Cooling....

Zambi

Zambi

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I managed to get a small amount of ingredients to make summer blonde ale.
It's all grain and biab and just a 7 liter batch.
I got some other materials on order but I don't have them yet (inclusive of wort chiller)
I do have my one fridge set to 21 oC (70 F) and it stays nicely between 20 and 22 oC (68-72 F), which I think is good enough as there will be a delay in the fermenter reacting to the outside temperatures (instructions say 18-24 oC (64-75 F))

But now to get my wort to cool down quickly to about 23 oC (73 F) (as stated in the instructions)? My daytime temperatures are around 35-38 oC (95-100 F) , my cold water temperature are around 25 oC (77 F).
Do I:
- put the brew kettle in an ice bath (as per instruction)? But the ice will melt in no time
- put it into a a big tub (on a trivet) and keep running cold water through it, making sure that the lid is above water level? (I got no lack of water)
- use less water for boiling and add ice to the wort?
- put the whole thing in the 4 oC (39 F) fridge?
- pour the hot wort into shallow oven trays to cool down (more surface area)?

I am tempted to use the second method till it gets to 40 oC or thereabouts (105-110 F), then pour into fermenter, put into the cold fridge and remove when it's to the required temp and then add the yeast.

I cannot do the no-chill method as I don't have a fermenter that closes perfectly and is food-safe and can handle boiling temperatures

Any advice/insights?
 
I'd cool first by dunking kettle in a tub full of your tap temp water whilst agitating the whole works back and forth and once water heats up repeat process a time or two untill you can easily place your back of your hand against kettle without having to remove it from burning then drop it into your ice bath. This should help to take initial heat off kettle before ice bath. It's easy to get it down to around 40c but the next 20c is a lot harder. Also I'm happy with 26c in summer here just pop.it in your fridge to drop the rest if the way.

Lastly I'd set ferm temp lower than 21c personally for ale mid 18c to first few days then raise up to 21c to finnish it'll help keep fermentation clean.​
 
^What he said.

I used to use a few plastic 1.25 litre bottles of frozen water instead of an ice bath. Slow but they didn't melt quickly. Just needed to change the water every 10-15 minutes.

And the tap water here was 26 C for the wife's brew session yesterday. Makes things interesting.
 
That's the nice thing about an international forum. Plenty people with similar situations and luckily happy to share their knowledge!

I got a number of those blue ice-packs. I'll make sure they are frozen. They should help esp after the initial cooling.
So, get it as cool as possible with water/ice and the final cooling part in the fridge. Then when it is at the right temperature, move to fermenter and add yeast, correct?

I'll put the fermentation fridge down to about 19 degree (meaning it will hover between 18 and 20 oC) for what? About 3 days?
Then up to about 21 oC?
 
Once you finish cooling with water and ice, I'd transfer to the fermenter. A bit more sanitary than keeping it in the kettle. I doubt you'll have any problem chilling 7 liters quickly.
 
I just chill as much as my 50 gallon drum of water can chill in the garage and then set the beer in carboys outside right now, it's been -25 most of February so they chill pretty easily.
 
Thanks all, going to try brewing this week, if work and weather allows.
 
I did make my first beer yesterday. It was an all grain pack (from S-Africa) for 7 liters of beer (BIAB)
Most went fine, although I lost quite a bit of volume while cooking or when removing the grains, but that's a whole other story.

Point is: Cooling went fine. I used a big coolbox with a rack inside. Placed the pot in it and filled with cold (coolish) water. When the water got hot, I drained and refilled. I did this 4 times. The 4rd time the water didn't really heat up much and I drained and put ice blocks in water for the last stage.
It brought the temperature down to 26.7 oC and I poured it into the fermenter. That's when I found out I didn't have 7 liter and I added (drinking) ice to the fermenter)
So, it does work :)

Thanks All!
 
Hopefully one of Many brews you do mate congratulations on your first batch of beer. Now to planing your next drop while that one ferments and conditions:).
 
Thanks :cool:
A bit less than 2 weeks before bottling (according to my description).
I have no hydrometer (yet) so I will just have to go by that time frame. Maybe a couple days longer.
I have a salinometer, but whenever I use it and use a conversion table, it comes up with an SG of 0.999 to 1.000, so either the table is wrong, or you can't use it at all, or I am doing something wrong.
Anyway,I'll bottle in 500 ml pet bottles. At least they can withstand quite a bit of pressure.

The fermentation temperature is about 19 oC. Should I up it in a couple of days?
 
Let it go a couple of days at your set ferment temp of 19c then let free rise 1c per day till you hit 21c leave it there to Finnish. Then once your confident it's done time to cool it back down to freezing to quickly settle out heavy particles for a few days then bottle it up.
 
If I cool it down that far (close to freezing, so about 2 oC or so), isn't there a chance that air wants to come in via the waterlock?
I recall reading something like that somewhere (a litle knowledge is a dangerous thing).
My waterlock is filled with vodka, by the way
 
Yep, when I use the cold crashing approach Ben mentions I loosen the bung off a bit to stop it sucking the airlock liquid into the fermenter (when i remember, so I only put in the minimum needed for when I forget).
 
Bloody good ideah Mark. I use airlock Senior not the s bend one. When I cold crash I still see plenty of liquid still in air lock so it doesn't suck it all in it seems then again I've even froze the air lock and caused the lid to suck right in too lol. I use them "IMake" I think 30lt bucket fermentors with that bendy lid. This helps when filling bucket with cleaner you can just bend lid and immerse the whole thing in cleaner.
https://goo.gl/images/Vmhpgc

And then @Zambezi Special there is the balloon type thingy you put over inflate with c02 or capture some towards end of fermentation by putting balloon over air lock outlet I'd imagine ( havnt done this my self). Then when cold crash it sucks in co2 instead of airlock liquid and O2...

Beer for thought:confused:...
 
I get you on the CO2 story, but unfortunately, my fermenter doesn't bubble very well. Think it got a leak somewhere. It's one of those bucket thingies.
I hope my brew is fermenting. I saw some foam on the top after a day, but I don't want to check to often.

Is i necessary to cold crash?
It doesn't mention anything like it in the instructions that came with the kit.
I did pour the wort through a (sanitised) sieve when filling the fermenter. Do you think there would still be a lot of debris/particels left?
 
Zambezi Special said:
I get you on the CO2 story, but unfortunately, my fermenter doesn't bubble very well. Think it got a leak somewhere. It's one of those bucket thingies.
I hope my brew is fermenting. I saw some foam on the top after a day, but I don't want to check to often.

Is i necessary to cold crash?
It doesn't mention anything like it in the instructions that came with the kit.
I did pour the wort through a (sanitised) sieve when filling the fermenter. Do you think there would still be a lot of debris/particels left?
Click to expand...
No need to cold crash time and gravity will do the same thing I believe a cold crash just help speed up the process so it's in my belly quicker:).

And dont worry too much about an apparent hole in lid and no airlock bubbling. Be patient enjoy the process leave it be plan forward and I'm sure you'll have success.
 
Trialben said:
No need to cold crash time and gravity will do the same thing I believe a cold crash just help speed up the process so it's in my belly quicker:).

And dont worry too much about an apparent hole in lid and no airlock bubbling. Be patient enjoy the process leave it be plan forward and I'm sure you'll have success.
Click to expand...
Cold storage (lagering) is good if you're having problems with chill haze. The yeast will settle out on its own, given time. Oh, if you keep it cold, it will dissolve more CO2.
 
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