Beer Forum

Where I live, we are currently under water restrictions. While not technically illegal, I probably should not be running my wort chiller the 30-45 minutes to cool down 12 gallons of wort. We already have a pre-chiller. I was thinking about running this for say 10-15 minutes and then dropping in frozen 2 liter bottles of water.
Any reason why I would not be able to sanitize the outside of these bottles?
Should I attempt to take the labels off? If so, how?
Any other ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thank in advance.

-FINA

1 PLEASE take the labels off
2 If you are doing extract perhaps boil a bit less then just add ice to top off.
3 If you do the bottles PLEASE sanitize the hell out of them.
4 Good luck
BUB

I've wondered about this too. The regs say "no lawn watering or car washing" but I'm not doing either of those, am I?

You can capture some of the hot water in your cooler or kettle and use for cleaning up. You can also run that free hot water into the clothes washer and do a load of laundry. If you have a pool, then it obviously can go in there.

As for the frozen bottles, I suppose that would work but you would certainly want to remove the labels entirely, sanitize the outside of the bottles, and put them in a big ziplock bag while you freeze them. Might be easier to just fill the ziplock with boiled, cooled water for freezing. Then you could just cut away the bag and drop the ice in the wort. Make sure you adjust your recipe to accommodate, though.

Any ideas on the best way to get the glue off of the labels?

most of the 2L bottles I see lately either have the labels on with something like a blob or 3 of hot glue. It is hard when cool and kind of scrapes off in one chunk. Others have a shrink wrapped plastic sleeve that just pull off leaving no residue.

If you found something different, then I'd fall back on the old standbys of PBW *or* ammonia *or* bleach water just like with glass beer bottles.

I think some people have had sucess with a pump and a cooler full of Ice and saltwater. And just keep recirculating the water back into the cooler full of ice.

Or just say the hell with it and use the hose, your not watering the lawn or washing your car...YOUR BREWING BEER DAMMIT!

There's a significant number of people (by local standards, anyhow) in Australia who do not chill. I am one of them.

I have a 20litre plastic jerry can designed for drinking water which I clean and sanitise the Henry out of. Then, while the wort is still above 90degreesC, I transfer it into the jerry. I then squeeze the jerry to get as much air out of it as I can then seal it, allowing it to cool in its own time.

It is a very contentious practice (have a look at the NoChill thread on AHB), but works for several people. It might be worth considering if you have vicious water restrictions in place.