Chilling - dealing with warm groundwater

Well my groundwater gets too warm in the summer to properly cool an ale, much less a lager.

I do 10 gallon batches and have a CFC. I am trying to find the best way to cool the wort down to at least 65 with the option of going lower.

My first thought was to just recirculate ice water through my CFC but I calculated to make that effective I'd need 60lbs of ice since I'd be transferring all the heat of 10 gallons of boiling water directly to my recirculating bucket. So that way seems out.

I'd need to buy a pond pump, but those are cheap.

I've thought about cooling the wort by ground water first and then down to my temp using recirculated ice but that seems to be somewhat complicated to do with a CFC and no pump (yet...)

I have an old IC that I could put in the pot, cool it down to 90* or so and then use the CFC but I'd rather not have two piece of equipment to take deal with, I'm wanting simple...

I've thought about putting a post chiller section on the CFC where I'd run the wort through some copper in a ice bath, adds a bit more complication when setting up but not too much.

I could recirculate the CFC back into the boil pot but I'll need to buy a pump. (in which case I'd buy a march pump to use with the rest of my system, so $$ is a factor)

What method do you all use that is simple and effective?

Just use the ground water to get you down to about 100˚F. Then change your connections and, with an inexpensive submersible pump, recirculate ice water through the CFC. That will get you where you need to go with minimal ice consumption.

Without a pump and with what you have I'd say the best and easiest you could do would be to use your old IC as a prechiller for the water going through the CFC. If you put your IC in a bucket/cooler with ice and salt you should be able to drop the temp a bit.

Of course getting a pump and recirculating through your CFC to the kettle and then switching to ice water through the CFC would be ideal, but without the pump you won't have much luck

I'm thinking I may need to go back to just using the immersion chiller. I can have quick disconnects on it to go from using a hose to using the ice-water pump.

My other thought so far is a post-chiller. Get some more 3/8" copper tube and add on to the bottom of my CFC (without a hose around it). Basically set the CFC extension in a bucket of ice water, such that the top half acts as a CFC with the hose water, the bottom half drops me the next 10 degrees or so I need by direct heat transfer from the wort to the ice water through the copper tubing.

This would keep it all to a one step process and still only one piece of equipment to sanitize/clean. I'm really looking for the best of both worlds in efficiency and simplicity.

I use an IC and submersible pump/ice water recirc. My summertime city water temps average around 76˚F. It takes about 10 minutes to get my wort down from boiling to ~100˚F with this water directly into the IC. At that point the temperature differential is not great enough for chilling any further in a reasonable amount of time.

Now the objective is to create another large temperature differential. Disconnect the city water from the IC and go into icewater recirc mode with the submersible pump in a 5 gallon bucket. I use about two 5lb bags of ice, topped off with city water. I'm able to go the rest of the way from ~100˚F to lager pitching temps (~55˚F) if I want in about another 5-7 minutes with this method.

Two other options that don't involve switching chillers...

Chill half of each carboy's worth of runoff with city water (assuming you'll end up with 2.5 gallons of 80F wort in each), Then switch over to your icewater coolant pump and top off the fermenters with what should be about 50-60F wort. The equilized temp should be fine for pitching ales.

The other option is to use icewater for the whole chill but DO NOT direct the chiller's spent coolant back into the ice bucket but rather top off the icewater with tap.

The output coolant is going to be something like 150F if your chiller is efficient. Why would you put that back into the loop when you have access to endless 70-80F water?

Up until recently I used an immersion chiller. Here in Phoenix, AZ, the groundwater never gets cold. What I did was use a little pond pump and re-circulated ice water through the chiller.

Just recently I bought the Thermominator, and I pump ice water through that too, and WOW it works fast

I bought a water hose, the type designed for hose reals because of its coils and placed it in a cooler with ice. In southern Texas I am able to bring my tap water from 84-102 from faucet to 34-45 at chiller.

BUMP
I have the same problem with warm groundwater and was thinking of after primary chilling with my 25' IC to buy a pump like this and use it in an icebath. Is this pump decent. What pumps do you guys have?

Well I've decided to hold off brewing for a while and build a natural gas brewstand and get a pump. I'm going to circulate boiling wort through my CFC for 15 minutes before the end of the boil, that way I can make sure it is sanitized. I've been having some issues with infection (I think) so this way I know the CFC will be sanitized.

Anyway I have two thoughts so far for groundwater. Either curl the hose up in an extra cooler and fill with ice water. Or get a cheap pond pump to pump icewater through the CFC and dump it outside, keep refilling the ice-water bucket with water from the hose.

FishinDave07 - I think the pump you linked to will be fine. You'll just need to figure out the connection to your IC.

chasebankofparker said:

I bought a water hose, the type designed for hose reals because of its coils and placed it in a cooler with ice. In southern Texas I am able to bring my tap water from 84-102 from faucet to 34-45 at chiller.

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I really hate having to call bullship in response to a first post but I have to. If you did measure the output in the high 30's, it was certainly only the first few quarts after having sat in the icebath for a time. There is no way that water flowing through a rubber/plastic coil at typical speed is going to cool off that much. You wouldn't even get that kind of performance out of a copper coil that conducts at least 100x better.

Bobby_M said:

I really hate having to call bullship in response to a first post but I have to. If you did measure the output in the high 30's, it was certainly only the first few quarts after having sat in the icebath for a time. There is no way that water flowing through a rubber/plastic coil at typical speed is going to cool off that much. You wouldn't even get that kind of performance out of a copper coil that conducts at least 100x better.

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Maybe he has a really big cooler and a 500' hose. Otherwise, if this worked, why wouldn't we just submerge the entire CFC in a cooler with ice?

It would be interesting to basically buy or build an all copper convoluted CFC and submerge that in a cooler full of ice-water. Then you don't need the pond pump and you don't need to switch connections like you would on an IC.

When I lived in vegas, I used an old corny keg as a pre-chiller, just fill the keg with a few bags of ice and some salt, then run the tap water into the keg and out the other end and into your chiller...brings the tap water down quickly before it enters the chiller, add more ice if necessary...

I actually tried the trick with the cornie keg and ice plus hose to connect to my CFC. I think the issue is that I can't control the flow of cooling water very well. I don't have a great way to check the temperature of the wort coming out of the chiller, so I'm running back and forth checking temperature and adjusting the spigot on the house, I never did get it exactly where I wanted it, and all my ice melted in the keg as well.

It may be useful to just temporarily use my ranco controller and a solenoid on the out side of the ice-keg-hose setup. That way as the wort temperature goes up it would kick on and blast more cold water through the chiller, then kick off for a second etc, that way it won't waste water, but will also get the wort fairly close to whatever pitching temp I set. I don't know if it would work.

maybe http://cgi.ebay.com/Parker-Solenoid-Shutoff-Vavle-Air-Water-Light-Oil-3-4_W0QQitemZ320294800030QQihZ011QQcategoryZ42932QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

My water temp is 75º in the summer. I use my cfc and get the wort down to about 80º. I then set carboy in ice bath in garage sink for 15 min while I am aerating with fishtank pump. Clean-up for 15 min, then the wort is around 65º - perfect ready for yeast pitching.

I have used the prechiller in an icebucket before with good results. No pumping needed that way. & you dont to to sanatise the prechiller. I do run some boiling wort through my cfc & pour back into the kettle now. Did you find a solution yet?

I will likely either try a pre-chiller on the water going into the CFC or just get it as cool as I can then put it either in an ice-water bath or in the fermentation freezer to cool down and wait an hour to pitch the yeast. I'll just need to find out what works best with my setup.

conpewter said:

I'm thinking I may need to go back to just using the immersion chiller. I can have quick disconnects on it to go from using a hose to using the ice-water pump.

My other thought so far is a post-chiller. Get some more 3/8" copper tube and add on to the bottom of my CFC (without a hose around it). Basically set the CFC extension in a bucket of ice water, such that the top half acts as a CFC with the hose water, the bottom half drops me the next 10 degrees or so I need by direct heat transfer from the wort to the ice water through the copper tubing.

This would keep it all to a one step process and still only one piece of equipment to sanitize/clean. I'm really looking for the best of both worlds in efficiency and simplicity.

Click to expand...

conepewter, Since this seems to be a problem for you please check out this link. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/hell-earth-wort-chiller-73315/
It has been the answer to my prayers and very easy to assemble. olllllo had a chance to use it this weekend and he seemed duly impressed. If you have a starting height of 2 feet it will gravity flow and produce about 50 degree single pass cooling with ground water of 85* and 20 lb of ice. With a pump olllllo measured 63*? into the fermenter after oxygenation( the o2 bottle was about 95*). I know its ghetto but the results are phenomenal.

conpewter said:

Well my groundwater gets too warm in the summer to properly cool an ale, much less a lager.
...
I have an old IC that I could put in the pot, cool it down to 90* or so and then use the CFC but I'd rather not have two piece of equipment to take deal with, I'm wanting simple...

Click to expand...

This method would have the benefit of getting you out of DMS production range quickly. Then the CFC with ice would get you down to 65 with 20#.

I've thought about putting a post chiller section on the CFC where I'd run the wort through some copper in a ice bath, adds a bit more complication when setting up but not too much.

Click to expand...

This isn't any more work than the CFC since you can clean and sanitize them together.

I use a pump in a cooler. I pump the water through my IC and out into the driveway until the wort gets down to 90, adding water to the cooler as required to maintain it at half full. Then I start recirculating the water back into the cooler and dump in 20# of ice to finish the job. Depending on ambient temp I can get down to 68-75. With 30# of ice I could get down to the low to mid 60's.

I could recirculate the CFC back into the boil pot but I'll need to buy a pump. (in which case I'd buy a march pump to use with the rest of my system, so $$ is a factor)

Click to expand...

This is the best solution since the CFC is more efficient than an IC, but $$$.

EDIT: screw it go with the Hell on Earth chiller, you already have an IC and CFC so you could build that AND it's gravity fed so no pump. Since he gets out the wort in 12 minutes you are within the safe realm for DMS assuming you did a patented BierMuncher Boil.

Posted in the hell on earth chiller thread. That whole idea is similar in concept to what I was thinking of for a post-chiller. The only addition to a normal CFC setup (after it is built that is) is the fact that you have to get ice somewhere.

This weekend we had a group brew my 7G 999BW, olllllo's 4G 999BW and a 5G combined 2nd runnings from us both. It was hot!!!! not sure what the ambient was, but I'm guessing 110* with 80* groundwater. all the batches hit the fermenters at about 63*. We used 50 lbs but could have done it with less.