what is the most "water conserving" method of cooling wort quickly?

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blacks4

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It currently takes me 40 gallons of hose water to cool a 5-6 gal batch using a 1/2" x 25' IC in NJ (the past 3 months). Yeah, I save it and try to dump it on bushes and plants, etc.. but that is WAY too much waste water. I'm upgrading to 10gal batches right now and looking for the best way to cool wort quickly that also doesn't use a ton of water. Plate chiller? pre-chiller? 50' IC? plate chiller with a pond pump in ice water? etc...

What are you guys doing? Thanks in advance for the ideas/help.

Steve
 
I use a 50' IC with a whirlpool attachment for my 10 gallon batches. I try to conserve as much water as possible too. What works for me is using my old IC as a pre-chiller in a bucket of ice water along with whirlpooling. I have single tier rig so the first water (hot)coming OUT of the chiller goes straight into my MLT and HLT for clean up. The rest goes onto the lawn/plants. I would guess my water usage is right around 40 gallons.
 
plate chiller or other counter-flow type chiller will get the highest thermal efficiency.

a counter flow with a closed cold side cooling system will use 0 gal water, but that's a whole different league.
 
I use a closed CFC. A 5 gallon bucket with 25' of copper tubing. I fill it with ice, dump in some salt and add water. I keep adding ice as needed, and my fermenter sits in a cooler of an ice water mixture. I use a clamp to keep the flow slow enough to make sure it's cold enough. I took 25 mins to get my boil cooled to 72ish saturday in 100+ weather
 
If you want to conserve water, the other ideas here will require dollars,(ice, glycol chiller) and electricity. Water is cheap, just cool as much as you can with the tap water, the recirculate the water back to a pail with ice and use a pond pump to continually recirc the water until the ice is gone and repeat.
 
Just do what you are already doing but don't waste the water. Get yourself a sump pump (if you don't already have one), capture the water into a rain barrel or similar, and reuse it for watering plants, washing the car, etc... You could even re-use it later for chilling wort.
 
Run your Wort Chiller output into a bucket and throw it in the washer before washing a load...I now have a cooler/Pump/hose from the cooling/compression jacket that they use after joint surgeries. I will be rigging it up with my WC to recirc and cool.
 
Well, the most conserving would be to only brew when there's a lot of snow on the ground and use that to cool your wort, but that might be limiting.

I use a small fountain pump in a cooler of water and a standard immersion chiller. I'll freeze up some blocks of ice before brewing and then run the chiller output into the ice block until the wort's cool enough to pitch into. I'll move the chiller up and down as well to keep everything moving along. I'll use about 10 gallons of water total to cool the wort this way. On a recent 100 degree day it took 25-30 minutes to cool a5.5-gallon batch this way.
 
Just do what you are already doing but don't waste the water. Get yourself a sump pump (if you don't already have one), capture the water into a rain barrel or similar, and reuse it for watering plants, washing the car, etc... You could even re-use it later for chilling wort.


That's precisely what I do and it works great. Especially in the Winter when cleaning out the mash tun and BK can be a pain. Collecting 40+ gallons of warm water makes finishing up the brew day easy.

A few people I know always fill their HLT for the next batch. They treT the water and seal the top to prevent bugs from entering. One less thing to do during your next brew session.

Brew on!
 
40 Gallons!!!???!!

I use less than 20 easily. I think my IC is 50 foot x 1/2inch. I run my water into buckets and use the hot water from the first one to clean my kettle and other items. Then I use the water to water plants around the yard.

One thing I do is, don't turn the hose on full blast. I adjust the water pressure during the whole chilling process so I'm not wasting water. It takes me around 10-12 minutes to cool my wort. (five gallons ish)
 
How often do you brew? How often do you shower? depending on when your house was built/fixtures installed, you use 25-50 (2.5gpm for newer fixtures, 5gpm for older fixtures) for a 10 minute shower.........each day........per person. 40 gallons per batch is not that much considering the average household usage as long as you don't brew daily. so, how often do you brew? if you brew once a week then reduce your daily showers by 2 minutes and 15 seconds each day to make up for that 40 gallons (assuming a 2.5gpm rate).
 

In all seriousness, glycol is good as a second pass chiller but doesn't scale to 10+ gallons without major assistance. ;)

I've been using two plate chillers in series for the past year. The first plate chiller (30 plate) is fed tap water and knocks the temp down to ~86F (ground water is ~80F). The second plate chiller (20 plate) is fed -20F glycol from a 5 gal corny keg via compressed air.

The glycol keg is stored in a chest freezer and a simple valve on the outlet side controls the glycol flow. No pumps to break or freeze and the footprint is MUCH smaller than a dedicated glycol chilling system.
 
no chill. only water it requires is cleaning out the vessel :thumbup:
 
no chill.

No, you chill! :D

Seriously, if you believe you can brew a wide range of beer styles with 'no chill', you're mistaken. But, yes, 'no chill' works for a narrow range of beer styles.

Personally, I'm not patient enough to wait 24hrs for wort to reach room temperature. My yeast are hungry.
 
Just do what you are already doing but don't waste the water. Get yourself a sump pump (if you don't already have one), capture the water into a rain barrel or similar, and reuse it for watering plants, washing the car, etc... You could even re-use it later for chilling wort.

You could also use an immersion chiller and keep the runoff in a bucket to water plants with. Or use it to fill your hot bath.:mug: Perfect to sit in with a cold beverage after a brew session.
 
I hooked my outlet hose from the IC to our rainwater barrel (which was very low due to low rainfall this summer) this afternoon. I actually filled the whole thing! Used a lot of it in the garden tonight!

B
 
in the past I used my bathtub to cool my wort, but it took to many bags of ice, i.e. 6-7 10lb bags. As of yesterday, I used a rubbermaid storage container with only 3, 10lbs of ice to drop the temp to around 65F in only 10 mins for my ales, this was with consistant stiring. If you're doing a lager you could add another bag of ice and drop the temp even more.
 
I chilled at 102 degrees outside today by buying 60 lb of ice per batch (brewed two 5 gal batches) and putting 20 lb to start in a cooler and adding water to fill a 42 qt cooler which was connected to a 40 plate chiller. I added water to make an ice bath that I ran through the plate chiller. I recycled the water as it ran out back into the cooler/ice bath and continued adding another 20lb of ice. I measured the water as it ran out and kept up with the total. I used less than 7 gal of water plus 30 lb of ice( $4.50)....I dumped 5 gal of water for cleanup when the wort was chilled to 70.

Just to repeat....7 gallons of water...102 freaking degrees outside.....the plants think Im god.
 
No, you chill! :D

Seriously, if you believe you can brew a wide range of beer styles with 'no chill', you're mistaken. But, yes, 'no chill' works for a narrow range of beer styles.

Personally, I'm not patient enough to wait 24hrs for wort to reach room temperature. My yeast are hungry.

no, YOU CHILL! :p haha

but what do you mean i couldn't brew a wide range of styles? i've brewed numerous styles of beer and they've all came out tasting as they should. Stouts, Porters, IPAs, Wheat beers, Milds, pale ales etc.
 
No, you chill! :D

Seriously, if you believe you can brew a wide range of beer styles with 'no chill', you're mistaken. But, yes, 'no chill' works for a narrow range of beer styles.
Personally, I'm not patient enough to wait 24hrs for wort to reach room temperature. My yeast are hungry.

LOL is all I have to say at that. I honestly cannot think of anything to address ignorance of this magnitude.
 
i've brewed numerous styles of beer and they've all came out tasting as they should. Stouts, Porters, IPAs, Wheat beers, Milds, pale ales etc.

How a beer should taste is relative. :)

For example, I've tasted a 'no chill' IPA that was extremely bitter with low hop character. I've also tasted a 'no chill' german alt that had undetectable hop character. They were both brewed with standard recipes, but the prolonged high wort temperature changes the beer. Often, dramatically. ;)
 
you have to change the hop schedule when doing no chill to utilize the AA properly. you can't use the same minutes that you use with normal chilling.

i'm sorry your experence wasn't great with them, but i've had wonderful very aroma'd double IPAs that tasted and smelled just like the ones that i've chilled in the past. and if you read the thread about the no chill brewing, the people that have utilized the correct hop schedule have no real taste difference between the two.

what i'm saying is, if done correctly, they come out the same.
 
Whatever happened to this thread? This was supposed to be a discussion about chilling with less water, not the merits of not chilling at all...
 
I hook up a hose and sprinkler to the outflow end of my IC and water my lawn. Gotta water it anyway.
 
It currently takes me 40 gallons of hose water to cool a 5-6 gal batch using a 1/2" x 25' IC in NJ (the past 3 months). Yeah, I save it and try to dump it on bushes and plants, etc.. but that is WAY too much waste water. I'm upgrading to 10gal batches right now and looking for the best way to cool wort quickly that also doesn't use a ton of water. Plate chiller? pre-chiller? 50' IC? plate chiller with a pond pump in ice water? etc...

What are you guys doing? Thanks in advance for the ideas/help.

What are you really trying to do? Fast? Or Conservative? Those 2 objectives are in opposition. A plate chiller will get you the highest thermal efficiency.

As for the methods of ice, salt, etc, well, that sort of defeats the point of trying to conserve water by adding all of that cost and inefficiency to the system, no?

I have considered running 2 chillers in series since I have nice cool tap water up North here (tap water is mid 60's right now and mid to low 40's in the winter) and I have 3/4" lines in my brewing area. I could split it and run 2 1/2" ID chillers at full pressure and be "FASTER", but that would not really do anything in terms of water conservation. I figure that would put me at pitching temps in roughly 5-9 min for 15 gal batches season-dependent.
 
It currently takes me 40 gallons of hose water to cool a 5-6 gal batch using a 1/2" x 25' IC in NJ (the past 3 months). Yeah, I save it and try to dump it on bushes and plants, etc.. but that is WAY too much waste water. I'm upgrading to 10gal batches right now and looking for the best way to cool wort quickly that also doesn't use a ton of water. Plate chiller? pre-chiller? 50' IC? plate chiller with a pond pump in ice water? etc...

What are you guys doing? Thanks in advance for the ideas/help.

Steve

Since I'm filling the kids pool anyway, I just stick it in there.

Ron
 
I chilled at 102 degrees outside today by buying 60 lb of ice per batch (brewed two 5 gal batches) and putting 20 lb to start in a cooler and adding water to fill a 42 qt cooler which was connected to a 40 plate chiller. I added water to make an ice bath that I ran through the plate chiller. I recycled the water as it ran out back into the cooler/ice bath and continued adding another 20lb of ice. I measured the water as it ran out and kept up with the total. I used less than 7 gal of water plus 30 lb of ice( $4.50)....I dumped 5 gal of water for cleanup when the wort was chilled to 70.

So you pay $4.50 for ice PER 5 GAL BATCH? That would be more than a third of my per-5-gal budget.
 
There's at least one thread a week here about trying to conserve water at the cost of many other things. Ice is rarely free unless it's winter in an area that freezes. 40 gallons of water for me is about 30 cents. The first 20 gallons goes into my HLT and MLT for cleanup anyway. The rest waters the plants because by then the output water is cool enough for them.
 
There's at least one thread a week here about trying to conserve water at the cost of many other things. Ice is rarely free unless it's winter in an area that freezes. 40 gallons of water for me is about 30 cents. The first 20 gallons goes into my HLT and MLT for cleanup anyway. The rest waters the plants because by then the output water is cool enough for them.

Yep, and if you're one of those double brew day folks, you can get a head start on your mash or sparge water heating. :mug:
 
If you live by a stream or have a neighbour with a pool or pond you can stick it in there. I have a small koi pond 50 gallons? I just stick the fermenter or keggle in there and it's down to ambient temps in 20 min.
 
Can someone explain to me the reasoning for conserving water? Is it the cost or are you trying to be eco-friendly?

I have a well, so I think nothing of using all the water I want. If I dump 40 gallons in my yard, it just filters down through the ground back into the well.

I was in Houston a couple weeks ago where it hasn't rained measureably all summer. These people are still watering their lawns and washing their cars everyday as if everything is normal.

So can someone please tell me what the fascination is with conserving water to the point where people will spend more money on ice and electricity than they would've on just the water alone?
 
I don't really know, and have wondered the same myself, but I'm a bit biased. The water here comes directly from the Great Lakes, and so is incredibly cheap and abundant, but I don't know what the situation is like for people that don't have the benefit of living near such a massive freshwater supply.

Even then, I have a Therminator, which is the most efficient chiller on the market, but the only reason I got it is because it's also the fastest (two sides of the same coin, really). But the water I use goes down the drain, and I've never given a second's thought to do anything else with it, with one exception - the *only* way to recycle the water that I feel makes a lot of sense is to use it for brewing another batch, and that's not really about recycling the water so much as recycling the thermal energy it picked up in the process, thus requiring less time and fuel/electricity to bring it up to strike temps.

But yeah, other than than that, I also can't help but wonder why people sacrifice speed, chilling power, space and sometimes even money, going with setups that allow them to recycle their water.
 
Just because people here in Houston ARE watering and washing cars as usual, doesn't mean they SHOULD be. We are currently under level 2 water restrictions, meaning no one should be watering their lawns more than twice a week, or after 3am. Water levels in Lake Houston are so low it's impacting the (already terrible) water quality, and they're having to drain water from other lakes to supplement. It's just a matter of being a good steward of a resource that's becoming increasingly scarce in many parts of the world.
 
Even if you "waste" a lot of water and it evaporates doesn't it come back one way or another?

That depends. The net water balance of the planet is essentially 0. That doesn't mean that the water you use is returned to your watershed or aquifer. Some aquifers are fossil aquifers that recharge extremely slowly, if at all (they are essentially mined). In many arid regions, much of the evapotranspiration does not re-precipitate locally, it is transported into other areas.
 
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