From: us279764@mmm.serc.3m.com (Philip . Miller)
Subject: Chilling your wort 
Organization: 3M Company
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 92 22:26:14 GMT


>>>Is there anything wrong with chilling your wort by combining the hot
>>>concentrate [by adding very cold water]

>>This is the way I cooled my first brew, and it turned out just fine.
>>One caution, though, is that you should pour the cold into the hot,
>>rather than the other way around.

>Not if you're using a glass fermenter.  There's a very good chance that
>your fermenter will crack when you pour the hot wort in.  If that
>happens, you won't have anything to pour the cold water in...


Hah!  Let me tell about an amusing incident that happened to me:

I decided to switch to glass carboys on my second batch of beer.  I had
read Papazian and knew enough to add the hot wort to cold water already
sitting in the carboy.

As I prepared to pour the nearly boiling hot wort into the carboy, my
wife, Kim, wondered if this was asking for trouble since she knew that,
ordinarilly, dumping really hot water into glass is a BAD idea.

I puffed out my chest and stuck my thumbs into my metaphorical suspender
straps and told her that while normally, yes, this would shatter the
glass, There Was Absolutely No Chance Of Breaking The Carboy because I
Had Partially Filled It With Cold Water.  (The capital letter are to
simulate the grave Voice Of Authority that I used.)

I knew the dangers of oxidation, so I cleverly (or so I thought) racked
the wort into the carboy using a siphon tube instead of just dumping and
splashing it.  (I believe I also told Kim how clever I was being just in
case she had missed it. :)

Well, the hot wort was actually denser than the cold water because of
all the dissolved sugars so it didn't mix with the water already in the
carboy.  I had created this wonderful thermocline in the carboy with
nearly boiling hot wort on the bottom and nearly ice cold water on top.
About 1/3 of the way into the transfer, we heard a noise which we first
took for a rifle shot.

"Jeepers", I thought, "somebody is shooting at me while I'm racking my
wort!  "Then Kim noticed that there was a crack that circled the carboy
and that my precious wort was slowly oozing onto the counter...



BTW, while I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off
going, "Cluck cluck, the carboy's cracked!  Cluck cluck, this batch is
ruined!", Kim (whom you're beginning to suspect is smarter than I am)
pointed to the OTHER sanitized carboy _happened_ to be sitting on the
floor and suggested that we siphon everything into it.

Now I'm _supposed_ to tell you that that batch of beer was the best I'd
ever brewed.  Actually, that batch of beer was terribly infected -- but
that's not the point.  The point is:  GET A WORT CHILLER!!!



Here are directions for making the easiest wort chiller in the world:

1)  Get 15 - 25 feet of 3/8 OD soft copper tubing.  It's sold coiled up
in a box and should run you about $20.  (You'll have to go to a store
that sells soft copper tubing to buy some.  I believe that every
hardware store is required by law to have some in stock, though.)

2)  Get a suitably sized cylindrical object.  I used an old paint can.
(If your house is anything like my house, there will be a plethora of
1/2 empty paint cans lying around in useful colors such as Harvest Gold
and Avocado.  The fact that the paint has solidified in them will make
them less likely to spill.)

3)  Using an amazing tubing bending device called your hands, bend the
tubing around the cylindrical object.  I left two little straight ends
to connect to my siphon hosing like so:

	       |           |
	       |           |
	       |           |
	       |========== |
		========== |
		===========|     <---tightly wound coils


4)  If you're really anal retentive and have _way_ too much time on your
hands, you can then take some thin copper wire and kind of weave it
between the coils to sort of hold everything together.  This step is
optional since the copper is pretty stiff by itself.

I cleaned the inside of the copper by running some hot water and B-Brite
through it.  I think I've seen people suggest running vinegar through
copper first to clean out residual oils.  Maybe I'll do that to mine
someday, too.

How to sanitize:  Run some water into the coils and stick it in an oven
set at 350F for about 15 - 30 minutes.  Turn off your oven and leave the
coil in there until you're ready to use it.

How to cool your wort:  Take the coil out of the oven and stick some
siphoning hose over each end.  Plunk the coil into a bucket of ice water
and siphon as usual.  Your wort will be _real_ cold at first and warm up
gradually as the ice water warms up.  Dump more ice in the bucket as
needed.


BTW, I got all of these wort chiller ideas and tips from reading the HBD
(except for the paint can idea which I came up with by myself after
several days of hard thinking).


The bottom line:  Chilling your wort is easy and cheap.  It will cost
about as much as that new glass carboy that you're going to need if you
keep on dumping hot wort into glass...  :)  :)  :)  




		      "The only thing that worried me was the ether.
Phil Miller           There is nothing in the world more helpless and
pmiller@mmm.com       irresponsible and depraved than a man in the
	              depths of an ether binge."
					      Hunter S. Thompson