Hi, I'm Mark Emiley on behalf of Expert Village.
In this segment, we are going to chill our
wort and get it ready to put our yeast into.
To do this, we're first going to take our
wort and put it into our sink. Next, we're
going to take our drain plug and put it in
there and start flowing cold water. In the
chilling process, we're trying to drop the
temperature of the wort as fast as we can
to encourage something called "cold break"
which will precipitate proteins and also get
the wort to a temperature at which we can
mix in our yeast as quickly as we can so the
yeast has the best chance of establishing
itself since it's the dominant microbe in
the wort. While I'm doing this, I'm stirring
the water around the pot in order to break
up the boundary layer that's forming of hot
water. Also, you can kind of give the pot
a little stir and that breaks up the boundary
layer on the inside so this will encourage
a cooler slowing...or a faster cooling. While
you are waiting for your wort to chill, you
may want to get a head start on the next step
which is yeast preparation. Since we put in
steeping hops, we are going to need to take
those out before we mix them with our water.
So we are going to go take our tongs and go
put them in our sanitization solution so that
they will be nice and clean before we need
to use them. While we are waiting for it to
cool, we are going to start filling our bucket
up with some nice cold water. Now, with these
buckets, this typically represents the halfway
mark or (I'm sorry) the five gallon mark.
So, we're going to start filling it to roughly
two and a half gallons and then we're going
to top off with the wort and then whatever
else we need to get just above five and a
half gallons. So grab your water and start
pouring and filling it up. You're going to
want to fill your airlock half up with sanitizing
solution or water. This is going to help prevent
any microbes or air from getting in and also
allow the carbon dioxide to escape. Now with
our freshly sanitized tongs, we can go in
and take out our hop sack. Let it drip for
a minute or so. You really don't want to try
to introduce any bacteria at this point as
the wort is very vulnerable. And after a minute
or so of letting it drain, I'm just going
to throw that in the garbage bag. The hot
kettle will heat up your water pretty quickly,
so once its gotten to a pretty warm temperature,
you're going to want to drain it. And then
we are going to fill it up and get some ice
next time. Now that we've filled the sink
back up with a nice cold batch of water, we're
going to make it even colder by adding a whole
bunch of ice from our refrigerator. Then we
are going to continue to swirl the water around
it so that it gets nice and cold and breaks
up the hot boundary layer. After a half-hour
or so, you should be able to take out your
pot, hold your hand here, and if it doesn't
feel hot at all, you are in good shape. If
it still feels pretty hot, you're probably
going to want to let it sit in some cold water
for a little while longer.
