Time taken to cool wort

I do the same thing - copper wort chiller and then ice bath. takes 20-30 min to get down to 75-80. My more experienced brewing friends tell me that a cold plate chiller is worth the investment because you do want to chill ASAP.

 

You can make/retain DMS (not a good thing) if the wort stands at high temps for too long. There's no hard and fast rule, but I always shoot for <30 minutes when chilling my wort.

How long is it taking you to get to pitching temps? Do you notice any vegetal/cooked corn flavors/aromas in your finished beer? If your immersion chiller isn't fast enough, you might consider recirculating ice water through the chiller using a submersible pump in a sink (or barrel or cooler or whatever). I do this in the warmer months. (You can't chill wort down any cooler than the water flowing through your chiller.)

 

My 2 cents is DMS isn't promoted by slow cooling. In the early stages of my brewing I cooled overnight and never had an issue. In general most DMS is boiled off during boil especially with 90 min boils. Although the faster you can cool the better. As I said just my opinion

 

Ask the Aussies what they think about this. If you aren't sure what I'm speaking of, it's pretty popular over there to rack hot wort over to a fermentation vessel and sit on it overnight, pitching yeast later.

Personally I chill down as far down as I can then I rack to a ferm vessel. Then it will go in the ferm freezer until it cools to pitching temps, which can be several hours, overnight even. I don't sweat it, I'd rather pitch when the wort is at the temp I want to start at (or slightly cooler) versus pitching warm and allowing the wort to cool down.

 

I don't think there's a huge issue. I do find however, for beers that I was great clarity in, I will chill as fast as possible. Summertime, my ground water is 75-78.. Not even close to pitching temps, so I get it down, and put it in my fermentation chamber at a lower temp. Usually can pitch it that evening before bed.

Works great that way.

For beers, such as my IPA's that I do alot of whirlpool. It might stay north of 100-120 for as long as 30-45 minutes before I pull the temp down. These beers are obviously not as clear, due to the huge amount of dry hopping that goes into it.. So no loss there.

 

The idea is to get it cooled off as quick as you can if you're not doing a hop stand. I'd say if you can chill your wort to pitching temp within 30-45 minutes you'll be fine. If you hop stand that's just sitting on your wort at ~170 for an additional 30 minutes for added hop flavor. This is above pasteurization temp and acceptable to prevent infection.

 

Why not use a pre-chiller? I have some hose in a cooler that I fill with ice, works great to get the 'ground water' to low, low temps.

 

More work than it's worth at the moment. It's easier to chill it, toss in chamber, and clean up. By the time I'm done, and chillin out, I can decant the starter and pitch.

 

Try putting the kettle in an ice bath while you use the IC, I do that now and stir the ice water in the opposite direction of the IC circulation and can get my wort down to pitching temps within 20 mins. I want to invest in a counterflow or plate chiller eventually but what I have now works fine for 5 gallon batches.

 

Faster is better, for a variety of reasons, but this isn't something to obsess on, IMO.

The quicker you get to pitching temp and get the yeast in there, the less likelihood that you're going to have bacteria get a foot hold and cause some off flavors. And a quicker cooling process will help clarify the wort.

So I suppose we could say the "optimal" is to have a plate chiller and bring the wort down to pitching temp within a few minutes. But fortunately for those of us who haven't made that investment, you can still make excellent beer using an immersion chiller that gets you down to pitching temp within a half hour or so. You can speed up your results with a wort chiller by stirring the wort with a large spoon if, like me, you don't have a pump.

Just for reference, using an immersion chiller and a little elbow grease, I can usually get down to ale pitching temp within about 15-20 minutes. Lager temps take longer, and usually require an ice bath in addition to the chiller, which of course can only get your wort down to whatever temp your tap water is. It sometimes takes me 90 minutes to get to lager pitching temp (~46F) but I don't worry too much about bacterial activity once I get it below about 60F.