Chiller options...

Brewed a batch on Sunday. Tap water temp was bang-on 68 degrees but my CFC would only bring the wort down to 88. What are other folks doing? My options seem to be:

- Spend the $$ and get a plate chiller. I'm a little concerned with horror stories about sanitation issues as you can't disassemble them, and no guarantee that it would get my temp down any lower.

- Build a pre-chiller. But more equipment to clean and sanitize.

Any other options?

(Edited for typo)

Did you reduce the flow rate going through the CFC? I have read that, that will help it cool faster. I have also seen people fill a bucket with ice water and set the CFC into it and drill holes in the bucket for the CFC to stick out. It should be lowering the temp farther than 88.

Mirage said:

Did you reduce the flow rate going through the CFC? I have read that, that will help it cool faster.

Click to expand...

+1

You should be able to reduce the wort flow through the CFC by not opening your kettle's spigot all the way, and you can reduce the water flow through the CFC with the spigot that the hose is being fed from.

Just adjust your flows so that the wort comes out at pitching temps.

You would not have to sanitize or even clean a prechiller.

During the summer when hose temp is high, I do a primary and secondary chiller set-up for lagers. Wort is pumped out of the kettle into a CFC chilled with hose water then exits into another 20ft coil of 3/8 OD copper tubing in an ice bath.
Boiling to 45F in a single pass. I recirculate for the last 10 minutes of the boil to sanitize everything...secondary chiller pulled out of the ice water and the hose turned off of course. I use a hop stopper to keep hops out of the chillers during recirc and chilling.

The pic shows a hop back after the kettle, it was a really hoppy pilsner.


It was actually closer to 40F but the wort warmed up by the time the carboys were full, zoomed in:


I've never had luck with pre-chillers in an effort to get these results. I've tried running hose water through 2 heater cores in parallel in an ice bath prior to the CFC and I've tried pumping ice water through the CFC with a march pump.

Just a thought but the only time I haven't gotten to pitching temps is when I miffed up and had the hose flowing THE SAME WAY as the wort. It's counterflow so it has to go in opposite directions, just a thought.

I just did a sanity check last night: my tap water is actually at 78. Ambient temp has been more or less the same since brew day so I must have misread. That means I'm getting my wort down to 10 degrees above the water temp which sounds reasonable. So I just need to drop it by 20 degrees. I wonder if just placing the CFC in an ice water bath would do the trick? Time to experiment...