wort chilling idea

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.

VipertheIV

Well-Known Member
Joined
Nov 29, 2011
Messages
89
Reaction score
1
So, an idea I have had for a while but am not sure how it would work is this. Using food grade (similar to siphon tubing) tubing; run it through a chest cooler full of ice (two 16 lb bags) and replace drain plug with a ball valve. You could control flow rate keeping worth in ice cooler longer to get it to temp. Could this work? Would be cheaper than a copper DIY worth chiller. To me it is the same principle as a counter flow chiller
 
Standard siphon tubing is not going to handle 200 degree wort very well, you would need silicon tubing and I am not sure how well it well exchange heat.
 
Soooo is this like a gravity feed to the fermenter? Or is this using a pump recirculating?
 
Ramitt said:
Standard siphon tubing is not going to handle 200 degree wort very well, you would need silicon tubing and I am not sure how well it well exchange heat.

What of I were to use the flexible PVC tubing
 
I'll bite!

What if you did this instead:

Add a ball valve to your boil kettle - from there you could use a piece of thick walled silicon tubing which would go to a piece of copper or SS tubing of equal diameter (you'll have to have a piece of silicon tubing on both ends of course). The metal tubing would go into the ice bath and you could have a barb on both sides of the ball valve that's in the cooler so that the silicon tubing on the other end of the metal tubing can slide on there...and ta-da your method would work.

Yea i know, the way i described it sounds a little confusing, but its really straight forward...I'll draw a picture if you need me to

EDIT: Oh hell, I've got nothing better to do at work (also, I just realized, you'll probably need a bulk head of some sort to mount the ball valve in the cooler) - here, check this out:

setup.jpg
 
I'll bite!

What if you did this instead:

Add a ball valve to your boil kettle - from there you could use a piece of thick walled silicon tubing which would go to a piece of copper or SS tubing of equal diameter (you'll have to have a piece of silicon tubing on both ends of course). The metal tubing would go into the ice bath and you could have a barb on both sides of the ball valve that's in the cooler so that the silicon tubing on the other end of the metal tubing can slide on there...and ta-da your method would work.

Yea i know, the way i described it sounds a little confusing, but its really straight forward...I'll draw a picture if you need me to

I think whatever size tubing he had coming from the kettle would be a bit large for that application, meaning that s/he'd have to have a fair amount of copper/ss pipe to get the desired temp down, not to mention that's going to melt the ice like crazy, to the point where I think by the end of the drain, you'll be running that wort through luke warm water.

Also, the cost of that ice will add up if you're purchasing it, making it more cost effective to just buy (or make) a immersion chiller.
 
I think whatever size tubing he had coming from the kettle would be a bit large for that application, meaning that s/he'd have to have a fair amount of copper/ss pipe to get the desired temp down, not to mention that's going to melt the ice like crazy, to the point where I think by the end of the drain, you'll be running that wort through luke warm water.

Also, the cost of that ice will add up if you're purchasing it, making it more cost effective to just buy (or make) a immersion chiller.

yea, i realize that, but its still a cool idea lol...maybe he could pour in some liquid nitrogen :p
 
I just built a counter wort chiller from a hot water hose, some 3/8" copper tubing, a couple "T" connectors, zip ties, and some soldering. It worked AWESOME! My brewing partner and I bought the materials for two of these and it was $100 total - that's right, $100/2, fifty bucks each. Went from 180F to 75F in about 20 seconds thru the rig. Flow was a bit slower than I hoped, but it was an easy project I found on this forum and it worked great, and it pretty easy to store and hookup.

1/2" copper tubing may help with the speed but is going to have a different heat transfer; I'm not sure that would matter for me because my cold water is very cold.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/How_to_make_a_Counter_Flow_Chiller
 
Back
Top