what is the most "water conserving" method of cooling wort quickly?

Randar said:

Yep, and if you're one of those double brew day folks, you can get a head start on your mash or sparge water heating.

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This is what I do! I use a CFC.

Another use for the used cooling water is to pour it all into buckets and pour it from the buckets into your washing machine for the next load.

To answer the OP's question, a plate chiller would be your best bet, or you could no-chill and use no water.

If this has already been mentioned, I apologize. You can hook up a garden hose to the outlet end of your immersion chiller, attach a sprinkler and water your lawn. Or use the outlet end to start doing dishes.

With caution... the first 5-10 gallons of IC outflow is usually near 200F and a good way to kill your lawn. It would actually be better used to kill any stray weeks you have growing around your paved surfaces.

Yeah, generally I agree that it's impossible to "waste" water. It will just return as part of the cycle, of course. But for people that live in areas where their water supply verges on at-capacity during the summer, everyone generally tries to conserve. Some to be nice and not wasteful, some to save on expensive water bills.

The water I use comes from a river, which comes from many smaller rivers and streams. What I take out of it and then proceed to dump on the lawn won't make it back to that river this summer when it's needed, if ever. Granted, it will go somewhere and be (probably) used by someone, but that's a different story. It actually gets back to that river faster if I dump it in the city drainage!

Immersian chillers are nowhere near as fast as plate / counterflow chillers for 2 reasons: total surface area, and more importantly, you can do one-pass chilling. One-pass is where you maximize your chilling water flow, and slow your wort flow to the point where it is coming out of the chiller at your pitching temp. Can't do this with an immersion chiller.

Saving water is easy if you use a submersible pump and an available body of water. Keeping a tank of rainwater would work (these are becoming pretty common). I use my pool. Just run the return water back to whence it came.

I just don't like wasting water, even though I live minutes from Lake Erie. I've been running a cooling loop (with a HF pond pump) from an ice filled 7gal cooler through my 40 plate CF chiller. I use cubes & blocks & just a bit of "starter water"-when all is said & done I have about 5-5 1/2 gal of water that I use for clean up. It's faster than tap water too.

-d

passedpawn said:

I use my pool. Just run the return water back to whence it came.

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What do you do when your pool is 90+ degrees?

I don't understand why people don't just freeze a 4L of filtered water like I do and add it to the wort instead of spending gobs of money on wort chillers that also waste so much water. It brings the wort down to about 25 degrees or less and then I can pitch my yeast. Can someone explain why this method isn't used more??

snowbeavers said:

I don't understand why people don't just freeze a 4L of filtered water like I do and add it to the wort instead of spending gobs of money on wort chillers that also waste so much water. It brings the wort down to about 25 degrees or less and then I can pitch my yeast. Can someone explain why this method isn't used more??

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Because many of the people here are brewing All Grain or are doing full wort extract boils, neither of which allow for adding water (or ice) post boil.

snowbeavers said:

I don't understand why people don't just freeze a 4L of filtered water like I do and add it to the wort instead of spending gobs of money on wort chillers that also waste so much water. It brings the wort down to about 25 degrees or less and then I can pitch my yeast. Can someone explain why this method isn't used more??

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I've done this, even with all grain. I did so because I couldn't bring 6+ gallons to a boil on my electric stove and because I didn't have a chiller and was concerned about the amount of time to bring the temperature down post-boil. However, there are some "costs" in doing this. First, since you will be using less water pre-boil, your efficiency (if doing all grain) will be lower. This means your grain bill will be higher. Second, since you are boiling the hops additions in less water, they are less effective and you will have to up the hops to get the same bitterness ratio. I know this sounds weird (my lhbs first told me and I've confirmed it in using beersmith). So, you hops costs will be higher.

bja said:

What do you do when your pool is 90+ degrees?

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I don't let my pool get over 85. But of course, that's not a good pitching temp.

I have a chest freezer right next to the pool. I drop the 85F carboy into the chest freezer. It's always down to temp in a mater of a few hours. I'm good with that.

I've used a pre-chiller IC (for after I'd get to 85), but I don't like to bother with ice anymore.

Simply adjust the flow... If the IC output is not significantly warmer than the input then the flow is too high.

Since I'm brewing in a shed that doesn't have any real plumbing, I direct the hot water coming out of my chiller to an old 40 gallon water heater tank I have in there (not hooked up to any gas) I can then pump the hot water back for all my cleaning needs for that brew day, without having to haul all my stuff up to my house to clean it.

philjohnwilliams said:

Because many of the people here are brewing All Grain or are doing full wort extract boils, neither of which allow for adding water (or ice) post boil.

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Thanks. I realized this after talking with my friend last night. I have been doing partial grains instead of full grains so this made sense to me.

I use a conventional immersion chiller and run the output into a 15 gallon plastic tub. When that tub's filled I stop the flow. (Water in the tub gets used for garden as needed.) Generally that takes the temp to around 100º, a lot lower in the winter. I transfer the wort to a muslin wrapped fermentor set up as a swamp cooler with small evaporator fan at this point. Usually takes another couple of hours to chill to pitching temps. If it's summer time I just continue the swamp cooler operation for the first 4 or 5 days of fermenting.

A 5# block of Dry Ice

The lady that owned my house before me was a little... off.

The water supply to the house was a "gravity fed spring system." That is, in the woods behind the house, up a hill which situated it higher than the second floor of the house, was an open pool about 10'x10', unknown depth, partialy covered with a tarp supported by 2x4's. At the bottom of the pool was a copper pipe that ran down hill to the basement, where it connected to the houses water supply pipes. The pool is full of leaves, frogs, and god knows what else. It was goddamn disgusting.

As a condition of sale, she had a new well installed. But they left the old water feed in place in the basement, just capped it with a ball valve. So that's what I use for watering the plants outside, and for feeding my immersion cooler. I just take extra care that the water is contained and doesn't leak into the wort. I don't feel too concerned about where the water goes after heating up, as its not potable, and not doing anyone any good as is.

Here is something I found interesting...should put everyones mind at ease on wasting some water for homebrewing...I wouldn't worry about it....

http://www.hbmwd.com/site_documents/HSU 10-28-09 Research water intensive industries.pdf

No one mentions agitating the wort with IC chillers. Its all about delta T. Grab a glove and stir/shake that chiller baby....... as you run the chiller the wort closest to the chiller will cool down, leaving a transition layer near the coils that has very low temp differential.

Agitating the wort makes keeps the hottest possible wort right next to the cold coils and maintains efficiency. Uses half the water.

Plate chillers (in addition to huge surface area) naturally have turbulent flow

If you use liquid yeast, it will give you a real nice headstart on aeration as well

schmagy said:

If you use liquid yeast, it will give you a real nice headstart on aeration as well

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I don't understand - would you say more, please?

Pappers_ said:

I don't understand - would you say more, please?

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He's referring to the fact that dry yeast doesn't really need to be aerated, whereas liquid yeast (or repitched yeast from ANY source) does.

However, experiments done by the yeast companies to determine dissolved oxygen levels using various methods of aeration/oxygenation have concluded that "stirring" (and similar methods) is the absolute worst method, and barely gets any O2 into solution... so it's really a piss-poor way of getting a "head start", and shouldn't be counted on.

Not to mention the whole issue of HSA (Hot Side Aeration), which many brewers dismiss as "just another brewing boogeyman", despite their being significant merit to the entire concept. Not to mention that said dismissive brewers invariably rely on fallacious logic, and/or a poor understanding of the pertinent science.

For those that use ice to cool water in a container and circulate that an additional way of conserving water would be to use gallon jugs, or 2L bottles filled with ICE that can be re-frozen so when the ice melts you are not just dumping the water. I realize this requires a lot of freezer space, but it does reduce your overall water usage even further.

Hey now, my grandmother had a gravity-fed spring box. We did have to climb into it one winter to get rid of a dead frog, but no one died.
As for water waste, I use a counterflow chiller, and hook the output water up to my soaker hose in the garden. Kill two birds.

schmagy said:

No one mentions agitating the wort with IC chillers. Its all about delta T. Grab a glove and stir/shake that chiller baby....... as you run the chiller the wort closest to the chiller will cool down, leaving a transition layer near the coils that has very low temp differential.

Agitating the wort makes keeps the hottest possible wort right next to the cold coils and maintains efficiency. Uses half the water.

Plate chillers (in addition to huge surface area) naturally have turbulent flow

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I have always "stirred" the IC around in a circle as it was cooling and recently starting using one of the "in carboy drill attachment aerators" to just whirlpool the wort around the IC as it cools.

emjay said:

Not to mention the whole issue of HSA (Hot Side Aeration), which many brewers dismiss as "just another brewing boogeyman", despite their being significant merit to the entire concept. Not to mention that said dismissive brewers invariably rely on fallacious logic, and/or a poor understanding of the pertinent science.

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I would say that Charlie Bamforth at UC Davis understands the pertinent science far better than anyone on this board and he disagrees with you wholeheartedly.

We have way more energy than fresh water, so using ice seems like a good idea to me. Freezing containers and reusing them in what ever cooling system you are using.

philjohnwilliams said:

Because many of the people here are brewing All Grain or are doing full wort extract boils, neither of which allow for adding water (or ice) post boil.

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Instead of adding ice that will melt into your wort, could you add an ice pack that you sanitized to your wort?

In the winter, when spigot water temps are relatively cold, I use the IC and stir method to bring the wort relatively close to pitching temps. In the hot months I use the IC only until temp reaches under 110º or so, and try to capture most of the water for the garden watering. I use a combination of crudely-rigged swamp cooler and ice packs to do the final chill to pitching temps. Not perfect I guess, but it's worked okay so far.