New wort chiller

pannell77 said:

This should probably be moved to a different forum but beyond that....

multiple solutions are available to you:

1.submerge your boil kettle in an ice bath while chilling with wort chiller
2. get a pre-chiller which is essentially another wort chiller that you put in an ice batch so that the water entering your wort chiller is cold enough to get your wort down to pitching temps.
3. get a pond pump and just re-circulate the wort chiller water in an ice bath once you get the wort temp down to your water temp of 80*.
4. do all 4 of these if just get really excited.

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i've just done parts 2 & 3, which I will attempt in a few weeks on my brown ale. The pond pump and small amount of tubing was pretty cheap, and it should get my temps down faster than an ice bath. Just don't forget to boil your wort chiller for the last few minutes of your boil to sanitize.

MalFet said:

I admire all the ingenuity here, but I don't understand the trouble people go to to avoid buying a $12 pond pump (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002JPGE6S/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20). As they say in my neck of the woods, "cheap and best!"

(Of course, I often find myself over-engineering very simple problems, so I'm hardly one to criticize.)

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Wow that is cheap. I hate wasting water, so this may be worth getting instead of a prechiller.

HootHootHoot said:

Use the wort chiller until about 100 degrees. Then take a tub of ice water and pump it through the chiller

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Why not just use the ice water all the time? The whole point is to cool it quickly.

Gasturbine said:

Why not just use the ice water all the time? The whole point is to cool it quickly.

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You'll need way more ice. Early on, the temp differential is high enough that even warm tap water cools effectively. You generally want to just dump that heat rather than fight against the ice with it.

Gasturbine said:

Why not just use the ice water all the time? The whole point is to cool it quickly.

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Because I don't want to use up all my ice just to get it down to 80 degrees, then I'm SOL until I go buy ice.

If the wort is ~200 deg and my water is 75-80, it will cool very fast to about 100. Then I can use ice water to get it down lower.

The temperature difference from 200-80 is so large, if my ice water is 32, it won't cool it that much faster from 200. Then by the time it gets to 80ish my ice is used up.

"Why not just use the ice water all the time? The whole point is to cool it quickly."

That's basically what I do, but that because I'm trying to avoid dead time, not because you pick up much cooling that way. I hook the prechiller and chiller up and turn on the water. Then I start filling the pre-chiller bucket with ice and cold water.

LateraLex said:

I'm going to built a prechiller as I know that can be made for about $25 at Lowe's. I wanted a pond pump, but after doing some searching on the forum, it didn't sound like a cheapie one would work. I would love to hear that I'm wrong, as I'd gladly shell out $30 to recirculate the water.

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How would you use a pond pump with a pre-chiller? I'd be interested in something that could conserver water. I use way too much with my setup.

I hear about people recirculating their water, but how does that work? I'm amazed at how quickly a bag of ice will melt using a pre-chiller. I put ice in at the end of the cooling phase just to get the temp to drop the last few degrees. Would I just be using that much more ice to cool the wort?

b-boy said:

How would you use a pond pump with a pre-chiller? I'd be interested in something that could conserver water. I use way too much with my setup.

I hear about people recirculating their water, but how does that work? I'm amazed at how quickly a bag of ice will melt using a pre-chiller. I put ice in at the end of the cooling phase just to get the temp to drop the last few degrees. Would I just be using that much more ice to cool the wort?

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Typically people use either a prechiller or a pond pump. I'm not sure what the advantage would be of using both.

To use a pond pump, just fill up a bucket with ice water, attach your immersion chiller input to the pump, and let the output feed back into the bucket.

Just as a reference, I use tap water to go down to about 90ºF and then use about 5lb of ice to bring it down to 60 or so. I always have plenty of ice left over at the end, so I could probably use less.

b-boy said:

How would you use a pond pump with a pre-chiller? I'd be interested in something that could conserver water. I use way too much with my setup.

I hear about people recirculating their water, but how does that work? I'm amazed at how quickly a bag of ice will melt using a pre-chiller. I put ice in at the end of the cooling phase just to get the temp to drop the last few degrees. Would I just be using that much more ice to cool the wort?

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I think the idea is to use one or the other. Instead of connecting your prechiller to your water supply, it goes to the pond pump which is submerged in your ice water, and the drain tube goes back into your ice.
I haven't done either, so I have no idea if it will use less ice than a prechiller. In the prechiller setup you are taking tap water (70-80) and chilling it to your ice temps. In the pond pump situation, you are recirculating water that is the same temp as your wort, so could be using more ice if you start while your wort is 100. I'm interested to see how it goes.

LateraLex said:

I think the idea is to use one or the other. Instead of connecting your prechiller to your water supply, it goes to the pond pump which is submerged in your ice water, and the drain tube goes back into your ice.
I haven't done either, so I have no idea if it will use less ice than a prechiller. In the prechiller setup you are taking tap water (70-80) and chilling it to your ice temps. In the pond pump situation, you are recirculating water that is the same temp as your wort, so could be using more ice if you start while your wort is 100. I'm interested to see how it goes.

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This will save me a lot of water: recirculating the spent water back to the ice water.


To save water, I'll try to put the hot water into my washing machine. But I haven't tried this with my new one... I'm not sure how those new load sensing ones work with water prefilled

Be interesting to try liquid nitrogen to cool wort, not that it's realistic. Just imagine... 200-60 in seconds. More time to drink!

HootHootHoot said:

Be interesting to try liquid nitrogen to cool wort, not that it's realistic. Just imagine... 200-60 in seconds. More time to drink!

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It's been tried...doesn't work

MalFet said:

It's been tried...doesn't work

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Why am I not surprised. If we ever go post apocalyptic, I'd like to propose the HBT community all meet in one spot. I feel like that'd be the best opportunity for survival, and there would be beer.

rifraf said:

Why am I not surprised. If we ever go post apocalyptic, I'd like to propose the HBT community all meet in one spot. I feel like that'd be the best opportunity for survival, and there would be beer.

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+1

Was watching the history of beer on tv, civilization was founded on where the beer was. No reason we can't continue that trend!

Here's my method:

1) run water from the garden hose through the IC until the wort is down to 90F. The first five gallons go to a bucket so I have very hot water to use later to clean the IC with PBW.

2) When the wort is down to about 90F, I remove the garden hose and attach the hose from the aquarium pump which is in a bucket of ice water. 5lbs of ice and water to fill the bucket halfway.

3) I run the output of the IC to the ground until it is below the tap water temperature (70). This only takes less than a minute or so since the ice water cools very fast. This helps conserve ice.

4) I put one of those foam insulation tubes on the line going from the pump to the chiller to reduce heat transfer from the air which is about 95-100F (Florida Garage). It has a slit down the lenth so it easily slips on.

5) I put insulation arround the kettle also especially for lagers which I cool to 45F. This helps keep the kettle cold. It's amazing how fast a 45F kettle will rise in a 100F garage.

Higher flow rate does cool faster (Heat transfer 101). Another thing to consider is the length of the IC I have a 25Ft and and a 50ft. The 50ft runs much slower due to the pressure drop through the long line regardless of the pressure at the inlet. So longer doesn't necessarily mean it cools faster. Somewhere between 25 and 50ft is probably ideal.

The pump method saves water and ice over the prechiller method. The water is recirculated and the water coming out of the IC outlet is colder than the tap water so the ice doesn't melt as fast as when using a pre-chiller.

I have a pond pump and a pre-chiller. I used to use the pond pump but it doesn't have high enough flow and I would just melt through tons of ice before the wort got to pitching temps. I now use a pre-chiller and it works ok, but I still use a 20 lb bag of ice to get 10 gallons down from 100 to 68 this time of year. I normally stick my pond pump in the same ice water bucket as the pre-chiller with pond pump outlet hose going back into the same bucket to help agitate the ice water, but I find that I still get better cooling if I manually move the pre-chiller around. This thread got me thinking though, that maybe I should put the pond pump in one bucket full of ice water, the pre-chiller in another bucket of ice water, and then maybe I can pump close to 32 degree water into the boil kettle. Not sure my pond pump can output enough to make this efficient, but i'm thinking with this method I could push cold water into the pre-chiller and then cool it down even more in the pre-chiller. Gonna give it a shot tomorrow.

All the waste water concerned me when I did my first boil a week ago. I'm glad to find out there are ways to conserve that. Buying ice is impractical for me since I don't have a car, but I'm using old 20 oz soda bottles filled with water that I just freeze and refreeze in my poor man's swamp cooler right now. How many of those do you think I'd need to equal a 5lb bag of ice? (This way the ice is reusable!)

Cosmo,

Number 3...it really only takes a minute? 20F in a minute? Maybe you weren't being literal...but you make assertions about saving water and ice, so I'm following up.

Also how does more surface area in a heat exchanger NOT equal greater cooling power? How can pressure drops offset surface area? The water goes in one side and comes out the other (in my feeble mind, that's all that matters, but again, I'm no physicist). Pressure on the exit may not be as high as on the entrance, but that shouldn't really affect cooling...or what am I missing?

Admittedly, maybe I'm just not reading your explanation the right way.

I have 2 ICs a 50' and a 25'. I use the 25' in the prechiller with ice and water, and the 50' in the wort, should I be reversing it? I've been operating under the assumption I put the exchanger with the most surface area in the wort, but is that wrong?

sorry for the barage of questions, but your post go me thinking...

MalFet said:

I admire all the ingenuity here, but I don't understand the trouble people go to to avoid buying a $12 pond pump (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002JPGE6S/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20). As they say in my neck of the woods, "cheap and best!"

(Of course, I often find myself over-engineering very simple problems, so I'm hardly one to criticize.)

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there's an electrical outlet neat where I chill my wort so i might try to pickup some type of pump.

Then again a pre-chiller has no mechanical parts and requires no power, since its essentially a copper coil with tubes on the ends, I might go this route instead. Same with the bucket (fish tank filter style cooler) I might try to build.

b-boy said:

How would you use a pond pump with a pre-chiller? I'd be interested in something that could conserver water. I use way too much with my setup.

I hear about people recirculating their water, but how does that work? I'm amazed at how quickly a bag of ice will melt using a pre-chiller. I put ice in at the end of the cooling phase just to get the temp to drop the last few degrees. Would I just be using that much more ice to cool the wort?

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Bag of Ice? Think ahead and freeze a couple of cottage cheese containers and put them in the pre chiller. Its not rocket science.

HootHootHoot said:

This will save me a lot of water: recirculating the spent water back to the ice water.


To save water, I'll try to put the hot water into my washing machine. But I haven't tried this with my new one... I'm not sure how those new load sensing ones work with water prefilled

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You got to wash up with something. Pump most of the water into the sink to scrub up the brew kettle/ Mash tun. I don't care about conservation, but this just makes sense.

jbaysurfer said:

I have 2 ICs a 50' and a 25'. I use the 25' in the prechiller with ice and water, and the 50' in the wort, should I be reversing it? I've been operating under the assumption I put the exchanger with the most surface area in the wort, but is that wrong?

sorry for the barage of questions, but your post go me thinking...

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Put the longer one in the wort. The longer one will slow down the flow, but the greater surface area will more than offset that. Besides, if you put the longer one in the ice then you would have slower moving water in a smaller IC which is the worst scenario.

My experience with ice is that a big solid block doesn't cool for sh*t. You will get much better heat exchange in the pre-chiller if you used crushed ice. I've tried both multiple times and always end up with the crushed. More surface area equals more cooling capacity. IMO it's worth 5 bucks for the 20 lbs or so of ice it takes me to cool 10 gallons to the mid 60's. Blocks just don't cut it. In fact, when I use blocks most of the block is left when I'm finished.

chumpsteak said:

My experience with ice is that a big solid block doesn't cool for sh*t. You will get much better heat exchange in the pre-chiller if you used crushed ice. I've tried both multiple times and always end up with the crushed. More surface area equals more cooling capacity. IMO it's worth 5 bucks for the 20 lbs or so of ice it takes me to cool 10 gallons to the mid 60's. Blocks just don't cut it. In fact, when I use blocks most of the block is left when I'm finished.

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Your money. Me, I got a hammer.

Zelbinian said:

All the waste water concerned me when I did my first boil a week ago. I'm glad to find out there are ways to conserve that. Buying ice is impractical for me since I don't have a car, but I'm using old 20 oz soda bottles filled with water that I just freeze and refreeze in my poor man's swamp cooler right now. How many of those do you think I'd need to equal a 5lb bag of ice? (This way the ice is reusable!)

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Did some math and answered my own question: you'd need about 4 20 oz bottles to have the same volume of ice as a 5 lb bag. Though due to the surface area issues, I'd probably add 2 more and have 2 more waiting in the wings.

Number 3...it really only takes a minute? 20F in a minute? Maybe you weren't being literal...but you make assertions about saving water and ice, so I'm following up.

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Jbaysurfer,
That's about right. Since the delta-T is very high (90F wort and 32F water) the temp drop is fast when you first switch to ice water.

Also how does more surface area in a heat exchanger NOT equal greater cooling power? How can pressure drops offset surface area? The water goes in one side and comes out the other (in my feeble mind, that's all that matters, but again, I'm no physicist). Pressure on the exit may not be as high as on the entrance, but that shouldn't really affect cooling...or what am I missing?

Click to expand...

Yes, there is more surface area, but the longer length of the copper tubing will put more drag on the flow. With a pump, you generally don't get as much pressure as you do from the tap. A 50ft chiller will have a significantly lower flow rate (gal/hr) than a 25ft chiller. If flow rate is slow enough, it starts to dominate and you may get less cooling even with a higher surface area. Of course this depends on the pressure and flow rate that the pump can produce. It becomes a ballancing act.

This thread got me thinking though, that maybe I should put the pond pump in one bucket full of ice water, the pre-chiller in another bucket of ice water, and then maybe I can pump close to 32 degree water into the boil kettle.

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Chumpsteak,
I don't think the pre-chiller will buy you anything if you are using a pump. You would already be pushing near 32F water into the chiller if you didn't have a pre-chiller. By adding the pre-chiller you are not appreciably lowering the temperature, but you are adding significant drag that can reduce the flow rate. If you are using a pre-chiller, my advice is to hook it up directly to the tap which has a higer pressure and will then cool your wort faster. Of course, this is a trade-off since you can't conserve water by recirculating and you may actually use more ice. It comes down to speed vs. ice/water usage.

So I made a chiller out of some copper coil and used crushed ice. Seems to only get the water temp down about 4-6 degrees cooler than tap water (Measured with IR thermometer). This was enough to get my beer down to 77, since my tap water was at 81/82... A pump pumping ice water would have worked better, but I would have gone through ice really fast. the 10lbs I put in the bucket didn't last very long.

I went with the coil method for simplicity, but I think I should have used a longer coil than the 20' available at home depot...

Justintoxicated said:

So I made a chiller out of some copper coil and used crushed ice. Seems to only get the water temp down about 4-6 degrees cooler than tap water (Measured with IR thermometer). This was enough to get my beer down to 77, since my tap water was at 81/82... A pump pumping ice water would have worked better, but I would have gone through ice really fast. the 10lbs I put in the bucket didn't last very long.

I went with the coil method for simplicity, but I think I should have used a longer coil than the 20' available at home depot...

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For a pre-chiller, if the water exiting the pre-chiller is not cold enough, you can either increase the length of the pre-chiller, or reduce the flow (or both). Personally, I prefer the pump method and recirculating.