Beer Forum

if i make a partial wort, of 2 gallons, not chilled, and pour 3 gallons of refrigerated water right on top of it, is this ok? do i need to chill the wort to get the hot break out, or would it appear later, even if i strained it while pouring it into the fermenter? any help, ideas would be awesome.

Probably not the best idea, as the water you are adding could be contaminated. If you already boiled the add in water and then covered and cooled it, you would be a lot better off. You might want to check out a really good site called "How To Brew", www.howtobrew.com, it is a wealth of information.

hylowa wrote:if i make a partial wort, of 2 gallons, not chilled, and pour 3 gallons of refrigerated water right on top of it, is this ok? do i need to chill the wort to get the hot break out, or would it appear later, even if i strained it while pouring it into the fermenter? any help, ideas would be awesome.

I'm assuming that you are brewing extract, in that case it's fine.
I would recomend using gal. jugs of spring water, usually only bout $.65 each.

You do risk contamination, but this method is common practice for extract brewers w/o the means to chill.
The yeast that you pitch should be able to overcome anything in the water.

Good luck,
Prost

I will share a nasty secret with you. Before I went to a full wort boil, I would pour my 2 gallon wort over 20lbs of ice and a quart of water. I never had a contamination issue doing it that way. Since moving to full wort boil and using an counter flow chiller, about half of my last ten batches have turned out bad.

When I got my results back from the Alamo City Cerveza Fest, I expected a $50 bill and a note begging me to quit brewing. I might have taken them up on it.

I do an extract with some steeping. finish with about 3 gallons of wort. Chill it to about 90 degrees with homemade wort chiller (or ice bath) and pour onto faucet filtered refrigerated 2.5 gallons of water. have never had a problem with contamination.

hylowa wrote:if i make a partial wort, of 2 gallons, not chilled, and pour 3 gallons of refrigerated water right on top of it, is this ok?

That won't get you down to pitching temps. You'll want to do cold water baths for a time to get it down to maybe 100 (there's got to be a calculator somewhere to tell you exactly what temp you need), or maybe a bit warmer. Keep in mind this doesn't take all that long, as the rate of temperature change is proportional to the difference in temperatures, so the hardest part of chilling wort is always the last few degrees.

Also, as noted above, boil your topoff water before you stick it in the fridge.

I've never had any trouble doing this. I mash 6 lbs of grain in a 3 gallon cooler, and boil 3 to 3 1/2 gallons. I cool somewhat in an ice-bath in the sink. I also drop in a few 2 liter coke bottles that have been filled with water and frozen, then dipped in StarSan. After that, I pour into bottling bucket, and add 2 or more gallons of water that has been refrigerated. Finally, I whirlpool and siphon to primary. I know this is not ideal, but it works for me.

I'm not doing full boils yet either. I try to boil at least 2.5 to 3 gal, cool it to below 80 in an ice bath. dump into primary, add refrigerated spring water to 5 gal and pull a sample to check gravity. then I pitch and pray.