Cooling Wort With Ice?

[des]

I was just wondering, has anyone tried this, any ideas why it would not be advisable?

Say for example; I brew a wort with the ingredients for a brew length of say 40 liters and actually brew 30 liters at the end of the boil, then top up with 10 liters of ice cubes (pre-boiled then frozen).

If I were aiming for OG 1.045 and the wort was 1.060 at end of boil then this dilution would bring the OG to where I want it and cool it down in the boiler at the same time.

Any thoughts...?

[Barley Water]

I have a better idea for you to consider but it requires a couple extra pieces of equipment. First of all, as you have already figured out, the faster you can get your beer down to pitching temperature, the better. In some cases, depending on the style of beer we are talking about, it will adversely affect the taste if it takes too long.

I suggest you make yourself a counter flow wort chiller. It involves buying a garden hose (relatively cheap) and running a copper tube into it (relatively expensive due to the high cost of copper right now). They sell the required fittings to do this at homebrew stores (at least they do in this country). You can use this nifty little device with only gravity but it's even better if you have a pump (also somewhat expensive).

In Texas, it getts hotter than hell in the summer and the ground water approches 80F, worthless as tits on a boar hog for cooling wort for a lager. To get around this problem, we use a fountain pump (relatively cheap) and pump ice cold water through the above mentioned chiller. Since my mash tun is one of those big water coolers, I fill it up with ice and use it as a big resevour for the ice water, it works out real well.

[bandit]

Stick with your CFC Des

[des]

I do use a CFC

the only point of the post really was because I was thinking about brewing a larger quantity of beer than will safely fit in my boiler. All the ice was about was topping up after the boil, and I thought ...if I am topping up why not use ice and assist cooling a little at the same time.

I know its ok to top up the boiler if level gets lower than desired, just wasn't sure if its ok to top up after the boil, whether it be with water or ice....

[Whorst]

You can also use two immersion wort chillers. Have one in a bucket loaded with ice. This will really chill down your water before it hits the main chiller. Very simple and effective.

[mattmacleod]

I read a similar thread on a US board. Someone had calculated how much ice you would need to cool the wort down to pitching temperatures and it came out at about a 1:1 ratio. ie: to get 20 litres of wort you'd need 10 litres of hot wort and 10 litres of ice.

That'd play all sorts of havoc with your hop utilisation I would imagine, but if you were making (pre-hopped) extract kits I can see this being a nice way to do things if you don't have a chiller. And do have lots of freezer space, of course!

[clogwog]

I wouldn't be in a hurry to actually add ice to my wort. Even though you propose to boil it before chilling, the reality is your fridge/freezer is a good source of bugs and potential infection.

I prefer to cool my wort as far as I can with an immersion chiller. I then route my immersion water first through what I call a pre-chiller, which is another copper coil sitting in a plastic cube filled with some water and packed with ice.

That usually gets me down to ale pitching temperatures. For lagers, I transfer to the fermenter, stick it in my brewing fridge until the next day. I then aerate the wort, and pitch the yeast.

[ryanmanchester]

I tried doing this yesterday


clicky


Worked pretty well, I didn't measure the flow rate but it was bringing it down to about 19C at a good speed with the water running on full.