Recirculating Ice Water Chiller

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EdWort

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I've read a number of posts from folks in hot areas like Texaz & Arizona that are recirculating ice water for their chillers. I used to use a prechiller, but not any more. I stopped by Lowes yesterday and picked up a 200 GPH fountain pump, 15 ft. of garden hose, and some hose fittings. I made my own ice water recirculator for about $45.

Chiller2.jpg


You can use any cooler, but I had my party keg cooler handy.

Chiller1.jpg


I connected it to my mongo 50 ft. copper immersion chiller from B3 after I brought the temp down to 100 degrees with tap water.

I added water and 40# of ice and cranked her up. It was running great.

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I had to move the chiller up and down a few times, but it brought my wort down to temp in no time. I ended up pitching my Wyeast 3068 starter at 68 degrees when I was done. I'm very happy with my purchase and when I start the Jamil Wort Recirulating System, I'll be able to chill to lager temps in a fraction of time. Great idea and saves water!

Chiller3.jpg
 
I've been thinking about doing this for a while, and all of the recent posts gave me a lot more confidence. Now I need to find that old submersible aquarium pump...
 
Not a bad idea, Ed! I could use that in wintertime if only to keep from turning my driveway into an ice skating rink. I'll definitely have to give this some thought!
 
Bernie Brewer said:
Not a bad idea, Ed! I could use that in wintertime if only to keep from turning my driveway into an ice skating rink. I'll definitely have to give this some thought!

Thanks, but I learned about it here on HBT. I think it was Bobby_M who came up with it.

It fricking rocks now! It will make AlGore proud! :D
 
Sweet set up. I am tired of shaking my prechiller up and down to keep fresh-iced water up against the copper.

Oh...and uh...Ed?

I want my banjo burner back. You can keep the cinder block.
 
BierMuncher said:
Sweet set up. I am tired of shaking my prechiller up and down to keep fresh-iced water up against the copper.

Oh...and uh...Ed?

I want my banjo burner back. You can keep the cinder block.

Yeah, I have a 25 ft. copper chiller for sale. :D

I guess the burnt paint on the Banjo is a dead giveway. Send the UPS guy. :cross:
 
I've been doing the same thing for a couple of months now. I also set up the Jamil whirlpool reciculation pump and can pull my temps down to the mid 60's fairly easily. I think it will take a little more ice to get down to lager temps. I went through almost 60 pounds of ice a couple of weeks ago, of course it was 105 here that day and most of the ice melted before I got it into the bucket. I think it will rock in the cooler months coming up.
 
On my last batch I tried something similar but since I hate the idea of paying for ice, I put two 6 gallon buckets of water into my fermentation freezer. I set the controller on 35F and then went on to start my brewday. Now, you could argue that I spent as much in electricity as I would going out and buy ice, but I also didn't have to leave the house. Time is money.

To put it into perspecitive, it would take about a 10lb bag of ice to get 6 gallons of 85F tap water down into the low 30's. It's nice to start with water that cold to begin with. Of course, if you don't use a freezer as your fermentation cabinet then you don't even have this option.
 
This is one of the next things on my "To Buy" list, but I am working on setting up kegging so it might be a while.

What does everyone think about adding salt to the ice to get the temp down real low? I have 25' immersion chiller and am hoping to have it set-up like this to cool my first lager.
 
Salt reduces the freezing temp of water, but I will not run salt water through my copper chiller or pump just for a few extra degrees.
 
It would be OK if you flush it out aftwards but that's just another step in a long brewday ya know? I've gotten icewater down to zero degrees F with some rock salt. That is some serious cooling potential but make sure you have a lot of ice.
 
An Idea I've been tossing around in the back of my mind is freezing a copper immersion chiller in a bucket of water. I have a spare chiller to do this with and I was thinking about freezing it inside a 3gal bucket of water. Then running the tap water for my CFC through the frozen chiller first. I need to check the flow, but if the flow through the frozen chiller, and then through the CFC is high enough, I think it would be effective. This sound doable to the board, or am I wasting my time?
 
I've thought about this too but there's a fatal flaw. The ice will melt around the coil but you still won't be able to agitate that water/ice to keep hot water from staying near the coil. In a regular icewater bath, at least you can stir.

Besides.. prechillers in any capacity are not as good as pumping/flowing the icewater directly.
 
Bobby_M said:
Besides.. prechillers in any capacity are not as good as pumping/flowing the icewater directly.

Yep and it's cheaper to put together than 25' pre chiller. Better performance, less cost and less waste.
 
I just recently got a 60' prechilling coil and have been considering useing dry ice for it. My only hesitation is it might freeze the water in the coil, any thoughts?
 
Ed-

You're getting me all worked up to do the liquid plumbing on my rig! I'm totally on board with Jamil's whirlpool pump method. I got a couple ideas I'll throw into the mix when I get them all worked out ;)
 
ScubaSteve said:
Dry ice is expensive....see Ed's comments Re: Al Gore:D
Unless you capture the evaporating (Sublimating, technically) CO2 and use it to preflush some kegs or something.
Ok, I guess that's a real stretch.
 
weetodd said:
Is there anything special you need to connect the pump to the hose?

Nope, the 200 GPH pump comes with a garden hose adapter. It said so on the packaging which is why I chose it.
 
I tried this for the first time yesterday on an 11 gal batch. Our ground water here is 85', so the best my CFC will do with a single pass is ~ 90'. Recirculating through the CFC to get the whole batch cool enough where the ice water would then get the wort to 75' took longer than I expected.

I think my submersible is only 160 gal/hr, and I felt that I really needed a bigger pump. I didn't cycle the used water back into my bucket. I was using a 5 gal water cooler, and it was too small. I kept having to monitor the water level and add more ice and hose water (which probably wasn't much different than the exit water now that I think of it). Next time I'll use a big cooler and start with all the ice (I think 40 lbs) to begin with.

Anyway, it was my first try with it. Hopefully next time things will go a little easier.
 
i've been doing this procedure for a while now and i can attest that it does work. i freeze water in empty water bottles or propel bottles to use in the cooler.

in the dead of august i will use my imc as one would regularly do to coll things down to the 100 degree mark , which is just about the limit in august , then crank in the ice water chiller and bam...temp drop in short period of time.
 
Absolutely brilliant. I just made this chiller. It was one of the most satisfying 30 minute projects I've ever completed. The cost was ~$50 for the copper, pump, tubing and connectors. It dropped my temps to ~75F in less than 15 minutes using about 3 gallons of ice water. Amazing!


Thanks!
Scott
 
I have found that hot whirlpooling works best for me and the counterflow chiller will cool a 12 gallon batch in 8 minutes. If I want to get colder than 80 for lagers I just place my 1/2 inch x 50 foot imersion coil in an ice water bath and hook it inline before the counterflow inlet water. I then throttle the wort as fast or slow as I need to get 50 degrees into the fermenter.
 
brewhead said:
i've been doing this procedure for a while now and i can attest that it does work. i freeze water in empty water bottles or propel bottles to use in the cooler.

in the dead of august i will use my imc as one would regularly do to coll things down to the 100 degree mark , which is just about the limit in august , then crank in the ice water chiller and bam...temp drop in short period of time.


I like the idea of using water bottles and simply pulling some out of the freezer if I need addtional cooling.
 
use the smaller bottles. i know the tendency will be to use big gatorate 1 gallon jugs. but the ice will melt away from the surface and then will not do it's thing as well
 
How about this...

Using a 10 gallon cooler with say 5-10 small water bottles filled with ice, the rest of the cooler filled with water. Recirculate the water until the temp of the water in the HLT becomes too high and ineffective (ice has melted). Grab another 5-10 water bottles that are frozen to replace the initial ones. NO buying ice, totally reuseable and I will still only use the initial 5-7 gallons of water. I have a chest freezer in which to freeze and store my ICE bottles. My HLT has a digital thermometer through the wall so that I will be able to monitor when my ice bottles have been exhausted.
 
The guy wondering about freezing his chiller into a block of ice...

Don't do it. I poured a 10lb bag of ice on top of my chiller one day and left it for a few minutes, as soon as I turned the water on, it instantly froze as it came into the cooler. Did it's job a little too well I guess. I had to pull the chiller out and run it under water for a minute to get the water flowing again.
 
Nope! None at all! I JUST finished brewing up your 'krisper kolsch' like a half hour ago BM. The pump worked fantastically! I started the recirc at around 130 and pulled it down to 60 in maybe 15min (I didn't really keep count, I'm just guessing) I honestly think next time I'm going to try JUST recircing.....I know it'll melt more ice but it's SOOO much easier than dealing with the hose (my IC almost ALWAYS leaks a little water into my wort when I use the hose...the pump didn't have that problem) plus it'll save water (theoretically)

OK, I'm hot, tired and have had maybe too many beers......time for a sandwich and a nap :drunk:
 
I used a pump like that, and some black irrigation tubing to create a solar heater for one of those inflatable swimming pools that are popping up all over the place these days. Works pretty good.
 
This is my next project for my Brutus. Im going to fill the my HLT with ICE water a few minutes before the end of the boil. Then use the ice water to go either through my IC or get a nice CFC. Not sure yet, Im going to have to see how well the IC works with ice water flowing through it as opposed to the 80* ground water I have right now.

I think block ice will be the way to go over ice cubes. The block will hold up much better to the very hot returning water from the IC


I love pumps
 

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