dcunitedfan
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- Dec 29, 2006
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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 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?