CFC Question

I have been readin about CFC's and was thinking about getting (or making) one. Do you need a pump to make it work? Can't you just gravity the kettle to one end of the copper and a garden hose to the other?

Kayos said:

I have been readin about CFC's and was thinking about getting (or making) one. Do you need a pump to make it work? Can't you just gravity the kettle to one end of the copper and a garden hose to the other?

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I don't own one, but I've used one a couple of times. It worked fine with just gravity pulling the wort through.

You can gravity flow through a CFC if you have your equipment set up properly. Often this is a rather slow process and how slow depends on how much head pressure you have and how much restriction the tubing and chiller present. I used gravity flow with mine long ago, but I now pump through my CFC for faster cooling.

Depends somewhat on your setup. I bought a pump when I went from an immersion chiller to a CFC, but my burner only lifts the keggle about a foot off the ground. When I was using the IC, it was no big deal; chill the wort, then lift the now-cool keggle onto my table and drain into the carboy. With the CFC, I couldn't drain directly into the carboy because I only had a foot to work with, and I wasn't going to lift the smoking-hot keggle onto my (plastic) worktable before chilling the wort down. So, bought a pump.

Incidentally, I find the pump to be pretty damn useful throughout the brewing process; worth the $130 to me. But, only REALLY necessary because of my low-to-the-ground propane burner.

I think the biggest issue you'll encounter is trub from the kettle clogging your flow. I built a cfc recently and tried and failed to gravity feed it from 4 feet above the chiller. Make sure you've either got filtered wort running into it and/or think about investing in a pump. Another thing to look into is whirlpooling your wort to concentrate the trub to one spot in the kettle.

I gravity feed my cfc. Works just fine. I am, however, planning to put a ball valve on my kettle and prolly gonna put some sort of filter on the inside, I've had it clog with trub before. Not fun.