[quote=“lazy ant brewing”]–with the bottles being dunked briefly in PBW solution-- and stir gently.
[/quote]
I hope you mean StarSan. PBW is not a sanitizer, it’s a cleanser and needs to be rinsed quite thoroughly before it contacts your beer/wort.
[quote=“lazy ant brewing”]My water for chilling comes from a municipal water tower so its temperature varies with the seasons. I do about 6 gals of wort on my usual batch. I use a copper immersion chiller to get the temp down to about 85 F. Then I add sealed 16 oz bottles of frozen water from the freezer --with the bottles being dunked briefly in PBW solution-- and stir gently.
Since the melting water inside the bottles isn’t sanitary, I keep the bottles sealed and the contents don’t contact the wort.
So far it’s working, but I’m considering getting some sort of immersion pump so I could link it with an ice water and then run that through the immersion chiller.
Brew on![/quote]
I’ve looked at pumps as well. I just don’t like some of the price tags, especially when you can be pretty successful with gravity. If I ever start brewing more than 10 gallons at a time, then I’d probably get a pump. You could always build yourself another IC or CFC and use the current one as a pre-chiller!
How do you sanitize the CFC? Run star san through it or some other way. I was thinking of maybe making one this summer but have not thought of a decent way to sanitize it. My IC can just be put in for the whole boil of the beer. (Obviously, it gets cleaned prior to going in).
[quote=“lazy ant brewing”]My water for chilling comes from a municipal water tower so its temperature varies with the seasons. I do about 6 gals of wort on my usual batch. I use a copper immersion chiller to get the temp down to about 85 F. Then I add sealed 16 oz bottles of frozen water from the freezer --with the bottles being dunked briefly in PBW solution-- and stir gently.
Since the melting water inside the bottles isn’t sanitary, I keep the bottles sealed and the contents don’t contact the wort.
So far it’s working, but I’m considering getting some sort of immersion pump so I could link it with an ice water and then run that through the immersion chiller.
Brew on![/quote]
That is what I was originally thinking, using sealed containers of frozen water. Of course, you could boil or use distilled water to freeze in the containers and help protect against infecting if a seal breaks. All in all, it looks like there are several very creative ways to cool the wort. Lots of great ideas on this board, and really glad it is full of some fantastic individuals that are willing to share. If anyone is in NE Iowa, stop by for a brew. :cheers:
Like most things brew-related, there are many ways to do this and get good results. But prehaps more than most issues, the best method for chilling depends on your equipment and how you do everything else.
yes, great stuff! I was thinking about using a CFC AND put a second port into my BK. I could pump the wort through the CFC then into the second port and create a whirlpool until chilled then into fermenter…. Anyone have such a rabbit? :idea:
Yep, gravity feed a bucket of star-san through it, or if you have a pump you can pump boiling wort through it for the last 10 minutes of the boil. A bottling bucket with spigot is great for feeding star-san through a CFC, especially since you’ll need some for sanitizing your fermenter anyways.
I’ve heard of people doing that. It is suppose to be the fastest way to get the whole volume below 180, which is the lower limit of where significant bittering can occur. I haven’t tried it myself though, so don’t know if it really works.
I just boiled a gallon of water and filled five new (sanitized) zip-lock containers to freeze. I will be brewing this weekend. I’ll open the containers and put the ice right int the wort to cool it and top it off at the same time. We’ll see how it goes. I’ll time exactly how long it takes and post if anyone is interested.
