wort chiller and warm tap water

I got my new 7.5 gal brew kettle and wort chiller last week, and tried them out on Sunday (just with water, to practice). Found as you would expect that Newton's law of cooling is still in effect, and what with tap water being somewhat warm during the summer, cooling slows down considerably as it approaches 90-100F, let alone 80F.

I don't want to jump into the expense of Jamil Z.'s solution of getting a pump and building a recirculating whirlpool thingy at this point. I debated in effect building a second device, in essence a 'tap water chiller' to sink into a tub of ice water so that the tap would get a chance to be chilled on it's way to the primary wort chiller. Decided against that mostly because of cost (would likely be at least $25+ in materials plus $8 for those pipe bender things) plus this is likely only going to be needed during the summer. Also debated trying to use my utility pump to force chilled water through the chiller - it has no flow regulation and somehow I doubt that putting a valve in front of the pump would be good for it's health...

So instead, I spent $12 for a 18 gal steel tub. Turns out not only is it more than wide enough to accomodate my kettle, the kettle rises slightly above the tub rim when placed inside. So I can shove more ice into the water bath and not have to worry much about the bath water getting into the wort.

My plan is to use just the wort chiller for the first 10 min or so until the wort temp gets down to around 120F (to avoid a really bad burn in the event of a spill) and then carefully place the kettle in the ice water bath for a extra thermal boost to get down to 80F.

I still might someday decide to build a second wort chiller, but this should help for now. If I go that route, I will probably try to tailor the new chiller to my brew kettle's measurements and use the original as the pre-chiller. My current chiller looks a bit small inside the kettle.

Has anyone else been bothered enough by the summer tap temp problem to take extra measures and if so what did you do?

I use a pre chiller covered in ice water after th wort is done to 100 degrees.

I'm thoroughly convinced that gravity feeding or pumping icewater into whatever chiller you use is the fastest way to do it (after the intitial chill down to 100F that is). Prechilling is second best but it requires more copper and is not as fast. The laws of thermodynamics prove that water in direct contact with ice will cool faster than water separated from the ice by a layer of copper and more water.

EdWort said:

I use a pre chiller covered in ice water after th wort is done to 100 degrees.

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that's my plan too. get it close to 100F, then pump a bathtub full of cold water and about a dozen 20oz water bottles that are frozen solid, to knock off the last 25 degrees.

luckily I already have the pump left over from my aquarium days.

I use a sump pump and run ice water through the chiller for the last 20-30 degrees. The prechiller I have was not as effective as the pump.

Here in AZ it's real tough to get tap water cold in the summer so I have the same problem with my immersion chiller so my method changed a bit. Ice bath while immersion chilling. It works great for the first 100 degrees, it's those last 40 that are tough to make.

Blender said:

I use a sump pump and run ice water through the chiller for the last 20-30 degrees. The prechiller I have was not as effective as the pump.

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This idea here with the sump pump connected to the chiller seems to be really easy solution.

Fill your tub/cooler full of ice water and submerge the sump pump, connect hoses, plug the thing in and let it do its thing.

Damn...I never thought to do such a thing before! Cool! I've got a nice sump pump that has a hose attachment that will run right into my IC. Freakin' sweet...it's been taking way too long in these summer months to get down to 70f.

I use my old IC as a pre-chiller now. I put it in a 5 gallon pot and dump all of the ice in my freezer in with some salt after the wort hits 100. Constant stirring of the ice water and the wort can get my wort down to around 66 degrees in the time it takes for the ice in the pot to melt fully. My tap water right now is around 80 degrees.

I thought of using my utility pump to pump ice water through my wort chiller, but the pump itself has no flow control or adjustable power, and I'm nervous about the idea of putting a valve between it and the chiller - would put back pressure on the pump and I'm not sure that's good for it (or maybe I'm worrying about it too much - those things are designed to pump the water down what might turn out to be a very long hose, and that's just another form of flow resistance). Anyone have any thoughts about the durability of utility/sump pumps in this application?

Hmm...the 18gal tub I just bought might just end up turning into a large ice water reservoir

I had 50' of copper tubing so I made two 25' wort chillers. I was going to sell one but I figured I'd try it out as a pre-chiller (in ice water bath) since my "cold" tap water was actually coming out luke warm in the summer. That worked better than the previous method of just partially submerging the pot in ice water.

I eliminated the pre-chiller on my most recent batch, and went back to setting the brew kettle in my cooler full of ice water, with the luke warm tap water running through a single immersion chiller in the wort. This actually cut my cooling times dramatically from either of the previous methods, and I find that I don't really need to bother with the extra clutter of a pre-chiller. I was hitting 80 degrees in about 10 minutes... I had to kill the water flow and remove the kettle from the ice water so I could finish sanitizing before the wort got too cold!

Of course, if you are doing large batches that make it difficult to submerge your brew pot in ice water, that would probably favor the pre-chiller method.

I have a pre-chiller that fits in a 5 gallon bucket. Then I put a sump pump I got from harbor freight in the bottom of the bucket. I'll use the prechiller until the wort drops down to 100* or so, then hook up the sump pump to the IC and pump the ice water through. I'll let it run until all the ice is melted (went through 60 pounds last weekend). I also have the Jamil whirlpool action going. Pitching temp on 12 gallons was 64*. Not sure how long it took to get to that. I just turn the thing on and walk away for awhile (went swimming with the kidos). Hopefully when the temps drop in the fall, I can get away with one bag of ice.

My brewbuddy Ed and I recently built a CFC and run icewater through it. Only used it once so far, but it seems to be very efficient. We went from boiling to 80df into the fermenter. Could probably improve on that with faster waterflow; We fed the icewater into the chiller by gravity.

Just brewed yesterday, which was the inaugural use of my wort chiller. I ended up filling the 18gal tub with tap water and a big bag of ice before I got started, to give the ice time to melt and cool the water. Once I got the wort temp down to around 110F I switched the input hose to my utility pump in the ice water bath. Had a bit of a nervous moment when the pump didn't do anything for a few seconds, but it turns out it needed to prime itself with less of a load in front of it (which I discovered by removing the hose from the pump). Once that was done, it worked fine, even with a ball valve restricting the flow.

Happy that worked out. I needed all of a 40lb bag of ice to do it though. At least this should be only a summertime issue here in PA.

That is the downside to brewing in the summertime. I'm going to brew my @ss off during the winter and fill every keg I own. Summertime is for drinking.

Mine.
No pump yet, but soon.

In Michigan my well water is in the 50 degree range on the hottest of days. I'm only about 10 minutes to cool my wort to 80, when I pitch it with 3 gallons of 60 degree water, it mixes to an almost perfect 70

I picked up a 200 GPM fountain pump at Lowes's today for $34. It came with a garden hose adapter. I'm brewing today, so I'll be giving it a try. I'm going to use tap water for the first 100 degrees and then I'll switch to the ice water recirculation with the pump. It will pump ice water through my 50 ft. mongo copper immersion from B3. I have 40 lbs of ice, so wish me luck. It's 95 degrees outside.

Pics to be posted tonight.

EdWort said:

I picked up a 200 GPM fountain pump at Lowes's today for $34. It came with a garden hose adapter. I'm brewing today, so I'll be giving it a try. I'm going to use tap water for the first 100 degrees and then I'll switch to the ice water recirculation with the pump. It will pump ice water through my 50 ft. mongo copper immersion from B3. I have 40 lbs of ice, so wish me luck. It's 95 degrees outside.

Pics to be posted tonight.

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I need one of those pumps.

Did you ever build your version of the Jamil wort recirculator?

BierMuncher said:

I need one of those pumps.

Did you ever build your version of the Jamil wort recirculator?

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Not yet. I need to get some copper tubing and I'm good. Just some sections of silicon hose connected the the march pump and I'm good to go. Perhaps a trip to Lowes again in the morning. Good thing they are only 5 minutes from the house.