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Hi, I'm Mark 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're going to need to take those out before
we mix them with our water. So we're going to go take our tongs and go put them in our
sanitization solution so 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 kind of bacteria at this point because 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. 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 up again 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.