Wort Cooling method

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What kind of Chiller

  • Immersion

  • Plate Chiller

  • Other


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crzepilot

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I am curious as to the preferred method of cooling wort of the folks here, I started off with the pot in the tub of ice which got a lot of water all over the place, I built an immersion chillers that I really enjoyed and thought that it did a fine job, I thought I would try and take it to another level thinking that a plate chiller would do me good and I'm just not enjoying it. Any advice on effectively using this plate chiller, I just can't seem to get the wort down to an acceptable temperature with out finagling. I'm not really seeing this fit in my system anymore but I dropped $$$ on a pump and the chiller thinking it would make my brew day go smoother but it is more or less a huge headache for me.
 
Just voted "other" because I use a counter-flow chiller.

Is there anything specific you do to get the cooling water down to a sufficient enough temperature to cool the wort in one run? And do you recirculate the coolant water or do you just run it down the drain?And how difficult is the sanitization of that device?
 
This is why I don’t like multiple choice, way too limiting. “Bathtub and chilled water tub” wasn’t up there.
 
I put immersion, but I utilize a simple pre-chiller. Chill most of the way (ie down to about 100F) with the immersion chiller (if I stir the chiller constantly it takes about 5-10 minutes), then use the prechiller. From tap through second inline immersion chiller in a bucket of ice and water, then through wort chiller, and back out. I intend to eventually go with a submersible pump cycling ice water through the immersion chiller in the wort.
 
Immersion chiller works best for me. My situation is different from most folks though. My well provides enough water in the mid-50's to let me do my thing year round at the cost of cheap electricity. I sometimes feel bad for you guys in the cities and other deserts. To soothe my angst takes a lot of brewing :p
 
With a pump you have any option out there available to you. I use a CFC and it works ok. I've thought about buying a plate chiller, but I've read they can be finicky with wort flow and clogging.

If you have an IC there is no reason not to use the pump to recirculate the wort. It will make the IC somewhat more effective.

If you still want to use the PC you can recirculate and not worry about flow rate. Just open it wide and set the output back into the kettle. That's what I do with the CFC I have now that it's on a pump.
 
crzepilot said:
Is there anything specific you do to get the cooling water down to a sufficient enough temperature to cool the wort in one run? And do you recirculate the coolant water or do you just run it down the drain?And how difficult is the sanitization of that device?

I don't use a pre-chiller if that's what you mean. I probably should though. I try to use the outgoing water on the lawn or to clean up equipment. Sanitation hasn't been a problem yet. I clean it immediately after use by running water through it. Then prior to using again I run boiling water through it. Then sanitized water immediately before use.
 
I use immersion, but am looking for ways to make it work better as it's the big floppy fail in my process. I live in San Diego so my water is always warm, it takes me about 20-30 minutes to get wort down to the mid 80's and then it won't budge. From that point its a silly dance of ice and refrigerators.

Looking back I would actually consider a basic copper chiller as a failed device, since it does cool, but stops short of cooling to the point where you can continue the process. If you re looking to replace or get a wort chiller, I seriously consider a method that chills your water down before pumping it through your wort.
 
I use a 20' counterflow chiller with a prechiller beforehand. The prechiller really helps, and then I use the collected warm water to clean up with and then dump on various plants.

My gravity-fed setup gets 6 gallons from boiling to ~75 degrees in about 15-20 minutes.

I've also used a drill pump to recirculate icewater through the CFC. Saves water, but uses more electricity. Plus, it's loud and requires me to stay there to hold the drill.
 
I make small batches, so a sink full of ice does the trick. And it's pretty cheap to get bags of ice at the corner gas station if the freezer doesn't have enough stored up.
 
50' recirculating immersion chiller with a pump here. It's a huge upgrade from the 25' standard IC I had before. It helps that groundwater here in the rural north is always nice and cool, 50-55 pretty much year round.
 
I can reliably get my wort down to around 50° F in any weather. Of course, I only go that far for lagers. For ales, I stop once I hit 65° F.

I use a plate chiller, a camping cooler full of ice water, and 2 pumps. One pump circulates wort through the plate chiller and back into the kettle (NOT into the fermenter). The other pump circulates the ice water through the plate chiller in the other direction. I just use plain tap water from the hose until the wort reaches 100° F, then I switch over to the pump/ice water (no sense wasting perfectly good ice). My ice bath consists of a camping cooler with 7-8 frozen juice bottles, a bag or two of ice from the grocery store, and half-filled with water. If I've been planning ahead, I'll actually take a bucket of tap water a few days ahead of time and stick it in my beer fridge to get it as cold as possible before brewing.

Once the wort has cooled to the desired temperature (according to the thermometer mounted on my kettle), I cease chilling and rack the wort to a fermenter with a plain old autosiphon (alleviating any issues with the dip tube losing siphon and ensuring I can get every drop of good wort from the kettle).

I get from boiling to 100° F in about 3 minutes. Getting down to 65° from there takes another 5-10 minutes.
 
I also live in SD. Warm groundwater sucks. My new system is groundwater ==> DIY IC in cooler full of ice water ==> plate chiller. Even with the prechiller, the coldest I could get the water into the plate chiller was 70 degrees. Then I started stirring the ice water around the IC, and the water coming out dropped to 58 degrees. Now I have to take it easy stirring or the wort comes out too cold.
 
Thank you to everyone that has posted thus far, I have some things to think about, I would prefer not to added another pump to my system but If I want to keep my plate chiller in the loop it seems like the most effective option. The other thing that I don't like about the plate chiller is that it requires soooo much cleaning after use and on occasion when I run sanitizer through it prior to using it to cool the wort, I still get some hop debris which really irritates me because I then gro concerned about possibly contaminating the wort.

I like the idea of using a pump to recirculate ice water through an IC, I may resort to that and see what kind of performance I get out of that setup.

Once Again thanks for the information.
 
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