Plate Chiller/Heat Exchanger procedure

I have been trying various methods of cooling 10 gallon batches. Today's experiment was with a Plate Chiller. Ground Water temp was 67F and recirculating the wort back to the BK got me down under 100F pretty fast. Did not time it but it was 5 minutes or so. Getting down to 85F took along time and I finally gave up.

All the plate chiller posts in the past always talk about getting close to water temperatures in one pass, what am I doing wrong? I ran the wort and water at full speed.

It's this model 30 Plate Stainless Steel Copper Brazed Heat Exchanger - eBay (item 350247518391 end time Oct-01-09 13:10:45 PDT)

btw - the ease of use and small foot print make this my ideal chiller, if it would only chill better.

samc said:

I ran the wort and water at full speed.

Click to expand...

Slow down your wort..Let the chiller do it's job.

You're recirculating back into the BK but what is the temp of the wort coming out of the chiller? The whole one pass thing requires the coolant to be run almost wide open while the wort is throttled to about half. At least that's what I've seen with smaller chillers like the Shirron and the one you got. The output of the chiller can be run back to the BK for as long as you want, but I'd only do so until you verify the output temp is low enough, then reroute to the fermenter.

Yeah, once your BK is down close to 100, the exit temp from the plate chiller should be cool enough that you can start draining to your fermenter. I think most people probably use them this way.