what is the most "water conserving" method of cooling wort quickly?
 

It currently takes me 40 gallons of hose water to cool a 5-6 gal batch using a 1/2" x 25' IC in NJ (the past 3 months). Yeah, I save it and try to dump it on bushes and plants, etc.. but that is WAY too much waste water. I'm upgrading to 10gal batches right now and looking for the best way to cool wort quickly that also doesn't use a ton of water. Plate chiller? pre-chiller? 50' IC? plate chiller with a pond pump in ice water? etc...

What are you guys doing? Thanks in advance for the ideas/help.

Steve

I use a 50' IC with a whirlpool attachment for my 10 gallon batches. I try to conserve as much water as possible too. What works for me is using my old IC as a pre-chiller in a bucket of ice water along with whirlpooling. I have single tier rig so the first water (hot)coming OUT of the chiller goes straight into my MLT and HLT for clean up. The rest goes onto the lawn/plants. I would guess my water usage is right around 40 gallons.

Most water conserving = plate chiller, -20F glycol, and pump.

plate chiller or other counter-flow type chiller will get the highest thermal efficiency.

a counter flow with a closed cold side cooling system will use 0 gal water, but that's a whole different league.

OK, I want pics & instructions!

-d

I use a closed CFC. A 5 gallon bucket with 25' of copper tubing. I fill it with ice, dump in some salt and add water. I keep adding ice as needed, and my fermenter sits in a cooler of an ice water mixture. I use a clamp to keep the flow slow enough to make sure it's cold enough. I took 25 mins to get my boil cooled to 72ish saturday in 100+ weather

If you want to conserve water, the other ideas here will require dollars,(ice, glycol chiller) and electricity. Water is cheap, just cool as much as you can with the tap water, the recirculate the water back to a pail with ice and use a pond pump to continually recirc the water until the ice is gone and repeat.

Just do what you are already doing but don't waste the water. Get yourself a sump pump (if you don't already have one), capture the water into a rain barrel or similar, and reuse it for watering plants, washing the car, etc... You could even re-use it later for chilling wort.

My ice is free,:D

Run your Wort Chiller output into a bucket and throw it in the washer before washing a load...I now have a cooler/Pump/hose from the cooling/compression jacket that they use after joint surgeries. I will be rigging it up with my WC to recirc and cool.