Opinion on my cooling of wort

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

TxBrewHouse

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 30, 2012
Messages
62
Reaction score
2
Location
Greenville
We're brewing 10 gallon batches do I'm cooling about 11 gallons. I'm using 50 ft of 1/2" copper for my immersion chiller. It takes about 1 hour to cool from boiling or close to it, to 70 deg F. Is one hour too long to lower the temp. I know there are better methods. We are using room temp tap water running through it. Should I stick with this or try pumping ice water through our chiller. Or abandon this method and use a plate chiller or some other method.
 
Try stirring as you are chilling, it will expose more wort across the chiller tubing. I keep meaning to install a pre-chiller as well but haven't done it yet. Ground water temp here is pretty warm in the summer. Winter time wort always chills more quickly cause of the ground water temperature drop.

Been thinking of getting a plate chiller the only thing holding me back is cash.. Plate chiller, then I'd probably want a pump and then I'd want to get cool SS quick disonnects... argh! Trying to not spend any more money on this hobby is tough. Always a new gadget to buy or build.
 
I agree with Dan on stirring. Pumping ice water through is a good idea, and it's what I do. I can chill 10 gallons in about 40 minutes with 20lbs of ice and my pond pump. An hour really isn't that big of a deal though. IMHO..
 
Hey Mike!

How you been my friend?

I know you guys down there in Texas have to deal with heat even worse than we do up here in the hot... dry... dairy farm scented.. dusty Ca central Valley.

I'm always in awe each time I read a post from somebody who deals with the kind of terrific heat you Texan's have to deal with and do it through ingenuity, DIY projects and not a ton of cash! :mug:
 
Howdy Dan!
I'm good, thanks!

Yeah, we definitely have to overcome the elements in order to brew here. I've read threads from people up north that say they won't brew in 100 degree temps. I brewed on my patio on 105 degree days a few times this summer. Just another day in the desert! My ground water comes out at about 85+ during the peak of summer, so I have to use ice to chill. I've considered trying "no chill", but haven't gotten around to it...
 
^^Hey bro!

I did the no chill method, well a modified version of it. Ran 80 degree ground water through an IC to get the temp dropped to around 100 (~20-30 minutes). Gently transferred to a bucket. Sealed it up and stuck in a ferm chamber till the next day. Did it a few times and seemed to work pretty well. Next day after it's sitting nice and cool, aerate and pitch.

I do have to admit, those beers had a bit of chill haze, never really cleared. But tasted just fine. Might have had something to do with the recipe. They were good none the less.

But got to admit I do get a bit jealous, maybe envious a better word of guys with 50-60F ground temp year around! Ha!
 
I've actually considered doing your version of no chill before. I'll have to give it a try.

I know what you mean about being jealous of 50-60F ground water temps. My ground water is actually still in the low to mid 70's during the winter. I'm also jealous of people that can chill there beer by just sticking the kettle in a snow bank. We don't even know what snow is around here!
 
We're brewing 10 gallon batches do I'm cooling about 11 gallons. I'm using 50 ft of 1/2" copper for my immersion chiller. It takes about 1 hour to cool from boiling or close to it, to 70 deg F. ....
I'm sure that if you start stirring your wort, or bouncing your cooling coils like a spring, you'll be able to get your cooling time down to 20-30 minutes.
 
one thing you could try is taking that 50 foot chiller and cutting it in half, and use two 25ft sections in parrallel. i bet the water is warming up to wort temp way before it exits the chiller, so the last maybe 20 feet of legnth is doing nothing for you.

also, what does the temperature curve of the wort over time look like? in other words- is it crashing down from 200* to 100* in the first 10 minutes, and then it takes 50 minutes to get from 100 to 75? (that would be due to your warm ground water) or is it more linear and slow? (which would be more due to an inefficient chiller)
 
I've also got a second chiller 25 ft of 3/8 that I was thinking about immersing in ice water before the water would enter the chiller in my kettle. Also I could use an aquarium pump to circulate ice water through them. The outside temp is at or above 100F when we brew. So the ground water is warm. I'd bet at least mid to high 80's. I take notes during brewing so here's the curve. Drops from boiling to 100F in 25 minutes. After that it takes about 40 minutes to drop 25 degrees.
 
Guys, I just had a stupid idea that might work well. I've never heard of anyone doing this, but what the heck do I know?


Get a second immersion chiller. Plug the water in the "In" of Chiller A. Clamp the "Out" of Chiller A to the "In" of Chiller B. Put Chiller A in a bucket of ice water, and Chiller B cools the wort.

If this is commonly done already, sorry to duplicate, but it just occurred to me.
 
It's called pre-chilling....I do it with an ole IC hooked up to my CFWC.

Water goes to pre-chiller in a Homer bucket filled with ice water...and then it runs to the CFWC where it chills the wort on it way to the fermenter.

I get my wort down to 60 degrees coming out of the CFWC constantly this way.
 
It looks like the OP is cooling ten degrees below the temperature of the tapwater. How is this possible?

Unless I’m reading this wrong, there is no ice involved (yet.)
 
My estimate on ground water temp is a guess. Never actually checked the temp. But when it's 105 outside it can't be to cold. You have to let the faucet run a minute before u wash your hands in my shop or you'll burn the hell out of your hands. But there's 150 ft of water line running along the wall on the uninsulated side of my shop and the air temp gets up to 140 inside that side.
 
I use the bathtub for cooling and I’m not that far from you. If I fill a bathtub with cold water, it’s 86º F.

It's ice after that.
 
Boiled 7 gallons today down to a final 5 gallons for fermenting. Cut the flame off at 2:05pm, had it down to 100*F at 2:12 via a 50ft ss 3/8" immersion chiller.

For the record, I too am in deep southeast Texas where groundwater is around 85* this late in the summer.

So, after getting down to 100* in about 7-8 minutes, I switch over to a bucket of ice(about 25lbs) and water. I found a clothes hamper from Walmart that has rope handles for about $7. It's big enough to hold my 7 gallon ss brewpot perfectly. I'll mention that at around 100*, I remove the wort chiller... it just isn't going to cool any lower than +/- 100 in these temps.

My notes from today's boil/cool down show that at 2:28pm, 23 minutes after flame out, I had 70*F wort! I brewed last Tuesday, and the result was similiar... take about 10 minutes to chill down to about 100, then switch to ice bath. I'll stir my wort continually AND swirl the ice on the outside of the brewpot. My goal is to have warm wort transfering to the ice cold surrounding water constantly.

Sounds like a fair amount of work, but it's not. Having wort chilled down to 70* in less than 25 minutes in the brutal heat of the day is priceless!
 
I use a 25' 3/8 pre-chiller in a 40 qt cooler full of ice and have a 50' 3/8" immersion chiller. My ground water is about 85 degrees this time of year.

Today it was 95 degrees in my garage. I chilled 5.5 gallons of wort from boiling to 60 degrees in 13 minutes. (I timed it)

I kept the pre-chiller moving in the ice/ice water and the immersion chiller moving in the wort continuously.

IMO a pre-chiller is worth every penny.
 
Yeah, I heard that. Can’t shut down for the eight months we call summer.

I have that Wal-Mart rope tub. I dump 20 lbs of ice and pitch six or eight hours later. It puts me below 70 and I modulate it with ½ liter frozen water bottles after that.
 
Ok. Just brewed what will be a raspberry wheat. Used a pre chiller using a Rubbermaid tote and 25 pounds of ice, and water and rock salt. It took 20 minutes to get down to 100 F. I should have used a styrofoam cooler. The ice melted quickly. Got down to 80 F in an hour total time. I went ahead and put into two carboys and put in freezer that was already cold. Took 30 minutes and it hit 70 and I pitched the yeast.

Has anyone used a plate chiller. I'd buy one if I knew they worked very well. I'm really not worried about the beer taking too long to cool, I'm worried about having a stroke in this heat. It was 102 in my garage and 98 outside.
 
I am in East Texas - it was 106 on the back porch Saturday when I brewed last (OktoberFast per BM). Anyway, I do the two step and cool with ground water from flame out to about 100 degrees with an IC. I then switch from ground water to iced water pumped around by a submersible. It melts 10-15 pounds of ice but gets me down to about 65. I put on quick disconnects to the switch goes very fast.

This seems to work well - total cool time about 30 minutes.
 
Ok. Just brewed what will be a raspberry wheat. Used a pre chiller using a Rubbermaid tote and 25 pounds of ice, and water and rock salt. It took 20 minutes to get down to 100 F. I should have used a styrofoam cooler. The ice melted quickly. Got down to 80 F in an hour total time. I went ahead and put into two carboys and put in freezer that was already cold. Took 30 minutes and it hit 70 and I pitched the yeast.

Has anyone used a plate chiller. I'd buy one if I knew they worked very well. I'm really not worried about the beer taking too long to cool, I'm worried about having a stroke in this heat. It was 102 in my garage and 98 outside.


If you try it again, put your prechiller in the cooler then fill it with ice (I go get my ice when I start my mash. I use 40 LBs and get it for $1.50 per 20 lb bag). Don't add any water. As you start your chill the water from you hose will melt the ice pretty quickly. As soon as you are able to move the prechiller around in the ice/ice water, get it moving. Move the chiller in the wort at the same time. I usually bounce the prechiller up and down and move the chiller around in a circle. Once in a while if my ice seems to be melting too fast, I throw a frozen gallon jug in the cooler toward the end of the process.

As I said above, I get to 60* in less than 15 minutes and us about 15-20 gallons of water. It was 95* when I brewed the other day. I run about 75' feet of garden hose across my lawn in the hot sun.
 
If you try it again, put your prechiller in the cooler then fill it with ice (I go get my ice when I start my mash. I use 40 LBs and get it for $1.50 per 20 lb bag). Don't add any water. As you start your chill the water from you hose will melt the ice pretty quickly. As soon as you are able to move the prechiller around in the ice/ice water, get it moving. Move the chiller in the wort at the same time. I usually bounce the prechiller up and down and move the chiller around in a circle. Once in a while if my ice seems to be melting too fast, I throw a frozen gallon jug in the cooler toward the end of the process.

As I said above, I get to 60* in less than 15 minutes and us about 15-20 gallons of water. It was 95* when I brewed the other day. I run about 75' feet of garden hose across my lawn in the hot sun.

Newbie here.

A general question on "pre-chillers". My thermodynamics aren't as strong as my electromagnetism, but here goes...

Would it not be a better use of the ice water to run through the main immersion chiller? I am assuming there are more losses (losses to bucket and air over time) with the ice water sitting in a bucket, "pre-chilling" than just pumping it through the main chiller?

Based on what I have seen in breweries (and in my line of work) is running chiller water (ice water) through a heat exchanger and counter flowing the process liquid (wort). There is no intermediate cooling of some 'carrier' liquid (which is water in this case).

Am I dumb or plain wrong?
 
Newbie here.

A general question on "pre-chillers". My thermodynamics aren't as strong as my electromagnetism, but here goes...

Would it not be a better use of the ice water to run through the main immersion chiller? ...
Sure, it would probably cool quicker to run the icewater directly thru the chiller, but now you have to buy a water pump and find a power source. It's quite a bit simpler to just use the tap water.
 
Newbie here.

A general question on "pre-chillers". My thermodynamics aren't as strong as my electromagnetism, but here goes...

Would it not be a better use of the ice water to run through the main immersion chiller? I am assuming there are more losses (losses to bucket and air over time) with the ice water sitting in a bucket, "pre-chilling" than just pumping it through the main chiller?

Based on what I have seen in breweries (and in my line of work) is running chiller water (ice water) through a heat exchanger and counter flowing the process liquid (wort). There is no intermediate cooling of some 'carrier' liquid (which is water in this case).

Am I dumb or plain wrong?

seems as though they both live in the south and have problems with hop tap water....maybe i dont understand your question but for them to drop to pitching temps (68-75) they need the use of a second PRE chiller
 
I have not used a pump and ice water, but most that I have read about have good results. Because they lose so much ice to the hot return water, most cool with tap water until about 100* and then switch to pumping ice water through the chiller. I use the prechiller in the ice because I have the extra chiller, I don't have a pump, I don't have to switch hoses, and I know that this works well for me. As I said above, $3.00 worth of ice and less than 20 gallons of water gets 5.5 gallons of 200+ degree wort down to 60* in well under 15 minutes. I don't know that I have read of much better results other than with counter-flow chillers and plate chillers (and you would still have to pre chill the cooling water somehow)
 
I had the 'pumpless' epiphany the morning after posting this. 'Cost-effective' and 'efficient' don't always go hand in hand.

I see now if you don't want to spend the cash on a pump, then pre-chilling is the best way to go.
 
seems as though they both live in the south and have problems with hop tap water....maybe i dont understand your question but for them to drop to pitching temps (68-75) they need the use of a second PRE chiller

The question was, why not just pump the ice water directly through one chiller. That way you eliminate the absorption of heat from the other sources in the 'pre' stage (bucket heat, ambient air, water to copper, copper to water).

Turns out I was assuming they just had a pump laying around. Which, they do not.
 
Back
Top