how fast do i have to chill?

how fast do i hav to chill an AG wort to get a good cold break? 20 mins?

As fast as possible. IMHO, A brisk chill of <15 mins seems to provide the best results. What kind of equipment do you have? There may be ways to improve your process.

i use an immersion chiller but it takes close to a half hour (all i could find was small copper so the surface area is rather small, 50' of 1/4" i believe)

I may combine this with an ice bath or make a prechiller or something

I went from boiling to 55 F in 20 minutes (Saturday brew).
I totally floced out in about 30 minutes.

I've read somewhere (Noonan ?), that the colder the wort, the faster flocculation would occur.

Think he's right.

I've employed a new system. 240 gph fountain pump in iced water directly to the immersion chiller (once I get to 100 F).

I'm pretty happy with it, but I think I need a little bigger pump. I think the 20 minute can be reduced to 10 minutes.

I've heard that pump recirc method works well. I may use that. Now I've got a march pump, so I may do this: http://www.mrmalty.com/chiller.php it's a fascinating article, and I can't wait to rig my IC up to whirlpool! Even if you don't have a pump, you can REALLY improve your chiller by whirlpooling manually with a sanitized spoon. This will keep thermal layers from forming in the wort, and will also focus all the cold break in the center of your kettle.

ScubaSteve said:

I've heard that pump recirc method works well. I may use that. Now I've got a march pump, so I may do this: http://www.mrmalty.com/chiller.php it's a fascinating article, and I can't wait to rig my IC up to whirlpool! Even if you don't have a pump, you can REALLY improve your chiller by whirlpooling manually with a sanitized spoon. This will keep thermal layers from forming in the wort, and will also focus all the cold break in the center of your kettle.

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I have 25' of 3/8'' IC and did a manual whirlpool with a spoon yesterday, got it down to 80 in 15 minutes tops. I have used this IC before with the whirlpool and it would take 30+ minutes. I am pretty sure that with a pump and ice bath I should be able to get this down to lager temps in 30 minutes.

Speed of chilling is of course dependent on how cold your cold water is. I have a little 25' 3/8" chiller and I can get 5.5 gals. of wort from boiling to 65° in about 10-12mins., with a good cold break.

Before I got my immersion chiller, I never had a break anywhere near what I get now.

I don't know what it is, but this part of the brew really interests me. I'm building a rig in the next few months and I really liked a lot of what Jamil had to say about losing hop aroma through a CFC/plate, as well as getting cold break in the fermentor. I'm a firm believer in the IC....it may not be as streamlined as a plate/cfc, but I think I can make it streamlined and modular (easily removeable/cleanable) with my kettle.

Question: Is recirculating in an icebucket for the WHOLE time feasible, or am I gonna end up with a bucket of hot water that stops cooling after a few mins?

Recirculating cold ice cold water from the start will yield warm water at the finish unless you want to use a ton of ice. I think using a prechiller would be the most efficient when using an IC (though I have never used one).
Living in central Florida the water from the tap is luke warm at its coldest this time of year. Using my IC will cool the wort pretty quickly to about 115-125. The cooling rapidly falls off from that point. I am going to try an recirculate ice water from that point next time (this weekend). I can't see any reason why this wouldn't work.

I use a homebuilt CFC which is 50' of 3/8 copper in a 5/8 hose jacket. In the fall & winter, I go from boiling to 70 in 5 minutes with the water turned on about 1/2 way. My most recent brew (my first summer brewing session with the CFC) it went from boiling to 85 in 5 minutes. Before the CFC, I used the recirculating ice water with the pond pump method. I filled a 30 quart kettle with ice water and as the ice began to melt, I started swapping in those plastic cold packs. I don't know how long it took, but it seemed to take forever, hence the CFC. I have never heard about losing hop aroma from using this method and I don't seem to have noticed anything.

SORRY! DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO MULTIPLE QUOTES!

"I have 25' of 3/8'' IC and did a manual whirlpool with a spoon yesterday, got it down to 80 in 15 minutes tops. I have used this IC before with the whirlpool and it would take 30+ minutes. "

Do you mean to say that you used a manual whirlpool and it worked great, but when you used a pump to recirc wort it took forever?

Recirculating cold ice cold water from the start will yield warm water at the finish unless you want to use a ton of ice.

Yielding warm water at the finish ain't a bad deal, especially if you're gonna use it to clean up with....but do you mean to say that after a certain point you can't cool anymore?

I have never heard about losing hop aroma from using this method and I don't seem to have noticed anything.

Yeah, that may just be hearsay. I base it off of Jamil Z, who has made some award winning beers. But there's still little more than subjective evidence My main beef with the cfc/plates are that the cold break makes it into the fermentor. I'm all about sloughing off all the garbage at each juncture in the process

BTW, Anyone know how to do multiple quotes?

ScubaSteve said:

BTW, Anyone know how to do multiple quotes?

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Use this format with the spaces removed

[ quote=ScubaSteve ]Put the quote here[ /quote ]

add your commentary

[ quote=ScubaSteve ]Put another quote here[ /quote ]

It would look like this:

ScubaSteve said:

Put the quote here

Click to expand...

add your commentary

ScubaSteve said:

Put another quote here

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Thanks for your help!