Ball bearing wort chillers

Just a thought but if one could find ss ball bearings would they make good wort chillers by freezing after boiling and tossing in the kettle? I've seen a number of people advocate sanitized ice for top off water but this would be easier to store and sanitize I think.

A floating ice wand would probably work better. Than you can start a whirlpool with the wand and be chilling it at the same time, then just let it float as the beer continues to chill. Granted you might need a couple of them.

I don't see it working to chill effectively for more than 20 seconds tops. But it could be an intersting experiment so if you try it please let us know what you find!

This is a bad idea. The reason ice works so well for cooling is that before it starts to melt it absorbs a ton of heat to provide the energy to break the hydrogen bonds that keep it frozen, so it absorbs much more heat than just what it takes to heat up from freezing temperatures. Without the phase change, any other 'freezing-temperature' material absorbs much less heat even if it starts out at the same temperature.

I'm not usually the one who says this kind of thing, but how cool would it be to say I cool my wort by sticking my balls into it.

Don't think it would work, have no idea about the scientific info above however.

If you pre-chill the ball bearings in liquid nitrogen first it might work.

I love practical solutions!

JKoravos said:

If you pre-chill the ball bearings in liquid nitrogen first it might work.

I love practical solutions!

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Ok, Einstein. What if you FROZE the liquid Nitrogen first, THEN added to the wort?? Say goodbye to your Hydrogen bonds! :rockin:

Sounds explode-y.

Also, there wouldn't be any convection going on. The balls would just adjust to the temperature, then sit there.

RobbyBeers said:

Sounds explode-y.

Also, there wouldn't be any convection going on. The balls would just adjust to the temperature, then sit there.

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I think you'd have to jiggle your balls for it to work.

Water has over 8 times more heat capacity than stainless steel (by mass). You'd be far better off using water ice, either directly or contained in a bottle that you can sanitize.

Bottom line, it sounds like you'd get a few degrees, but not enough to effectively chill a batch.

Brewing Clamper said:

Water has over 8 times more heat capacity than stainless steel (by mass). You'd be far better off using water ice, either directly or contained in a bottle that you can sanitize.

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Wouldn't this be more accurate? "ICE has over 8 times more heat capacity than stainless steel (by mass)".

M_C

JKoravos said:

I think you'd have to jiggle your balls for it to work.

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Oh, that's your answer to everything.

RobbyBeers said:

Oh, that's your answer to everything.

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I have yet to encounter a situation where jiggling my balls didn't help, so...*jiggle*

Most of you seem to be missing the point here. The real question is the size of the balls. If you have really big balls it might just work. But no matter the size, jiggling them is sure to help.

The amount of heat ss holds was really what I was thinking would hold this back. I think it would be more efficient to simply freeze boiled water. Perhaps if you could encapsulate salt water with ss it would work better, but the pressure change would be pretty high between boiling and freezing and custom made balls would be expensive.

its kinda like boiling with hot rocks, but chilling with frozen ball bearings. I would think for this to even get close to working, u'd need a massive vessel b/c of the displacement of how much SS ball bearings would be required.

Lautering balls anyone?

Not to mention having to clean the wort off of hundreds of balls. I hate to think about sticky balls between brew days.

Unless you have a smaller number if really LARGE balls (easier to clean) that you super-cooled. IMO the materials cost and cooling time would make it a failure.

Dunk, or jiggle, your balls all you like in the hot wort. I still see the time to chill being far too long to make it to the 'good idea' list.

Not to mention, in this heat and high humidity, you would likely have very sweaty balls. More balls would probably work better, but I've had pretty good luck with only two large ones.

Catt22 said:

Not to mention, in this heat and high humidity, you would likely have very sweaty balls. More balls would probably work better, but I've had pretty good luck with only two large ones.

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I've found that putting your balls in some large jugs helps the brew day, as well.