adding water to finished beer

[monkeybrewer]

Hello Forumites
It seems I have gotten my self in a bit of a pickle. After having a hell day in the brewhouse brewing my new wit bier (don't use 25% oats and don't add orange/spices to a kettle unless they're in some sort of sack ) I am now having cooling issues as my yield was probably 1.5 out of 7 bbl short. The beer fermented fine but now with the yeast pulled it seems to be out of the top cooling band. The cone cooling band doesn't seem to be able to keep up (yeast insulation?). After looking at my SG/FG, I've realized that adding 1 bbl of water will still give me a 5% wit. After adding the water the beer should definitely be in the cooling band and I should then be able to cool it properly before moving it to the serving vessel. My question comes in the preparation of the water. I have available my direct fire kettle, CO2, pumps etc...but no free fermenter or serving vessel to use. My first thought was to prepare clean water in the kettle by boiling for 1/2 hour. I would then send it through a sanitized heat exchanger to cool as low as possible as I added it to my fermenter. Is the boiling enough to drive off any dissolved oxygen? After I boil should I bubble CO2 through the water to drive off any DO? Do I need to let it cool before I hit it with CO2? So many questions...thanks for any help.
Cheers

[beertje46]

I've never had to do this but a brewer friend of mine used to use your method for high gravity brewing. If I remember correctly he used Co2 on his wort aeration system -->outflow of HE.

[monkeybrewer]

out the heat ex

David
Thanks for the advice...coming out of the heat exchanger and carbonating there will save me ton of time and hassle.
Cheers

[jarviw]

just curious...
but inline carbonation doesn't sound like it will strip out the O2 though? wouldn't that just basically increase the CO2 level in the water, without doing much to the O2?

[monkeybrewer]

reducing O2

I was also thinking that, so as I have been circulating my water to heat it up quicker I have been putting CO2 to it. Especially as the temp has increased, I can tell that there is scrubbing going on as my kettle is now completely full of CO2. I figure I'll be scrubbing it for about 1.5 hours (my kettle is very slow to heat up) and then I'll boil it for 0.5 hours and then as I pump into the fermenter I will cool through heat exchanger and in-line carbonate so I am not putting flat H2O into my fairly carbonated beer. I'm with you on the last part not scrubbing(I actually don't want to scrub at that point as I will end up scrubbing my beer) but will be happier to put carbonated water into my beer than flat. I'll let you know how it all turns out. Thanks for the heads up.
Cheers

[JoeV]

boil away

I would think boiling alone should be sufficient to deaerate the water. In fact by carbonating the water before boiling you may actually need to increase the boiling time to get the same level of de-oxygenation. This is due to the boiling points of the two gasses CO2 -78C and O2 at -183C. So you the gas with the lower boiling point "boils off" last, in this case 02.

[liammckenna]

Boil the water in the kettle.

Cool in the calculated amount through the pre sanitized heat exchanger.

O2 won't be a problem.

Do it soon before primary is complete. Yeast can be touchy that way.

Simple.

I think it's a psychological issue with the yeast. Separation anxiety perhaps. Ha!

Pax.

Liam