Immersion Chiller / Whirlpool / Hop Spider / Filter??????

I've been reading through a LOT of the threads here, especially the DIY section, and am getting gear together for my attempt at AG. I've made a couple of immersion chillers, and today was adding a whirlpool tube, when it struck me...

If I place the whirlpool tube in the middle of the immersion chiller, why couldn't I also place a paint strainer bag inside the inner circle of the immersion chiller (off the bottom of the kettle, of course), put the whirpool tube inside the strainer, put the whole shebang in my brew kettle, and whirlpool during the entire boil, adding my hops into the strainer bag???

I figure that the constant flow of new wort through the bag would help with hop utilization, everything would certainly be sanitized, and most of the hops and break would be contained in the strainer bag, resulting in clearer wort to the fermentor.

Am I overlooking something obvious here???

Yes. Put the whole chiller in the bag instead of just the tube. That way you have a 'chassis' for the bag. The other way, the bag will float due to boiling and be annoying.

Probably the hops will coat the inside of the bag and block flow from your whirlpool tubes. This blockage will result in disaster of some kind. I've done something similar (not as elaborate as your idea here) and found that I couldn't return the wort into the hop bag for this reason.

SankePankey said:

Yes. Put the whole chiller in the bag instead of just the tube. That way you have a 'chassis' for the bag. The other way, the bag will float due to boiling and be annoying.

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My concern with that approach would be that the bag would be more likely to contact the bottom of the brew kettle and melt. In my scenario, the whirlpool tube should help keep the bag down, and if not, a couple of pieces of copper in the bag might help.

jimmayhugh said:

My concern with that approach would be that the bag would be more likely to contact the bottom of the brew kettle and melt. In my scenario, the whirlpool tube should help keep the bag down, and if not, a couple of pieces of copper in the bag might help.

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If you don't have an electric kettle, then it's a moot point. Melting point of nylon is over 300 degrees. Some guys even use it in e-kettles and have no probs, others it melts. In my e-kettle I suspend the bag in a bayou steamer basket. Actually gonna build something different cause of the aforementioned floating problem.

If your doing things the old fashioned way, you will have no issue. The bottom of your kettle will be 212 (or slightly higher) and due to rapid fluid convection, your bag will see nothing more than that.

i put my 50' immersion chiller in my boil at the first hop addition and put my hop spider inside it. that way at knockout i don't have anything to do but fire up the water for the IC and start the recirc.

putting the recirc inside the hop bag may force more particles through the bag and cause more trub, so i don't bother. i just whirlpool around the side of the kettle with a long copper removable recirc arm and then use that as my "racking arm" to fill the fermentation vessels at the end since it was sterilized by the recirculating wort.

jimmayhugh said:

My concern with that approach would be that the bag would be more likely to contact the bottom of the brew kettle and melt. In my scenario, the whirlpool tube should help keep the bag down, and if not, a couple of pieces of copper in the bag might help.

Click to expand...

Also, take it from me adding hops to a puffed up bag kinda sucks. It's not something I though of being such a problem before doing it. I tried weighing it down with a big oring, a stainless pastry ring. This is all in a 11" x 11" steamer basket. Still puffed up badly. Now I'm making basically a huge fine chinois from various stainless parts and mesh.

Just FYI with my configuration and all pellet hops, my pump flows faster than the clogging of the bag and the filling of the basket. Hope I have better luck w/ the chinois.!

So I'm bringing this thread back up again because I had similar ideas. However my thought was to do one of two things. Put a SS micron mesh about an inch inside the copper coils and then run the whirlpool tube just inside the mesh OR put the entire micron mesh about an inch outside of the copper tubing. This way the wort coming back in is filtered and when the kettle/keggle is drained everything is filtered. I'd end up using mesh like the link below has.

http://www.homebrewing.org/Stainless-Hop-Filter-6-x-14--300-micron-mesh-_p_3181.html

The original poster was going to use a bag but by using a micron mesh you could put that in the middle, dump all your hops in and then slide the immersion whirlpool chiller in or around the mesh and go to town.

Thoughts?

Again am I making things too simple or is this just a bad idea overall?

Sub'd.