Immersion Woes

[seino]

Hey all,

I've just finally finished my first brew day (whoop!). Started out with a Full Extract IPA pack bought online.

The brew itself went well (I hope), but when it came time to cooling the wort it took forever. It took nearly 2 hours to get it down to a workable temp, and even then I couldn't get it below 24C (in fairness, it was a scorcher today, so room temperature was probably around there). I thought chilling would take about 30 mins.

I'm using a copper immersion chiller attached to an outside tap. After about 15 mins of running the chiller, the water coming out of the hose was pretty cold, but the wort itself wasn't coming down in temperature at any pace.

I've read that stirring regularly can help, and that the source water temperature can have an effect, but surely neither would account for over an hour's difference?

Any advice much appreciated!

Cheers,
-S

[BrewDorg]

I find summer adds at least 15mins to my chilling compared to winter. As you've already mentioned, best thing to do is to continuously stir the wort with your coil. You'll significantly reduce the time needed to bring it to tap water temp. One other thing, what's your water pressure like?

[seino]

I find summer adds at least 15mins to my chilling compared to winter. As you've already mentioned, best thing to do is to continuously stir the wort with your coil. You'll significantly reduce the time needed to bring it to tap water temp. One other thing, what's your water pressure like?

Thanks for the reply.

Water pressure is pretty good, although I didn't have it up full whack as the jubilee clips I picked up were slightly too big causing leakage, so didn't want to risk water spraying into my wort. Should have that resolved for the next brew day, and will try run it faster.

That said, the water was running cool out the other end of the hose. so I suspect I wasn't stirring it nearly enough.

How long would your average cooling time be?

[BrewDorg]

Pressure should be fine next day so. Some days my garden tap pressure is crap and that will make chilling even longer again.

In winter I can get a batch down to temp in about 15 minutes. In normal/warm weather, I can get it down in 20-30 mins depending how much I stir. Usually I'll stir for 5 minutes, leave it alone for 5 minutes, stir 5 mins, leave 5 mins etc. Once I am down around 25 degrees, I will then stir constantly while checking the temp with my thermapen until it's at 18 or so.

[seino]

Good advice, cheers. Will try that next time.

Now gotta figure out why my airlock keeps spitting out all its water. Possibly didn't fill it enough to begin with.

Nothing like learning on the fly! Hope it tastes half decent after all this.

[Water_Wolf]

I've switched to using a blow off tube instead of an airlock for primary fermentation. Just use the same bung but replace the plastic airlock with some 1/4" tubing and put the other end of the tube into a bottle / glass / whatever with a small amount of water in it.

[seino]

I've switched to using a blow off tube instead of an airlock for primary fermentation. Just use the same bung but replace the plastic airlock with some 1/4" tubing and put the other end of the tube into a bottle / glass / whatever with a small amount of water in it.

That makes sense. I have some spare tubing so I'll give that a go next time. I guess that's a safer option in terms of leaving the brew unattended for longer periods, as krausen shouldn't be able to blow out the airlock.

In fairness to my current airlock, once it spat out the majority of the water, it's maintained enough to keep a bubbling seal, so I think I'm safe enough this time round.

[Qs]

What sort of airlock is it? Some of them are better than others.

[seino]

What sort of airlock is it? Some of them are better than others.

Using an S-shape airlock.

[Qs]

Try one of these instead http://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/super-major-airlock-p-2050.html

[seino]

Cheers, will add that to my next order and give it a go.

[seino]

Doing some more reading online about this, I see quite a few people who suggest adding cold tap water directly to the wort - so for example boiling a 10 liter wort, then topping up cold from a tap to 25 liters, then without bringing to the boil straight to pitching and fermenting.

I can see how this would help speed up the chilling process, and the added air/CO2 from the tap water will help the yeast, but it sounds risky to me in terms of potential contamination.

Anyone tried this?

Would pre-boiling 20 liters of water the night before and leaving to cool in a sealed, sanitised container be an option, or just creating work for myself?

[DEMPSEY]

Boiled wort is sterile so adding water from the tap is not a good practice to have as it does risk contamination of the wort.

[seino]

Boiled wort is sterile so adding water from the tap is not a good practice to have as it does risk contamination of the wort.

Yeah, that's what I would have thought. Cheers.