How to use an Immersion Wort Chiller in the winter

I am looking to jump into all grain brewing after Christmas. I plan on brewing outdoors with a propane burner, but I am trying to figure out how to use an immersion wort chiller to cool the wort. What is everyone else doing out there? I certainly do not want to make a frozen lake on my driveway or in my yard with the exhaust water.
Any advice on outdoor brewing techniques (especially chilling the wort) will be appreciated.
Thanks!:rockin:

You could just drain it into some buckets

It's too cold here to run a hose outside (I brew inside anyway) but I would do it if I had to. You can drain your wort chiller out into the yard (not the driveway) and at least the ice will be out of your way where you'd fall.

That's a good idea,
Of course I would have to turn the water off everytime the buckets filled up and run into my basement to drain it.
Might be my only option though.

Are you using your outside tap? Any risk of that freezing?

I would be using my outdoor spigot, I didn't think about it freezing on me.
Maybe I can just brew in my unfinished basement with the windows open. I can pick up a carbon monoxide detector to keep myself from falling over and use my laundry basin for the chiller. Hmmmmm..........

Honestly I'd just get some more tubing and telescope it onto the out hose of the chiller. Then you can route the water wherever you think is best. Do you have a sewer drain nearby?

If it were me, I would still use your garden hose, but would connect it to your "cold" faucet for your washer (to prevent the tap from freezing due to outside temps) and then just drain into an isolated area of the back yard that people don't need frequent access to. Unless you're in the middle of a big cold snap, the ice shouldn't stick around long.

Otherwise, whenever i'm running my exhaust water from my CFC, I drag the hose across the front yard, and tuck the end of it directly into the runoff drain in the street curb. Then the water is in nobody's way.

If it's cold enough outside, you could hook it to the sprinkler, and wind up with a hell of an icicle display for the neighbors?

I'll be running my outlet hose into the side yard. I'm not concerned with my grass freezing.

Thanks for all the advice guys. I am already starting to plan this out. I will probably run the water into my chiller from the washer (good idea) and run the exhaust into my laundry basin to drain. This will still allow the burner to be outdoors. I just hope I can still get a boil during a chicago winter. We shall see.

StankAle said:

Thanks for all the advice guys. I am already starting to plan this out. I will probably run the water into my chiller from the washer (good idea) and run the exhaust into my laundry basin to drain. This will still allow the burner to be outdoors. I just hope I can still get a boil during a chicago winter. We shall see.

Click to expand...

I boil in the winter - not really a problem. Of course, I've never really done a COLD, COLD day. I just run the hose like I normally do. I drain right into the grass.

Being a Chicagoian, you should know that the weather changes fairly often here. I've never really had a problem with ice sticking around very long.

Run the hose into you bath tub. Then you can take a bath with all the hot water you collected. Think of it as free hot water. You'll be conserving water and energy. Or save the hot water in your laundry tub and use it for the clean up.

Maybe Al Gore will nominate you for a Noble Prize. Don't forget to credit me in your acceptance speech.

Hey, that bathtub idea is interesting -- you could also use the 1st 1/2 (the hottest half) of the exhaust water to fill up your washer - then, just turn it on and go for a warm-wash cycle! That's actually a really good way to stay green while brewing!

You can also run the exhaust water back into your HLT for cleanup water

What about recirculating ice water in a bucket? I know normally people start with hose water and then shift to recirc with ice once the temp drops below a certain point to conserve ice, but if it's winter and you've got snow available it seems perfectly acceptable to start right out with ice water (err, snow water) recirculation immediately. Or, at the very least, if there's no snow yet, just bring a couple buckets of tap water outside when you first start brewing, so it'll get pretty cold by the time you're ready to chill, and use that until it seems appropriate to start using ice from the freezer.

Might be able to get away with only a couple buckets worth of water this way - come out with a bucket with a small amount of water in it, add a little snow, and keep adding more as you're able, without getting the pump stuck. If it gets full and all the snow is melted, dump a little water over into another bucket, move the pump over, and repeat.

If it is cold enough to freeze on contact with the ground, do you really nered a wort chiller?

Funk, I think he's doing it without a pump. Same for me, I'm gravity based.

Tenchiro, I can vouch that it doesn't usually get quite that cold at our latitude. (I'm in Nebr., which has fairly similar climate patterns to the Chicago area).... We do have to worry about faucets freezing or burst hoses, but it's not usually a freeze-on-contact kind of thing. Unless we're in the middle of one heck of a blizzard, that is....

Nothing like the temps my friend in Saskatchewan sees though. We gripe about 10F below 0 (and that's on a REALLY cold day hereabouts). They routinely see 50F below 0, many multiple times per winter.

I run my hot water into a bucket and use it to dunk the chiller in after use to clean off the hops and gunk. I quit filling it after a few gallons because I want to clean it off with hot rather than luke warm water.

chriso said:

Hey, that bathtub idea is interesting -- you could also use the 1st 1/2 (the hottest half) of the exhaust water to fill up your washer - then, just turn it on and go for a warm-wash cycle! That's actually a really good way to stay green while brewing!

Click to expand...

I have a friend that does that. I've been meaning to try it too.

Funkenjaeger said:

What about recirculating ice water in a bucket? I know normally people start with hose water and then shift to recirc with ice once the temp drops below a certain point to conserve ice, but if it's winter and you've got snow available it seems perfectly acceptable to start right out with ice water (err, snow water) recirculation immediately. Or, at the very least, if there's no snow yet, just bring a couple buckets of tap water outside when you first start brewing, so it'll get pretty cold by the time you're ready to chill, and use that until it seems appropriate to start using ice from the freezer.

Might be able to get away with only a couple buckets worth of water this way - come out with a bucket with a small amount of water in it, add a little snow, and keep adding more as you're able, without getting the pump stuck. If it gets full and all the snow is melted, dump a little water over into another bucket, move the pump over, and repeat.

Click to expand...

Beat me to it. EdWort made one. I plan on trying it when the weather gets colder:

http://homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=38235

Do this on a day where temps are not below freezing. Fill a bucket up with water and ice and use a march pump to pump water from the bucket into the chiller and back into the bucket. Only one bucket of water used the entire time.

Bernie Brewer said:

Beat me to it. EdWort made one. I plan on trying it when the weather gets colder:

Click to expand...

Yep, I plan to do the same. I live in an apartment, and while there's plenty of lawn area around the place for brewing, the only hose hookup has one of those keyed valves so we can't use it. My only real choice would be to run a long garden hose from the sink, through the living room, and out a window, which wouldn't please the roommates when it's freezing outside.

Got an "eco plus" 396GPH pump on ebay for $25 shipped, should show up tomorrow. I picked it over other similar ones because it is supposed to come with a basic hose barb fitting, whereas most other fountain pumps come with a bunch of fittings that are worthless for trying to connect any standard fittings to to adapt to a garden hose thread.

chriso said:

Nothing like the temps my friend in Saskatchewan sees though. We gripe about 10F below 0 (and that's on a REALLY cold day hereabouts). They routinely see 50F below 0, many multiple times per winter.

Click to expand...

I watch our regional and national weather on a daily basis and it is rare
to see that low a temperture anywhere outside the artic unless you are talking about windchill.

boo boo said:

I watch our regional and national weather on a daily basis and it is rare to see that low a temperture anywhere outside the artic unless you are talking about windchill.

Click to expand...

She measured the temps, not me. Regina Sask, for reference, and not in the past 2-3 years, prior to that. She has moved a couple times since then. So we would have been talking about roughly 2001-2004?

Yeah, not saying it don't get cold. Sask would be on par with the Dakotas.
Either way much too cold for my liking, lol. My climate is pretty moderate for Canada.

Two other options:

1) Get the little adapter thingy to connect your chiller to your kitchen sink faucet

2) run your garden hose through a window or something and have it drain in your kitchen sink, laundry room sink, etc.

I would move.
I hate winter.

I‘m also getting ready for winter brewing and am trying to work out the wort cooling in freezing temperatures. My outside water spigot is 40 feet from my detached garage, so I’m confident the hose will freeze before I can use it. My plan (vision) is to take one of my Igloo IceCube coolers and position it about 5 or 6 feet off the ground and fill it with cold water. I would also have about 3 or 4 5 gallon buckets filled with cold water to re-fill as necessary. With my current IC, I run the water at about 1 gallon a minute and get down to 65-70 degrees in 20 minutes, so that's how I came up with the additional water required. I assume I wont have to worry about losing water temperature because the water should gstay colder because of the winter temperatures. I Live in Hammond IN, that’s about 20+ miles from downtown Chicago. My plan is for the IceCube cooler to feed water via gravity to the IC and the out hose to 5 gallon buckets, saving the first two buckets for cleanup.
Will the 5-6 feet (pressure) be enough in height to feed the cold water to the IC and hot water to exit? Has anybody else tried this? Or am I whistling in the cold.

Thanks

tom

As long as you don't have a lake wind going, you should be able to brew. They have to be worst part of winter in Chicago.

Take your hot water as it comes from your chiller and fill your bath tub.
Make sure it does not over flow! Let it cool into your home over night. It will return the heat to the house air with some very much needed humidity.
You will not be wasting all that expensive fuel.

r