Cooling Wort with Ice

[Dirk McLargeHuge]

I would also be wary of pouring your hot boiled wort into a bucket which can lead to splashing and our course oxidation in the final product. Besides cooling the beer below 80F for yeast pitching purposes it is also to reduce chances of splashing your hot wort which some say may lead to oxidation. Just a thought....

I used to use ice to cool my wort as I poured it into a bucket. He's talking two gallons or so of hot wort and 2 gallons of ice. The wort cools pretty quick, so HSA isn't a concern. I don't worry about HSA. I worry more about sanitation.

[Fugglupagus]

. . . . . 2.5 gallons will cool down pretty quick in an ice bath, you could use an ice bath to knock most of hte heat off and add to chilled water (not frozen) to drop you the rest of the way.

This works for me. 20lb bag of ice ($3 from my beer store) in which to bathe 3.2/3.4 gal wort for 20-25 minutes + refrigerated bottled water gets me down to about 70F. Extending the ice bath to 30-35 minutes and moving one of the gallons of water from the fridge to the freezer for the length of my brew session gets me 63ish. YMMV, but it can be a pretty predictable method if you keep track from brew to brew.

[spiderwrangler]

Yup. That being said, if you are brewing a lot and shelling out $3 each batch for ice, after 25 batches or so you could have bought a wort chiller...

[BrewerAdam]

I would also be wary of pouring your hot boiled wort into a bucket which can lead to splashing and our course oxidation in the final product. Besides cooling the beer below 80F for yeast pitching purposes it is also to reduce chances of splashing your hot wort which some say may lead to oxidation. Just a thought....

Oxidation before fermentation is not an issue. Most people oxygenate their wort because it is good for yeast health. Oxidation post fermentation is a bad thing.

[spiderwrangler]

What b-hard is referring to is "hot side aeration', a bit of a controversial topic, but premise is that aeration while hot will result in oxygen binding to molecules which will eventually cause staling flavors to crop up in the beer. The general consensus as I understand it is "It probably happens in significant levels, but HSA isn't the main thing you need to be concerned about."

[BrewerAdam]

Gotcha. I was thinking oxidation instead of hot side aeration (which I understand are pretty much the same thing).

I've always thought of Hot Side Aeration as being more of a factor during the mash, but I dont know much about it. I've got more things to get under control in my brewing process than to worry with hot side aeration.

[spiderwrangler]

I was thinking oxidation instead of hot side aeration (which I understand are pretty much the same thing).

Kinda... HSA is a specific type of oxidation.

[Fugglupagus]

Yup. That being said, if you are brewing a lot and shelling out $3 each batch for ice, after 25 batches or so you could have bought a wort chiller...

Excellent point. Long term the chiller is a better investment.

FWIW I like my process ATM. To me it’s worth an extra $3 for consistency and predictability. For now . . . . . . Plus I’m a member of a semi-bureaucratic institution called marriage, which in my case is not always fiscally logical. $3 comes out of petty cash. A $75 expenditure has to be pre-approved by the “appropriations committee”, sometimes with strings attached. Since the committee recently approved the request titled “kegerator”, all other spending relative to homebrewing infrastructure has been temporarily frozen.