Cooling wort in fermenter overnight. Help....

[Damn]

Hi,
Did a Partial Mash the other night care of Trough Lolly
http://www.homebrewandbeer.com/forum/vi ... =13&t=7720
I cooled my wort in the pot some in my kitchen sink, with some ice cubes.
My Wort was 34c once I finished up in the fermenter. Problem was it was 11:30pm and I'm an early riser.
I put the fermenter in my laundry trough with very cold water and....wait for it you'll laugh.
Set my alarm for 1:00am.....30c.
Set my alarm for 2:30am.... 28c.
Set my alarm for 3:30am.....25c. Yawn. Pitched my yeast and put in heater fridge.
During this period I had the fermenter sealed with sterile sponge over the airlock hole.
I won't be doing the alarm routine next time. So far I've done all my brewing after my kids are in bed and are not planning to change this time.
I rang a friend who's been brewing some time and he laughed at my commitment, he thought it may be ok to let it sit overnight to cool.
Normally with my other extract brews I use less hot water.
Any economical suggestions to fast cool the wort. I can make a spare fridge temporarily available but this will still take time.
Maybe from experience I set the alarm only once for say.....5 hours after completion. I appreciate the heightened risk of infection but I do have it sealed.
Thanks for any input.

[squirt in the turns]

Wow Damn, that is dedication! One way to speed cooling is to agitate both the wort and the coolant. There isn't really an economical way for you to agitate the wort and keep it sealed, and regardless, you'd need to be in attendance instead of getting some much needed sleep. However, depending on what you consider economical, a cheap 12v pump would do the job of moving the cooling water around. You'd just need a power supply (12v or less) such as an old computer PSU, phone charger or suchlike. They move water at a fair rate, so you'd want to power it with a lower voltage or secure it in some way otherwise it will propel itself out of the sink and/or splash a lot of water around!

I'd also suggest doing all the cooling in the pot. You'll get better heat exchange through metal than the plastic of the fermenter, and it would be easier to keep sealed - just cling wrap it and put the lid over the cling wrap. Just watch the head space (gas will shrink to a much greater proportion than liquid as it cools) otherwise this can happen. Pretty unlikely with a smaller pot, but worth bearing in mind.

I wouldn't stress about leaving the wort for more than 5 hours. It'll be find as long as you seal it hot. Plenty of people no-chill in the kettle this way, especially when doing smaller boils. It's essentially the same as the full-volume no-chill method that seals the wort in an HDPE cube. You wouldn't want to store it for months in the kettle like you can with cubes, but a few extra hours before pitching the yeast is fine. Just aerate properly while diluting to full volume.

Set my alarm for 3:30am.....25c. Yawn. Pitched my yeast and put in heater fridge.

I hope the heater wasn't switched on! 25°C is still a bit warm (I say that without knowing what yeast you used).

[Damn]

The fridge temp was set 19c. Ok, good advice thanks. So I will seal my brew pot with glad wrap shortly after flameout and replace the Lid. Would tipping the wort in the fermenter the following morning be enough agitation for aeration? Then I will add either hot or cold water to get the the temp to 22c? (Mostly ales for me).

[rotten]

How much wort are you boiling??

Have you considered no-chill?? I'm a convert now after trying many methods. It saves time especially if you brew at night because of kids etc. If you boil full volume this method would suit you. If you are doing partials and topping up with cold water I don't think it would suit.

[squirt in the turns]

The fridge temp was set 19c. Ok, good advice thanks. So I will seal my brew pot with glad wrap shortly after flameout and replace the Lid. Would tipping the wort in the fermenter the following morning be enough agitation for aeration? Then I will add either hot or cold water to get the the temp to 22c? (Mostly ales for me).

Pour the wort from a few feet above the fermenter, and not too fast, so that the stream breaks up as it falls. Repeat for topping up with water to the final volume, or if using a hose, get a bit of a jet going. I'd say that would be sufficient and it's what I do with no-chilled wort (or if I'm chilling I hold the wort outlet hose nice and high). That said, I've just got myself a wort aeration kit from Marks Home Brew (O2 bottle + aeration stone) so I'll be interested to see if I get improved attenuation as a result.

How much wort are you boiling??

Have you considered no-chill?? I'm a convert now after trying many methods. It saves time especially if you brew at night because of kids etc. If you boil full volume this method would suit you. If you are doing partials and topping up with cold water I don't think it would suit.

Just to clarify, Damn, what Rotten's suggesting here is the traditional no-chill method I mentioned in my first post, which is useful for full-volume boils (required for all-grain and also done by some partial/extract brewers) as it does not require any active chilling effort. This forum and others already have plenty of info on this. Depending on your boil size, you could do this, you'd just need to buy smaller HDPE cubes than the 20L standard adopted by the homebrew community (although people do successfully no-chill small boils in these with a lot of headspace).

I should have called the cling-wrap leave-to-cool-in-kettle method "slow-chill" to differentiate it. Arguably there's no such thing as "no-chill" anyway, it's all slow-chill, but that's a semantic debate that serves no purpose here.