wort chilling question

so ive been thinking of a way to chill my wort faster, and ive came up with this idea, but dont know if it will work.

basically after the boil, i would drain the wort through a copper pipe that runs throgh a cooler filled with ice, and i would put a ball valve so i could regulate the speed that the wort comes out so it could have maximum cooling.

do you guys think this would work?

If you have a valve on your boil kettle, then yes- this probably would work.

ill be building my keggle this weekend, so ill have a valve on it, ive been thinking of the best ways to cool my wort, and i think this will be a relativly cheap way to to do it, i think i would be able to use the same cooler as my mash tun...

if you coiled the copper running through the cooler, that would be badass. It probably wouldn't have to run through super slow, depending on the length of the copper line. I bet if you bought some 3/8 copper tubing, wrapped it around a coffee can, and ran it through that ice water, it would work great. Good idea

The rate of heat transfer from the wort to the ice water is a function of time and temperature difference between the 2 fluids. For this to work properly you will need a recirculating system or you will need to regulate the flow very carefully. If you recirculate the wort temperature will eventually equalize with the bath temperature. If you run the wort straight through the bath, you will need a long resonnance time in the bath to get the wort cool. Also in both cases you will need to add ice through out the process as the wort gives up its heat, the bath temp will rise and your cooling will begin to slow.

Did any of you try this and if so, did it work out? I was thinking about doing the same with silicone tubing.

SchulteMeister said:

Did any of you try this and if so, did it work out? I was thinking about doing the same with silicone tubing.

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This thread was last replied to last June so odds are you wont get a reply from the original participants. But basically the answer is you can cool beer this way but probably shouldn't. What was described is a Jockey Box. But it is not going to work well unless you have a very large cooler with lots of ice water, a long coil, and move the wort very slowly. In other words it is going to be very inefficient so you will be much better off using an immersion wort chiller which allows for a continuous heat exchange system that you can run for as long as it takes without worrying about recirculation or replacing the ice water. And trying to do it with Silicone tubing isn't going to work at all because it's an insulator, not a conductor.