Shirron plate chillers, 75 shipped!

http://www.free90free.com/peshchat/viewtopic.php?t=18

Talk to Jim_R on the green board, free90free or northern brewer. He's got an eBay store.. and is an all around good guy!

Good find!

Now that it is winter here, I'm going to wait on something like this. My plan this winter is to fabricate a rolling, sturdy brew stand, and then I'll add all the extras to it as I go. A plate chiller is definitely in the plans. I'm tired of the hassle with the CFC.

I've still got an IC.

Just so you know, Jim offers a 10 dollar discount from his ebay store to brewboard/northern brewer members. So you can get it for 75+ shipping any other time.. this is a holiday deal through the 31st.

I've used plate chillers in the food processing industry for a long time. Big ones, we call them heat exchangers. They can be used for cooking slurry or chilling water.

My concern is the particulate in the wort will tend to clog the channels through the plates. Unless you can filter all the trub and hops from your hot wort, I'd be concerned with clogging and even if that didn't happen, getting the inside clean and free from trub will be difficult.

We have to break the big ones down every couple of months and when we do, they are nasty inside. We are cooking starch slurry to 180 degrees in the first half and cooling to 70 degrees on the second half with a blank plate in between.

I should add that these heat exchangers are cleaned nightly with a CIP system that flushes hot caustic and then a rinse through it.

Well PBW is Caustic..backflushing hot PBW through the Shirron (or Therminator) should be adequate. There are a few folks that have jammed theirs up when their screens fell off their spigot or whatever.. they simply backflushed them into working condition again