Can anyone recommend a cheap chilling system that I can use in a flat?

I need a chilling system which is relatively cheap and doesnt require large quantities of water to flow through it. I mean I need something that is not messy and can be used in a flat.

Any ideas?

Cooler filled with ice and just enough water to get it to circulate through an aquarium pump?

What do you want to get cold -- the wort after boiling, the beer in the fermenter, your kegs or bottles?

I'm planning on doing what Takuie mentioned. I like the idea that I'm not wasting as much water by reticulating it.

Harbor Freight has a very cheap and very small pump that I think ought to work rather well.

http://www.harborfreight.com/92-gph-miniature-submersible-fountain-pump-68389.html

I'm not sure if 92 gph is fast enough, but the size seems great. And on sale now is the slightly larger one.

With copper and vinyl tubing, and hose clamps from Home Depot, and the tubing bender and water pump from Harbor Freight this can be made for less than $50.

I'll be spending a portion of my hobby $$$ on building this next month.

Takuie said:

Cooler filled with ice and just enough water to get it to circulate through an aquarium pump?

Click to expand...

+1

but how? Do you know of a tutorial or something that could help me learn how to build this one?

Try one of these, or several to see differences:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=building+an+immersion+chiler

But instead of using an attachment for a garden hose you'd use lengths of vinyl tubing that fit over the copper tubing and then clamped down tightly.

One end of the hose goes to the pump, and the other end back into the bucket/sink/cooler with the pump and chilled water.

If your going to recirc. from a reservoir of some short through to a chiller and back the biggest problem you'll face is the reservoir getting too hot. The temperature differential needs to be reasonable to get good cooling, plus the chiller itself will need to make the most of the differential because the number of recircs you'll have before the differential is too small will be limited.

Lets put it this way, the water that goes through my plate chiller at about 14C, the temperature of the wort once cooled is 17C ish, the water coming out the cooler is about 60C. My hot waste water goes to drain, but if it went but to a recirc. you can see the problem.

If this is for cooling down after the boil, 92 gpm is not enough. It will barely overcome the head pressure of all the pipe. I've used the 264 gpm pump in the winter when I can't use my garden hose. It is just enough to circulate through my 3/8" 25' coil. Going bigger would not be a bad idea. Also, assuming you are going to use the cooler full of ice water, it is a good idea to waste the first part down the drain. For the first several minutes there is tons of heat coming off. It will melt your ice quickly. After you get down to cooler temps you can switch to recirculating.

Someone else also mentioned using rock salt to lower the temp of the water. My other tip, plan ahead. You will need plenty of ice for even a 5 gallon batch.

If you are doing the recirculation have plenty of spare ice on hand. Once the cooler of water starts warming up you will stop cooling as quickly.

Cooler of ice water with sump pump pushing the cold water through an IC and back into the cooler. Refill with ice as needed. It may not be an bad idea to run the first few minutes worth directly from the sink and drain the hot water that results as that return water will really melt your ice fast.

Wow! Thanks!

I see the pumps of that size have a 1/2" outlet. Do you use a reducing barb to go from 1/2" to 3/8" or do you squeeze it down with a hose clamp? Is your 3/8" copper tubing measured by inside or outside diameter?

I bought a 1/2" x 3/8" barbed fitting from the hardware store.

I'm using soft copper tubing the same as most who make their own. I think that it's 3/8 ID?


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I brew 2.5 gallon batches in a 4 gallon stainless stock pot. It simply set the stock pot in a large enamel hot water bath canner in the kitchen sink, fill it with cold water, and leave a small trickle running through. It doesn't take long or take much water really.
Let me suggest using plastic blue ice packs.... the rigid kind. Freeze them, then toss them in the boiling wort......... They will be sterilized by the wort, and quickly cool it down. Look on Ebay......... search "blue ice pack".


H.W.

Additionally if you do partial boils, Boiling water then putting it (once it cools some) into zip top bags or tupperware before freezing will yield sanitary water that you can drop right into the wort to cool it down and top it off all at the same time. That is the bare minumum in water use there and really quick cooling too.

I use this exact pump to recirculate water through my chiller- works like a champ. One thing to definitely keep in mind is that this method uses an awful lot of ice. I bag up a freezer ice maker load a few days before, use another full load, and I have a bunch of frozen water bottles I toss in. Even with all of this, I have to go buy a bag for lagers.

rodwha said:

I'm planning on doing what Takuie mentioned. I like the idea that I'm not wasting as much water by reticulating it.

Harbor Freight has a very cheap and very small pump that I think ought to work rather well.

http://www.harborfreight.com/92-gph-miniature-submersible-fountain-pump-68389.html

I'm not sure if 92 gph is fast enough, but the size seems great. And on sale now is the slightly larger one.

Click to expand...

I use that same pump when I brew indoors but I set it in my kitchen sink, not in a cooler. I'll run cold tap water through my Immersion Cooler until the wort temp gets down to something reasonable and then switch over to the pump sitting in a sink full of water and ice.

Keeping to basics, the temperature differential between your cooling water and the wort determines the speed of cooling. There's a big enough differential between my tap water and hot wort to drop the temp fairly quickly - at least initially. I look for the temperature drop to slow down and then make the switch to pump and ice water.

I am no engineer, but I do know that if you move the water too fast it won't cool because the water is moving faster than the heat can be transferred. 90ish gallons per hour seems about right to me.

During the summer, I use my long tubing and have it drain to my pool or I will water plants with it. I also put my boil pot in an ice bath. I don't run my faucet full blast, I monitor the temperature of the water coming out of my chiller and adjust water flow to maintain a 20 degree differential. I go from boil to pitching temperature in 16 minutes

There are lots of ways you can reuse the water. By slowing the flow to maintain a 20 degree differential between your wort and chiller out put, you will find that you use way less water. Regular 5 gallon buckets are cheap. Fill em up! Dump the water in your pool, water plants, wash a car, can even pour some down a toilet so you don't have to flush. I save 1 bucket of water for when I need to boil off labels on bottles.

Takuie said:

I am no engineer, but I do know that if you move the water too fast it won't cool because the water is moving faster than the heat can be transferred. 90ish gallons per hour seems about right to me.

Click to expand...

I agree. 90 gpm is enough. However, these impeller pumps do not handle head pressure all that well. With the 264 gpm pump I'm sure I get far less than 90 gpm after it goes through a total of 20+ feet of vinyl tubing and 25 feet of copper.

The other thing that occurred to me is the possibility of using glycerol instead of water in the cooler. You can put glycerol in the freezer and it will still be liquid. This would allow a big temperature differential.

So you could fill some 2 L water bottles with a water and glycerol mix, put them in the frezzer. Setup a immersion chiller, to a pump that recirculates, from a cooler. Fill the cooler with the pre chilled glycerol/water and recirc.

Here is a useful table of Gylcerol/water freezing points.

http://msdssearch.dow.com/Published...rine/pdfs/noreg/115-00663.pdf&fromPage=GetDoc

Doing a 40% glycerol solution will allow you to get down to -15C.

Its a bit more expensive than water, but you should get some fast cooling with minimal space and it is a one off expense.

Takuie said:

I am no engineer, but I do know that if you move the water too fast it won't cool because the water is moving faster than the heat can be transferred. 90ish gallons per hour seems about right to me.

During the summer, I use my long tubing and have it drain to my pool or I will water plants with it. I also put my boil pot in an ice bath. I don't run my faucet full blast, I monitor the temperature of the water coming out of my chiller and adjust water flow to maintain a 20 degree differential. I go from boil to pitching temperature in 16 minutes

There are lots of ways you can reuse the water. By slowing the flow to maintain a 20 degree differential between your wort and chiller out put, you will find that you use way less water. Regular 5 gallon buckets are cheap. Fill em up! Dump the water in your pool, water plants, wash a car, can even pour some down a toilet so you don't have to flush. I save 1 bucket of water for when I need to boil off labels on bottles.

Click to expand...

Maximize the speed of the chilling water to maximize the chilling speed. Why? The rate of heat flow is directly related to the temperature difference between the hot pot and the water, and increasing the flow of water ensures the lowest temperature against the pot.

If you are trying to reduce the use of water, then the water flow should be reduced.

So, you have to decide if you want to cool quickly (turn the water flow all the way up) or reduce water usage (turn flow down).

I'm sure there is a physicist or engineer somewhere that could explain this better than I, but...

Glycol can be chilled below freezing. However the phase change that ice goes through stores a lot of energy. Water also has a higher specific heat than glycol, so you loose some efficiency there. In order to really figure that idea out someone would have to run some calcs using volumes temperatures and specific heat.

I would think the issue with glycol would be the volume you would need to draw the heat from wort at 212 degrees down to pitching temp. Also, there may be some issues with expansion in a closed loop when you sink the sub zero glycol into boiling wort.




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Do you do partial boils?

I simply freeze two 1/2 gallon water ptichers. I take them out when I start brewing so they melt a little, then I drop them 1 at a time into the wort until the temp is right. It takes 5 to 10 minutes max to cool.

Aplikowski said:

I'm sure there is a physicist or engineer somewhere that could explain this better than I, but...

Glycol can be chilled below freezing. However the phase change that ice goes through stores a lot of energy. Water also has a higher specific heat than glycol, so you loose some efficiency there. In order to really figure that idea out someone would have to run some calcs using volumes temperatures and specific heat.

I would think the issue with glycol would be the volume you would need to draw the heat from wort at 212 degrees down to pitching temp. Also, there may be some issues with expansion in a closed loop when you sink the sub zero glycol into boiling wort.




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Click to expand...

Yes you could well be right. It would be interesting to know though.

What I would like to know is can you do this with a refrigeration system? Would it be possible to take apart a mini fridge and graft it onto a plate or immersion chiller?

Now I'm sure working with freon is above my pay grade. But it would be interesting to try.


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Hmmm... Interesting thought!

I have an old water cooler (type with a 5 gal water bottle for drinking) that was kept in an old house forever that I've had and been wondering what I can do with. I had initially considering rigging it up to cool a swamp cooler, but maybe it could be used to chill the recirculated water!

The no chill method or partial chill are the cheapest


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Aplikowski said:

What I would like to know is can you do this with a refrigeration system? Would it be possible to take apart a mini fridge and graft it onto a plate or immersion chiller?

Now I'm sure working with freon is above my pay grade. But it would be interesting to try.


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Click to expand...

Unfortunately I do not think that a mini fridge has the oomph to cool a batch of beer. You would do better making chunks or tupperware bricks of ice (more surface area = more cold) and dropping them into a recirculating bucket of ice water.

jcoxen said:

I use that same pump when I brew indoors but I set it in my kitchen sink, not in a cooler. I'll run cold tap water through my Immersion Cooler until the wort temp gets down to something reasonable and then switch over to the pump sitting in a sink full of water and ice.

Keeping to basics, the temperature differential between your cooling water and the wort determines the speed of cooling. There's a big enough differential between my tap water and hot wort to drop the temp fairly quickly - at least initially. I look for the temperature drop to slow down and then make the switch to pump and ice water.

Click to expand...

This sounds like a setup I'd really like to try. What tubing/adaptors do I need to hook up one of those pumps to a IC with a standard gardenhose attachment on it?

I use the cooler full of ice and pump method. Like stated in previous posts, use your tap water from the faucet to the IC until below 100* then fill up your cooler with ice and run the pump until you're at pitching rate.

I connected a 4" tube from the small HF pump then a garden hose connection to that. When it's time to switch, just unscrew the IC from the sinks adapter to the pump. I use my 10g cooler mash tun, one frozen 1 gallon water bottle and the tray of ice in the ice maker to fill up with water. I like opening the bottle of frozen water and working the return water hose from the IC into it so it has to make direct contact with the block of ice and overspill back into the cooler.

This seems to get me to 60-65 in about 20 minutes which is not bad. Make sure to swirl your wort with a sanitized spoon or use the IC to swirl things around. This is a cheap way to save $ on water and more expensive chilling options IMO.


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fenners said:

This sounds like a setup I'd really like to try. What tubing/adaptors do I need to hook up one of those pumps to a IC with a standard gardenhose attachment on it?

Click to expand...

Figured it out. 5/8 inch inside diameter tubing & a 5/8 "garden hose male repair" connector that basically converts the other end of the tube into a garden hose that will attach to my IC. Success!

fenners said:

Figured it out. 5/8 inch inside diameter tubing & a 5/8 "garden hose male repair" connector that basically converts the other end of the tube into a garden hose that will attach to my IC. Success!

Click to expand...

Right the first time. That's exactly what I use.

This is going to be complicated but: if you combine a few ideas here you could have something interesting. Take the glycerol solution idea and run it through a counterflow chiller. If you could have that cold solution recirc through a refrigerator or freezer element you could be on to something.

I've seen pro breweries use liquid to air chillers. Pump hot wort through a radiator/heat exchanger with large fans mounted to it. Obviously this is less efficient since water > air but if the goal is to not run water then the best bet would be to recirc the wort through this type of chiller as fast as possible with a strong fan setup on each side of the exchanger in a push/pull.