# Dumb cooling question



## Daisy317 (Feb 16, 2016)

I have never made beer or cider. I have been looking into it this week after a trip to my local homebrew shop. 

I have read lots of posts about what to do and then it gets contradicted in another post. I'm wondering how you cool the wort down after boiling (do I really need a bunch of extra equipment?) I have a dedicated fridge in the basement and one in the garage so I could "in theory" use one of them for cooling... But before I do that I wanted to see if there were other options.


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## salcoco (Feb 16, 2016)

it need to cool down very quickly to prevent bacterial contamination. temp must get to at least 80 deg. one way is to use a ice water bath in a large sink. place the pan with the wort in the ice bath and start stiring. the best is a copper coil immersed in wort with cold water runing through the coil. I believe there are pages on Google that show how to make one at home.


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## BernardSmith (Feb 16, 2016)

Beer involves boiling the wort - in part to kill all the lactic bacteria on the grain and in part to concentrate the liquid and so increase the sugar content.. but cider does not involve heat. You don't "brew" cider. That said, air is a poor method of cooling. That's why brewers use water to transfer the heat from the boiled wort through the use of an ice bath. Air is an inefficient conductor of heat compared to water , which is why simply placing a hot bucket in a fridge or a freezer can take hours to cool, but standing your kettle or bucket in an ice bath can take minutes (albeit long minutes ) to transfer the heat... Many brewers use copper coils to allow for cold water to flow through the wort transferring out the heat to increase the amount of water flowing by the wort and removing the heat.

Do you NEED a copper coil? I cannot say.I don't have one but I brew very small batches. I can say that brewers are near neurotic about the possibility of bacteria infecting the wort because souring and spoilage bacteria prefer those elevated temperatures.. so they will stand on their eyelashes to bring the temperature down from 212 F to about 70F STAT. But since wine making (and I include cider and mead making in that term) does not involve heat we are relatively speaking anxiety free about infections... we add K-meta (effectively , sulfur dioxide) to ensure that the yeast you pitch has no competition from bacteria or mold.


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## olusteebus (Feb 17, 2016)

What I do is probably way wrong but I read it somewhere. when making beer, I don't use enough water for 5 gallons. I can't remember if I made three or four gallons. To cool, I use ice in the actual wort. I think I used a 5 gallon bucket or maybe two. When melted it gave me 5 gallons of beer. Worked good as far as I know.

I am sorry I cannot remember exactly what I did. I see that 8.34 pounds of ice makes one gallon of water.


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## BernardSmith (Feb 19, 2016)

olusteebus said:


> What I do is probably way wrong but I read it somewhere. when making beer, I don't use enough water for 5 gallons. I can't remember if I made three or four gallons. To cool, I use ice in the actual wort. I think I used a 5 gallon bucket or maybe two. When melted it gave me 5 gallons of beer. Worked good as far as I know.
> 
> I am sorry I cannot remember exactly what I did. I see that 8.34 pounds of ice makes one gallon of water.



Not sure if that is good practice or not but brewers might argue that unless you have ensured that your water is bacteria free when you froze it, the ice could be a good way of inoculating your wort with all kinds of souring and spoilage bacteria that use the warm wort as a perfect invitation to squat, reproduce, and gorge. Me? I would want some empirical evidence that freezing water in a freezer causes any problem.. If it did then wouldn't commercially sold bags of ice be a noted source of illness.


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## barbiek (Feb 19, 2016)

You can put the pan of wort in a sink full of ice but only for small batches. You want the wort to cool to yeast pitching temp asap. I think it's 10-15 min not sure. You could boil some water on the side to sterilize it, have a sanatised lid on it and leave to cool. Don't add ice directly to wort! Your best bet would be to get a wort chiller, but if that's not possible the above is acceptable practice


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## Elmer (Feb 20, 2016)

I brew 5 gallon batches. I brew my wort in a 4 gallon pot. The wort tends to be 3 gallons. 
I used fill a big round tub with ice and put the kettle in. This took. 1/2 hour to 45 min to lower the temp from 220F to 80F, which is when I pitched my yeast. 
If you are going to use an ice bath you need to stir the wort to help cool it down
Since I use tap water to fill up to 5 gallon I would add cold water, which helps from going to 80 down to about 70.
Another method to aid the cool down is buy 2 or 3 gallon of bottled water. Put that in the fridge or freezer ad get super cold.
After the ice bath add those gallons to top up your wort to 5 gallon.
Assuming you do partial boil

Last summer I built and immersion chiller. LHBS and brew stores online sell them anywhere from $65 to $90.
You can make it for $30 or less.
This has become a valuable asset on brew day.
I drop my wort from 200F to 80f in 10 to 15 mins.
If you plan on brewin on a regular basis it is worth the cost and effort.
There are plenty of directions on line or I can walk you though the build.


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## BernardSmith (Feb 20, 2016)

Elmer, Have you measured the amount of water your coil uses in the 15 minutes? Do you collect that water or does it simply go down the drain? 
I love the idea of the coil but I am loath to waste water. I wish there was a simple way to circulate the water through some coolant and so the waste would be small.


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## Elmer (Feb 21, 2016)

BernardSmith said:


> Elmer, Have you measured the amount of water your coil uses in the 15 minutes? Do you collect that water or does it simply go down the drain?
> I love the idea of the coil but I am loath to waste water. I wish there was a simple way to circulate the water through some coolant and so the waste would be small.




Goes down the drain. Just as any ice from an ice bath 
However I use the water coming out of the hose to rinse off and clean my equipment.


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## NorCal (Feb 21, 2016)

I've only made one batch of beer. I put the pot in the pool and used my pump and ran my copper coil line from the swimming pool and then back into it. Worked good.


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## richmke (Feb 21, 2016)

BernardSmith said:


> I love the idea of the coil but I am loath to waste water.



Some would say that freezing ice is using energy that creates CO2 emissions, so is much worse. My guess is that 15 minutes of tap water is cheaper than the cost of freezing ice.

Where you live does make a difference. I live in the Midwest, and water is cheap and plentiful. If I lived in Los Angeles, where they are having a really bad drought, i would be more concerned about sending perfectly good water down the drain.


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## barbiek (Feb 21, 2016)

NorCal said:


> I've only made one batch of beer. I put the pot in the pool and used my pump and ran my copper coil line from the swimming pool and then back into it. Worked good.



Good way to take the chill out of the pool too! Rain barrel here.


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## Mismost (Feb 21, 2016)

Remember you said conflicting information? I don't chill at all. My kettle easily handles five gallons and has a tight fitting lid. I do my full boil, remove it from the heat, clamp the lid on with those big spring paper clips, and leave it alone. Normally brew Saturday afternoon and transfere to the primary after church on Sunday.....wort is at room temp. pitch yeast, seal the primary under airlock, and leave it alone for three weeks. You get beer.

I started this during our Texas drought and it has worked just fine, so I have continued with this process. At boil everything is sanitized, with the lid on, nothing gets in, and a lot of the kettle trub settles out. It has really simplified my brewing....no chill.

Something else you might try is freezing gallon jugs of water....then dunk them in sanitizer, and put them in your kettle. I used to use this method too....don't worry, even if there is a germ, the boiling hot wort will kill it!


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## olusteebus (Feb 22, 2016)

NorCal said:


> I've only made one batch of beer. I put the pot in the pool and used my pump and ran my copper coil line from the swimming pool and then back into it. Worked good.



Great idea. I don't have a pool but I live on lakes so in the winter I could use that.


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## BernardSmith (Feb 22, 2016)

richmke said:


> Some would say that freezing ice is using energy that creates CO2 emissions, so is much worse. My guess is that 15 minutes of tap water is cheaper than the cost of freezing ice.
> 
> Where you live does make a difference. I live in the Midwest, and water is cheap and plentiful. If I lived in Los Angeles, where they are having a really bad drought, i would be more concerned about sending perfectly good water down the drain.



It's not about the price of freezing water or about the use of energy to make a ice (my freezer works better if it is more full than empty whereas a fridge works better if it is less full ). It is about simply wasting a resource like water and for all intents and purposes turning on a faucet and letting the water gurgle down the drain.. That ain't really a sustainable approach in the 21st Century.
But I do like Mismost's no-chill method (I believe that that was started in Australia - because of the shortage of water and the fact that in the summer tap water is just too warm anyway).


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## sour_grapes (Feb 22, 2016)

BernardSmith said:


> It's not about the price of freezing water or about the use of energy to make a ice (my freezer works better if it is more full than empty whereas a fridge works better if it is less full ). It is about simply wasting a resource like water and for all intents and purposes turning on a faucet and letting the water gurgle down the drain.. That ain't really a sustainable approach in the 21st Century.
> But I do like Mismost's no-chill method (I believe that that was started in Australia - because of the shortage of water and the fact that in the summer tap water is just too warm anyway).



I am no fan of wastage, but I think it really IS different for Rich and me. I'd be interested to see what you think.

Rich and I live within walking distance of the 4th-largest body of fresh water (by volume) in the world. But that is not the point -- the point is that they take my drinking water out of that lake, spend some energy to clean it up, pump it to me, then take the stuff from my drain, spend some energy to clean it up again, and discharge back to the same lake. I think this usage does not really degrade the sustainability of our water resources, although there could be some factor I have not thought of. It is not clear to me that (in this instance) this is worse than making ice. (I have NOT done any energy calculations.)


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## richmke (Feb 22, 2016)

BernardSmith said:


> It is about simply wasting a resource like water and for all intents and purposes turning on a faucet and letting the water gurgle down the drain.



Choose your poison. You are either wasting energy to cool the ice to cool the wort, or you are using water to cool the wort.

Just because you can't see the coal/natural gas/uranium being used to create the energy to freeze the water, does not mean resources are not being consumed (wasted).

Depending upon your area, water down the drain may not be really wasted. If you live a rural area where you get your water from a well, and your drain goes to a septic system, then it is just part of the water cycle, and not really wasted.

In Los Angeles, water down the drain is wasted, so they have a different calculus.

In my area, I can make ice in the winter time for free. Just put some water outside. On really cold days, when it is 0 degrees outside, I can probably just put the kettle out there.

I thought about the no-chill method. There is a risk that as the wort cools, the air above it also cools. That sucks in air, and in theory could bring in undesirables.

How about making 3 gallons of wort, let it cool down for 15 minutes (high temp difference between wort an air), and pouring in 2 gallons of tap water. Tap water should be bacteria free.


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## ceeaton (Feb 25, 2016)

richmke said:


> Choose your poison.
> ...
> Tap water should be bacteria free.



Yikes. If you ever get a spoiled batch, that may be your problem. Even public (treated) or from a well, tap water is not free of bacteria that can spoil a batch of beer. Even if the source is clean the pipes over time build up a nice colony of all kinds of things. We have a cabin in the mountains that has no civilization uphill of us (we are at the bottom of a canyon), we draw our water from a deep well, and even though it is termed "pristine" (had it checked before fracking started in our area) it had bacteria in it.

Boil any and all water that comes in contact with your wort/beer _after_ the boil has ended. Before, no biggie, you are going to boil it anyway. Also, if they treat your water source, you want to boil away any chloride compounds that you can. Some can produce nasties in conjunction with different compounds in the hops.

FYI, I use an immersion chiller and put the waste water (after a few minutes) into the garden. I barely run water since it usually takes 20-25 minutes to go from 212*F to 70*F whether I turn up the pressure or trickle it.

Also, sitting it out, even in 0*F weather will take more hours than you think (I've tried it, took overnight and was still 85*F for a 5.25 gallon batch) unless you have a stiff wind blowing against your brewpot.


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## WI_Wino (Feb 26, 2016)

I brew a lot of beer in my garage. I have a garbage can full of water and use a submersible pump to feed my immersion chiller and have it empty into another garage can. In the dead of winter, the ambient temp is ~40F and 30 gallons of water easily chills my 6 gallons of wort to pitching temps. Some water is wasted via evaporation but that is negligible. In the summer when ambient temps are in the 80s I still pump from the garbage can to do the majority of my chilling. Then switch to well water or move the wort to a fridge to chill to pitching temps.


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