Idea! Counterflow chiller alternative

The chill-down is always the worst part of my brew day. No matter what it takes close to an hour for 5 gallons. i have an immersion chiller, but frankly water baths are faster.

I had an idea tho, how i could use my chiller in a different way and possibly get faster results. I thought I'd post here to see what people thought before I went through the trouble tho.

If i have a kettle with a bulkhead on it. I think I could do a gravity transfer to a carboy and chill the wort on the way by running it through my immersion chiller submerged in a cooler full of ice water. The wort would go from the kettle, through high temp tubing, in to the top of the chiller, spiral down through, and out the nozzle of the cooler, into my carboy.
If this works, the only piece of kit i need that i don't currently have, is some hi temp tubing.

Anyone done this?

Might work if you keep the ice water stirred so you are in effect creating an almost counterflow chiller. Don't forget to sanitize the chiller.

I know people do it that way by pumping it. Whether or not it would siphon properly would be my only concern. Maybe test it with water first?

It might work, but it seems overly complicated to me. I'd say something is wrong with your chiller if it takes over an hour to cool 5 gallons. Perhaps its too short? I cool 5 gals in about 12 mins with a 50ft roll of 3/8 copper tubing.

killsurfcity said:

The chill-down is always the worst part of my brew day. No matter what it takes close to an hour for 5 gallons. i have an immersion chiller, but frankly water baths are faster.

I had an idea tho, how i could use my chiller in a different way and possibly get faster results. I thought I'd post here to see what people thought before I went through the trouble tho.

If i have a kettle with a bulkhead on it. I think I could do a gravity transfer to a carboy and chill the wort on the way by running it through my immersion chiller submerged in a cooler full of ice water. The wort would go from the kettle, through high temp tubing, in to the top of the chiller, spiral down through, and out the nozzle of the cooler, into my carboy.
If this works, the only piece of kit i need that i don't currently have, is some hi temp tubing.

Anyone done this?

Click to expand...

It will work, but no better than the normal way you would use it as an immersion chiller. Water baths are never faster than either an immersion chiller or a counterflow chiller if they are properly sized and operated.

I suspect that the heart of the problem is your chiller. Specifically the length and ID. I'm gonna guess that it's a 25ft 3/8" OD copper tubing IC. If that's the case, then the ID of that tubing will only be about 1/4" which is very small and restrictive. Larger tubing = higher flow rate for water or wort. Small increases in the tubing ID make a huge difference in the flow rate and this translates to faster chilling whether using an IC or a CFC. You want to keep both the wort and the cooling water moving for optimum performance. I use a pump and circulate through a CFC and back to the kettle in a continuous loop. This works very well for me.

astropunk said:

It might work, but it seems overly complicated to me. I'd say something is wrong with your chiller if it takes over an hour to cool 5 gallons. Perhaps its too short? I cool 5 gals in about 12 mins with a 50ft roll of 3/8 copper tubing.

Click to expand...

This.
The key is to stir the wort gently so there is a good heat exchange happening.

Until he posts up the length and OD of the IC, it's hard to say what he's using...

I will say, that I can chill 5-5.25 gallons of boiling wort to under 70F in ~15 minutes. That's with an IC built from 20' of 3/8" OD tubing. Takes ~4.5 gallons of boiling wort down to under 70F in about 10-12 minutes. Of course, that's with moving the IC inside the wort, to provide more contact with the wort, thus improving the chilling time.

I'm trying to figure out which OD tubing to get for my next IC. I know I want to build it with 50' of soft copper. I'm just really torn between 3/8" and 1/2" OD tubing. Either way, it will be utility grade, so that I'm not spending a small fortune on the copper.

BTW, the tubing wall isn't 1/16" thickness, it's actually less than 1/32" (just put a dial caliper onto the end of my 3/8" OD IC, get a wall thickness of .023")... This is utility grade, so if you bought the expensive stuff, it could be thicker. Thicker tubing could also be why it's not working as well as it should. More metal for the thermal transfer to go through could result in reduced cooling efficiency.

In the summer I have to use a pre-chiller here in Georgia. I found my 25 foot IC took too long. I made a 50 foot and use the 25 foot in a bucket of ice water with a frozen two liter in the center as a spacer so I don't have to use too much ice.

Increasing the water speed helped also. I started out using clamp fittings at low pressure. Now I have compression fittings that can handle high pressure.

It will work fine. Make sure you leave room in the cooler to add more ice if needed, and either stir the ice water or shake the copper coils as the wort flows through. If you're monitoring the temps coming in the fermenter, don't worry if it's too cold at first, the chilling effect will taper off and should average out to a good pitching temp. After using it once or twice you'll be able to dial in your end temp easily.

Catt22 said:

It will work, but no better than the normal way you would use it as an immersion chiller.

I suspect that the heart of the problem is your chiller. Specifically the length and ID. I'm gonna guess that it's a 25ft 3/8" OD copper tubing IC. If that's the case, then the ID of that tubing will only be about 1/4" which is very small and restrictive. .

Click to expand...

If the problem is water temp then what the OP descibed will work considerably better. The "cold" tap water here is often over 90F in the summer, and I used to use a chiller almost identical to what the OP is describing. It was ~20' of 3/8" copper in a bucket full of ice water, and I could chill a 5 gal batch to pitching temps in the ~10 min it took to gravity feed into the fermenter. There are certainly better methods of chilling, but for those with warm tap water and no pump it's the best method I know of by far.

JuanMoore said:

It will work fine. Make sure you leave room in the cooler to add more ice if needed, and either stir the ice water or shake the copper coils as the wort flows through. If you're monitoring the temps coming in the fermenter, don't worry if it's too cold at first, the chilling effect will taper off and should average out to a good pitching temp. After using it once or twice you'll be able to dial in your end temp easily.



If the problem is water temp then what the OP descibed will work considerably better. The "cold" tap water here is often over 90F in the summer, and I used to use a chiller almost identical to what the OP is describing. It was ~20' of 3/8" copper in a bucket full of ice water, and I could chill a 5 gal batch to pitching temps in the ~10 min it took to gravity feed into the fermenter. There are certainly better methods of chilling, but for those with warm tap water and no pump it's the best method I know of by far.

Click to expand...

There is nothing at all wrong with the OP's concept. The same could be done riunning ice water through the IC using gravity flow. I do something similar in the warm months by adding a cooler and ice into the loop. I run the first 75% with tap water only and finish up with the ice water. Sometimes I get lazy and just refrigerate the wort to cool to desired pitching temperature which is often the next morning. No problem doing that so far.

JuanMoore got my situation exactly, right down to the size of the chiller. In the dead of winter where our tap water is very cold, it still took forever to chill down, and gallons and gallons of water. That's the other part of this, i hate to just run water down the drain if i don't have to.

The way i have this worked out, gravity would work in my favor the whole way through the chiller. And I'd be surprised if it took longer than 10 min. It's also pretty simple. Just the tubing, and a bucket of ice. I bet I could chill down with a single bag of ice and about 3g of water.

I'll run some tests and see what I find, but I think this will be my new go to.

Edit: just so we are clear, i'm interested in doing this:

Catt22 said:

Sometimes I get lazy and just refrigerate the wort to cool to desired pitching temperature which is often the next morning. No problem doing that so far.

Click to expand...

Good point. I don't really agree with the comments about how urgent it is to chill the wort as fast as possible. The Aussies have no troubles using the no-chill method, and it's the cheapest and easiest way to do it by far.

No-Chill.

Get a 6 gallon water jug (HDPE) and just drain your kettle into that. You'll also need a ball valve and silicone hose to make it work well, but it's well worth it. Saves a lot of water, and about 20 minutes of time. Also, less risk of infection in my opinion.

No chill is interesting, but i thought there was a risk of DMS if your wort sits at high temps (but below boiling) too long?

I would suggest a plate chiller. It chills 5 gallons in 5 minutes. Shirron or Therminator or the ones kegcowboy sells would be just fine.

Well sure I could spend a heap of money on any number of brewhouse gadgets, or I could diy something for a tenth of the cost. Diy fits my budget much better these days.

Charlie P. outlines a similar chilling scheme in The Complete Joy, but it involves a counter flow chill prior to the one you've described. If your chiller is of decent length and submerged sufficiently in ice water, it should work.

I took my immersion chiller and made a DIY counterflow chiller. This is a closeup of the connection. Basically just a 1/2" copper elbow drilled out and the copper tube is shoved through and soldered shut.

Cold tap water through the garden hose, hot wort through the inner copper tubing.

All you need is an old garden hose and a couple fittings and you have a counterflow chiller. I use a pump on the wort and regulate the flow at the kettle, then I can set the outlet temperature of the wort to what ever pitch temperature I want. Takes about 5-7 minutes for a 5 gal batch to go from boil to 21C, but I have cold tap water here in Canada.
I prefer this counterflow chiller over the therminators etc for a couple reasons.
1. Its a lot cheaper as a DIY project.
2. The therminator style have a lot of little passageways to get clogged and who knows how clean you are getting them (yes they get steralized, but still).

There are plans in the DIY section for a no solder counterflow. Total cost is around $50, and will cool a batch of beer from boiling to room temp in under 10 minutes, gravity fed.

Prior to building the aforementioned counterflow, I was using a DIY immersion chiller. The difference is night and day, I wish I would have built this sooner.

You could probably salvage the copper from your IC for a counterflow, and cut the cost in half.

so for the sake of science , i just did a test with the setup in the picture i posted above. i took 3g of 160º water down to 60º in about 5 minutes, using just water and the ice in my fridge's ice machine (about a half - 3/4 of one of those small ice bags).

why 160º? i don't have a ball valve on my kettle yet, so i had to put the hot water in a bucket, and i wasn't sure it could handle 210º. That said, getting down to 160º after you cut your burner is usually pretty fast. i think this is proof enough for me to go ahead and build out the chiller fully, so i can present more realistic results. I think though, that going from full boil, with the right amount of ice and flow-rate, i'm going to be able to get 5g down to at least the low 70s in just over 5 minutes. But like I said I'll post my results whenever I get around to it.