HERMS Coil used for cooler?

Does anyone use the Herms coil in their HLT to cool their wort as well? I see the coil and I see a wort chiller, would it work if you filled the HLT with icewater and recirculated till the wort was down to temp? Just wondering because I have an immersion chiller i am getting ready to try and make into a HERMS coil in a new HLT. Any feedback is appreciated.

I actually just took my keggles to the shop yesterday to have this kind of outfit hooked up.

Currently I use a Sabco HLT, a Sabco boil kettle (BK), and a 10gal Rubbermaid cooler for the MLT. I am having the HLT and the BK fitted with inlet and outlet ports so I can use the stainless immersion chiller as a HERMS coil too.

I plan on conducting my mash with the coil hooked up as a HERMS coil. Hot wort will be circulated through the coil to maintain temps. Then after mash out, I'll remove the coil and conduct the sparge. I'll hook the coil up into the BK as the immersion chiller (I keep it in during the entire boil).

I figure with the wort heating up the water to a very hot temp, any wort that had a chance to dry in there will be flushed out. Plus, it's all hot side so "sanitary conditions" are not a necessity. After the chill, I'll run some hot water through the chiller and call it good.

Yep, I've done it!

Once.

It took 42 pounds of ice to cool 5 gallons of boiling wort to 70 degrees.

That was the first and only time I did that!

thats what I needed to know. I will not cut my immersion cooler and make it into a herms coil I will keep it as is for now however i will probably make it into a CFC instead because from what I have read they seem to work better, but i use my chiller with hoses running to a waterfall pump in a cooler with ice water and it works really well right now as it is.

72Chevelle said:

Does anyone use the Herms coil in their HLT to cool their wort as well?

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Totally misread this post. Sorry. Yes, I do the above. But I re-purpose my immersion chiller as a HERMS coil.

72Chevelle said:

would it work if you filled the HLT with icewater and recirculated till the wort was down to temp?

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This I have never done and won't for reasons elaborated by Yooper above.

I have a HERMS coil in my HLT/BK in my 2 vessel system. Use the herms as a chiller by running cold water thru it. Cools my beer and cleans the HERMS

I use my HERMS coil as a pre-chiller for my plate chiller in the summer when groundwater temps are usually in the 70s, makes a big difference. I believe mine's a 50' 1/2". I thought about running the hot wort right through it as a chiller, but as Yooper pointed out I'd have to swap ice out over and over, seemed like a pain.

I have a 3/8" stainless HERMS coil that was actually an immersion chiller I chopped up.

I use it every time as a chiller. Just fill my HLT with cold tap water, start circulating hot wort through the HERMS.

I've found that tap water is usually able to get me down to the 100-110* mark pretty quickly...after my wort has cycled through completely, usually by what I'd call the "second pass" it gets down to the 80-90* range...especially if i'm constantly draining the hot water out of my HLT and adding cold tap water from the top. This keeps the water around my coil fairly cool, and I stir pretty much constantly. From there, I add about 10lbs of ice, stir, continuing to recycle my HLT water as well. By the time my wort cycles through again, it's usually within pitching range (65-70*).

after running this setup (cooling in the hlt via coil), ive since switched to a plate chiller.

yes it was efficient, yes it worked, but it added time to the brew day.. by using a plate chiller, i dont need to clean the coil out (i run hot sparge water thru it)..

i do 10 gal batches, and with a 30 plate chiller i can go straight from bk to fermenter (we'll see how ground water is in the summer).. rather than a 30-45min cool down period in hlt (i have 50 ft by 1/2 tubing in hlt)

I cut up my old immersion chiller to use as the HERMS coil in my HLT. Works great for that purpose.

My POS plate-chiller couldn't cool my wort down to pitching temps unless it was trickling out at about a gallon an hour. So, after the boil I refill my HLT with cold water (my tap water is 40 degrees or lower up here in NW Montana) run the hot wort through the HERMS coil and then through the plate chiller in one pass. I can run the pump full blast and get 60 degree wort going into the fermentor. Works fantastic.

I think the immersion chiller is 3/8" by 25 ft, copper.

(at the end of the cooling I flush the HERMS & plate chiller with the now-warm water in the HLT, then refill the HLT with half RO water for the next brew)

50lbs worth of ice is roughly $6.00 at any beer distributor. I basically have to pack ice over my Therminator, anyway, so there's really no reason not to try this in my mind. I make 17gal+ batches and have a 50' ½'' stainless coil sitting in my kitchen. If it's efficient, great. If it's inefficient, I keep my Therminator.

RobertColianni said:

50lbs worth of ice is roughly $6.00 at any beer distributor. I basically have to pack ice over my Therminator, anyway, so there's really no reason not to try this in my mind. I make 17gal+ batches and have a 50' ½'' stainless coil sitting in my kitchen. If it's efficient, great. If it's inefficient, I keep my Therminator.

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You need to have it mixed with water the ice. If you just pack ice around the chiller, the ice around the chiller will just melt leaving a "cacoon" around it and the other ice won't be doing anything.