Hot Weather Means Hot Wort Chiller Water

And that means our immersion wort chillers don’t work as well.

What to do? Oh, what to do?

I have a washtub that I can put ice and water in.

Should I

A. Put my 100 or so feet of garden hose in the ice bath to chill the water going to my wort chiller

B. Put my brew pot in the ice bath to chill it directly

C. Put the hose and brew pot both in the ice bath

I've done B in the sink without a wort chiller. A pot of hot wort easily turns a sink of ice water into a sink of hot water. It took several sinks of ice water just to get below 80F.

The thing with C is the hot pot of wort will warm the ice water I’m trying to chill my wort chiller water with.

I've also cooled extract batches with top off water. Having gone to AG, I'm not too keen on that method now.

Get a cheap submersible pond pump. Chill as low as you can go with tap water then Fill the sink with ice and water and use the pump to circulate the ice water through your chiller. Either put the discharge water back into the sink or keep adding cold water to the sink until the ice melts.

In the summer, I put my BK in a utility sink and let the outlet water from the IC drain into the sink. Once the sink fills up or the kettle starts to float (whichever comes first), I crack the plug little by little until the water going in roughly equals water leaving the sink. This way you get the best of both worlds, immersion and water bath. After a couple minutes, the outlet water is quite cool. Once the wort gets close to tap water temp, I shut off the immersion and add ice to the water bath to get down the rest of way.

I did a test once to see how well my immersion (while sitting an ice bath) would prechill tap water. It didn't work that great. However, if I sat there and stirred the hell out of the ice bath to keep cool water passing by the coils, it performed pretty well. I wasn't too keen on the idea of having to constantly stir to prechill my water. I don't think a garden hose would transfer heat nearly as well as my IC, so I would say that idea is a no go.

Make yourself a counter flow chiller with a pond pump. Use the immersion chiller you have as a post chiller in an ice bath.
1. Connect pot to counter flow or pot to pump to counter flow.
2. Connect submersible pump to the CF water imput on bottom and put pump in bucket.
3. Connect the beer output of the CF to your existing IC and put it in the bucket with the pump.
4. Fill bucket with ice and water (don't let water output back into bucket because it's hot). Don't forget to keep filling the ice bucket.
At full blast with my pump I can get to 70 in 5 min, slower I can get to 50. Hope it makes sense

I use an old submersible pump that I don't use for the aquarium anymore. Chill the wort down using my immersion chiller til it won't go anymore. Then some ice, a bucket and the pump. Voila. Only took another 10 minutes to get the Oktoberfest down to lager pitching temps (50s), last Saturday.

Ugh, sounds awful. I'm glad I get my water from an alpine lake that's huge (496.21 square kilometers) and deep (501 meters.) Our tap water is 40-45 year round.

We fill a 42 gallon garbage can and add about 10 gallon jugs of ice (water jugs resused, but you could use cleaned out milk jugs) We use a cheap pump to pump that water. we do 16 gal batches and a plate chiiller,, but it is enough. We never tried the IC as in the above as a post chiller but looks good

I have to go to great lengths to cool my wort on the summer, my tap water is 89.8 in June.

Lots of good ideas above...if your looking for simple, chill your wort w/ the IC as usual and bring it down to 100 or so, then set the kettle in the tub w/ about 20 lbs of ice and water and take a nap for a couple hours

If you are in a hurry, stir the wort and the ice water for faster chilling.

Submersing garden hose in ice water is not very effective at all FYI.

I'm also a pond pump guy. It works very fast, and it saves water.

It was 105 last Sunday when I brewed up a batch!! Good thing we were poolside, bbq'n and drinking beer to stay cool. I ended doing the tub filled with ice and the garden hose coiled up in it setup. It would definatley be worth it to buy a small pump and go that route. Another thing that helped out a bunch was I rinsed down the outside of the keg as well.

I run tap water through my chiller to knock the temperature down to about 100º F, then switch to pumping ice water. I have this Harbor Freight pump:

http://www.harborfreight.com/16-horsepower-submersible-utility-pump-68422.html

I put this into a 20 gallon plastic tub with about 10-12 gallons of ice water and recirculate the water through my chiller to get down to pitching temperature. This pump has a 23 foot lift which is higher (more pressure) than most pond pumps. I get a little over a gallon per minute through my 50 foot 3/8 OD chiller with a 6 foot length of washing machine hose on each end. Not as much flow as from the tap, but still works very well.

EDIT: for some reason the link won't work for me, but it's the 1/6 horsepower submersible utility pump on sale for $49.99 (item # 68422)

DeafSmith said:

I run tap water through my chiller to knock the temperature down to about 100º F, then switch to pumping ice water. I have this Harbor Freight pump:

http://www.harborfreight.com/16-horsepower-submersible-utility-pump-68422.html

I put this into a 20 gallon pla.....)

Click to expand...

Your links works if we copy and paste it into a new tab in the browser. Great idea BTW.

Well damn. I wanted to get by with what I had.

Yeah, the hose is a stout hose too. Cheap hose aint worth it. And that goes without the e too. To do any good, I was thinking of letting it sit in the ice water for a while before running the chiller. Even sitting charged for that little extra chilled water.

Oh well. Tankards a lot, yall.

revolutioned said:

Make yourself a counter flow chiller with a pond pump. Use the immersion chiller you have as a post chiller in an ice bath.
1. Connect pot to counter flow or pot to pump to counter flow.
2. Connect submersible pump to the CF water imput on bottom and put pump in bucket.
3. Connect the beer output of the CF to your existing IC and put it in the bucket with the pump.
4. Fill bucket with ice and water (don't let water output back into bucket because it's hot). Don't forget to keep filling the ice bucket.
At full blast with my pump I can get to 70 in 5 min, slower I can get to 50. Hope it makes sense

Click to expand...

I'm interested in trying the post chiller technique. Does it get the wort too cool? I have a 25' CFC, but it just can't get the job done in Orlando, so I'm looking into getting a 25' IC to add on in this fashion. Since the CFC can get the wort to around 100 on its own without a pre-chiller, would the IC post chiller in ice get it cooler than I would want?

I don't quite understand the idea of pre-chilling. Its cheaper to buy a inexpensive submersible pump and then pump actual ice-water through your existing chiller.

http://www.harborfreight.com/158-gph-miniature-submersible-fountain-pump-68396.html

live in houston - even in winter our tap water is usually higher than 70*.
I do the following.

on my IC i have hose barbs, and connect garden hose pig tails with fittings.

- use tap water through IC to knock down to about 90-100* with waste water going to yard sprinkler.
- fill MLT with ice bags and a couple of Gals of water
- remove hose pigtails, and pump ice water out of MLT through IC back into MLT
- when cool - I use same pump and hoses to pump starsan from fermenter to holding keg.
- pump cool wort to fermenter.

DeafSmith said:

I run tap water through my chiller to knock the temperature down to about 100º F, then switch to pumping ice water. I have this Harbor Freight pump:

http://www.harborfreight.com/16-horsepower-submersible-utility-pump-68422.html

I put this into a 20 gallon plastic tub with about 10-12 gallons of ice water and recirculate the water through my chiller to get down to pitching temperature. This pump has a 23 foot lift which is higher (more pressure) than most pond pumps. I get a little over a gallon per minute through my 50 foot 3/8 OD chiller with a 6 foot length of washing machine hose on each end. Not as much flow as from the tap, but still works very well.

EDIT: for some reason the link won't work for me, but it's the 1/6 horsepower submersible utility pump on sale for $49.99 (item # 68422)

Click to expand...

I just picked up that pump on Friday for brewing this weekend. I ran ground water through my plate chiller to get the beer down to 105°, then had a cooler full of ice water (used 20# of ice total...10# per 5gallons) with the pump and hose hooked up. That pump moved a lot more water than I expected it to, and after 1 pass through the HE I was at 60°. It definitely saved me at least 40 minutes of time on brew day!

Here is what I use in Phoenix and it works very well:

Hot Weather Wort Chiller