Ice gallows

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An ice gallows is a wooden or steel frame on which water can freeze to form icicles at freezing temperatures. They were used to obtain ice sticks before the introduction of artificial cooling systems.

Ice making technique

At air temperatures below −3 ° C, well or spring water is distributed over a scaffold with showers with water pipes, so that the amount flowing through safely grows into icicles immediately and does not reach the ground. In order to achieve a sufficiently dimensioned area on which the cones can begin to grow, wooden poles or many crossbeams are placed in the frame, which are strong enough to withstand the constant load of the weight. On the ice days , which vary from region to region, icicles up to several meters in length were produced here, knocked off with ice flails and transported with carts, wagons or on slides into an ice cellar close by . The yield depends on the size of the ice gallows, in an Ulm brewery you can still “harvest” up to 100  cubic meters of ice in a sufficiently cold week.

Advantages over older methods of natural ice production

  • Such a device for ice production makes the location independent of a nearby body of water, such as a pond.
  • The producer is in control of the water quality

user

In particular, breweries , which were dependent on low temperatures both during the brewing process to cool the fermentation vats and when the beer was stored in beer cellars, used ice sticks in addition to naturally formed ice blocks that were obtained from frozen waters before the introduction of artificial ice production with refrigeration machines , that were made on ice gallows.

But also hospitals, restaurants, hotels and sanatoriums and companies in the food industry made use of this technology for the provision of ice in their cold stores, ice cellars and smaller ice pits. Such systems were in operation until well into the 1960s, and small breweries still occasionally use this process to this day.

literature

  • F. Hellwig: The ice cellar. Description and practical implementation . 1st (last) edition. Hachmeister & Thal, Leipzig 1921 (teacher library, volume 600). Section Artificial Ice Production , pp. 27–32. New edition 2006, Survival Press ISBN 3-937933-16-6 .
  • Schifferverein Stadl-Paura : Old views of Stadl-Paura - image of an ice gallows

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ dpa: Ulmer Brewery maintains the tradition of ice gallows in Märkische Oderzeitung from March 1, 2018, p. 8
  2. ↑ Joy of frost. The brewery maintains the tradition of ice gallows. FAZ.net . February 28, 2018, accessed March 1, 2018.