practice but it didn't cause me any problems.

 

[pcmfisher]

Why are you doing full boils with extract, rather than just a smaller boil and adding the rest of the extract later?

 

[mkstalen]

I see a few people saying you should boil the water before you freeze it, but I'm pretty sure most people who do K&K or full extract always top up with cold water straight from the tap.

I understand that there's a small possibility of infection from unboiled water, but seriously is it more likely to introduce an infection if it's frozen? Or are you suggesting us K&K/extract brewers should boil up 18L odd of water the day before we brew?

 

[Bribie G]

I have twice used a bag of 'pure drinking ice' from liquorland to chill wort in my kits n partials days and both times I had to chuck the brew. I've only ever had four infections and those were two of them. Also they were not only more expensive than a bag of ice from fred's fish guts and bait shop but also cost me an extra thirty dollars each as I chucked the fermenters - I have a zero tolerance no mercy policy with infections. Since going full-mash brewing and no chill for the last two years I am still using the good fermenters from that era, as well as my original cube who will be having its second birthday soon, and have not had an infection since.

Edit: no probs with tap water, I guess that the commercial ice works use RO water which is decholorinated, but possibly ambient bacteria get into it in the iceworks with workers sneezing on it who knows. I like the idea of the cube-o-cold water. Why not get yourself a fresh wort 15l kit and make that as a treat, and you'll have a 15l cube good for all sorts of uses. I still have mine from 2 years ago that has had serveral careers changes in the brewhouse and nowadays I use it (full) as a counterbalance on my brew rig to lower its centre of gravity

 

[argon]

thanks for the replies, just wondering though......so what i do at the moment is that i have a small tank of water that i use to cycle through my immersion chiller and i get it down to 35-40 degrees before it doesnt drop much more as the chiller water warms. so my thinking is if i drop the ice in at knock off it will drop the wort temp a few degrees before i use the immersion chiller therefore i should get more temp drop from the chiller water before it warms too much. so i hoped the hot wort would kill any bactertia in the iced water....prior to this i was doing part boils and was using about 10 litres of tap water straight into the fermenter to top it up to the full volume. and from a bacteria point of view which is worse? or have i been doing it totally wrong? does everyone pre boil their top up water? thanks again for helping

Option 1: As you're using an immersion chiller and and a recirc tank of water, i'd continue with that. When you get to the lowest you can (you say 35-40) add some ice to the tank. You're better off knocking out as much temp as possible with regular water before adding the ice. A couple of bags of ice will easily get it down to lager pitching temps no problems.

Option 2: Alternatively you can add pre-boiled ice to the batch to knock off the extra temp. Again just run your immersion chiller then add the pre-boiled block to the wort.

IMO go option 1, cause you can use any old ice from the servo or whatever as it never contacts your wort.

 

[Fents]

water from your tap frozen in sanitised containers = good

ready made ice brought from servo / milk bar = bad

massive amount of beer down the drain when they brewed on Black Saturday last year and did the service station ice.

 

[Bribie G]

Yeah so much for pure drinking quality ice, hey.

 

[alford_j]

I have an immersion chiller too and use tap water, a pump, and a big tub of iced water.

2 days before I brew, I make about 12KG of ice and chill a cube worth of water in my brewing fridge.

The chilled water makes a big difference, bigger than I thought it would.

I use tap water through the immersion chiller to chill the wort to about 35 where the rate of cooling drops off.

Then I swap to the ice and chilled water with the pump. This drops it the rest of the way quite quickly.

Does the job pretty well- last batch was a Kolsch and I chilled 30L to 16C for pitching in under 45min.

Alfie

 

[milestron]

my process is just if I plan to brew on a saturday I'll boil up maybe 5 litres of water and freeze it. Then on brewday after I've done the main boil say 15 litres depending on the recipe I'll chuck in the big iceblocks, wait for them to melt then top up the rest with boiled + cooled water. Still takes ages to get to ferment temp but I don't have any extra equipment for it (or a fridge that will fit the fermentor).

 

[Fents]

Yeah so much for pure drinking quality ice, hey.

i'd be more concernd if it was labelled pure brewing quality ice....malayasian ice now theres another story, you cant even drink/eat that stuff!