Wort cooling

[Toad]

Is there any reason you can't put iced water ie. Water with ice in it, straight into the fv to reduce the temp of your wort for pitching?

Cheers.

 

[supertonio]

I can only assume it is difficult to prepare/procure ice which is sufficiently 'sanitary' to not infect your wort.

 

[supertonio]

Maybe should have read that properly....

Do you mean a bottle of water which has been frozen?

I may be having a brain fart and not getting what you mean....

 

[manticle]

Assuming you're talking about kit/extract top up water?

You can. You just need to make sure the water is clean and kept clean as freezing won't kill all micro-organisms. Best way to do it is to boil as much water as you can, place in a clean, sanitised covered suitable container and freeze. The impracticality of this on a large scale is the main drawback.

 

[Toad]

Thanks manticle that was the answer I was after. [emoji482]

 

[klangers]

Best way is to buy ice in the 5kg bags from your local servo or wherever. The ice is food grade and made from drinking water.

 

[Fents]

Best way is to buy ice in the 5kg bags from your local servo or wherever. The ice is food grade and made from drinking water.

I wouldnt be doing that. We lost 1000 litres of beer at Kooinda one day when we did this. It was Black Saturday with all the fires. The pool would only chill the beer to 40c because thats what the pool water was. So we headed to the servo and brought 20 or 30 bags of ice that was apparently drinking quality. 1000 litres of pale ale down the drain.

As manticle said if you boil your own water then freeze it in a clean and sanitised container you should be ok.

 

[supertonio]

Surely it also depends on the initial temp you are taking your wort down from.

If you scale it down for example and imagine that a litre of hot water is a 23 litre batch of beer and 1 small ice cube is the equivalent of say an block of ice made from a 2 litre ice cream tub. If you put the ice cube in the hot water it is going to melt very quickly and increase the volume of your hot water and is going to take lots of ice cubes to overcome the heat of your water.

Now if this was a batch of hot wort then this will only serve to dilute your wort and increase the volume. If you account for this in your recipe and then want to spend all the time and effort getting or making ice then use this method.

For me it seems an inefficient way of cooling wort. Whereas you could no chill or use some sort of ice bath to cool water going into a wort chiller of your choice. (I only advocate using a chiller because I live in Scotland and have the luxury).

 

[manticle]

Pretty sure it's a kit brew being discussed here supertonio.
Tin of hopped malt extract, couple of litres of hot/boiling water to dissolve, kilo of some type of sugar/malt extract, topped up to 20/23 L with water. Sometimes the temp is high for pitching (depending on water temp mostly) so using super cold water or adding ice to it helps get the the wort to a good temp.

 

[supertonio]

Yeah I've made a kit before.

 

[manticle]

Then surely the concept of adding ice to cool something from maybe 25 to 18 makes more sense than building a wort chiller for a kk brew?

 

[supertonio]

Use bottled water and keep a couple in the freezer to cool the water and not freeze it.

The concept of using actual ice (which is the initial question) especially for a kit seems unnecessary and not a problem I've encountered but again my location gives me benefits that the OP may not have.

As you can see from my reply I thought they were doing AG and therefore advised using a chiller for that, not a kit, which I agree would be nonsense.

Still think it would be to much of a risk and hassle whether it was AG or kit.

 

[klangers]

Use bottled water and keep a couple in the freezer to cool the water and not freeze it.

The concept of using actual ice (which is the initial question) especially for a kit seems unnecessary and not a problem I've encountered but again my location gives me benefits that the OP may not have.

As you can see from my reply I thought they were doing AG and therefore advised using a chiller for that, not a kit, which I agree would be nonsense.

Still think it would be to much of a risk and hassle whether it was AG or kit.

You see the issue with that is that you'll end up diluting it far more in order to cool it by the same amount.

The energy required to change the state of the water from solid to liquid (the latent heat) is an order of magnitude greater than energy required to warm the already liquid water (the specific heat).

 

[manticle]

Yeah I got you thought they were doing AG.
I only explained the kk because
A. Some brewers have only ever brewed AG
B. I don't know what kind of extract based kits are commonly used in Scotland.

Crossed wires and I agree there are easier ways.

 

[supertonio]

Yeah I got you thought they were doing AG.
I only explained the kk because
A. Some brewers have only ever brewed AG
B. I don't know what kind of extract based kits are commonly used in Scotland.

Crossed wires and I agree there are easier ways.

We have the same 'twangy' kits that you guys do.

Agree crossed wires.

 

[manticle]

Taut wires make a twanging sound when you pluck them.

 

[kevinj]

First line of any kit and kilo brew schedule should read
"Day before brewing pre-chill a keg of flitted water and freeze some bottles"
and then, fire up the fermentation fridge and STC (or lnkbird) if you got'em.

QUEENSLANDA!

 

[kevinj]

Which is the best way to cool wort with ice?
Prechill cooling water?
or
Post chill wort?

 

[AJS2154]

QUEENSLANDA!

shouldn't you change the spelling to QUEENZLANDA......cuzzie?? Try to be more culturally aware please kjg.

 

[kevinj]

I was thinking state of origin, no NZ(kiwi's) allowed.
Not the kiwi (QueeNZlander) invasion of Queensland