Pump for Counter Flow chiller

I'm testing my chiller out on a dry run in prep for next weekend, and it seems to be quite slow exiting my brew pot into the chiller and then down into the carboy. Do I need some sort of pump on this thing, and if so, what pump do I need? I assume I need something food safe, which means I can't get it at home depot.

I use gravity for mine, but I do raise the brew pot a bit higher than I used to. I haven't checked the time to drain, but draining boiling wort at full speed with 65 degree tap water (also at full speed) reduces the temperature, to the low 70's in the primary. If only it would clean itself afterwards.

-a.

I manage a gravity feed through my CFC as well. I don't even keep the pot all that high. Takes about 20 minutes to cool 15 gallons.

If you want to speed things up you can buy a wort wizard from morebeer. http://morebeer.com/product.html?product_id=6336, or you make an identical wort wizard by buying an aquarium aspirator from an aquarium store or like I did bought a waterbed aspirator from Menards for less than $5.00 . Remove the screws and grind down the plastic fins so that you can slide it on the water hose. It works great with a counter flow cooler.

davidkrau,

Do you have any pics of what you're talking about?

-S

Unless your CFC is operating near it's maximum efficiency, wouldn't you want the wort to kind of meander through? My wort comes out slowly too, but with my home-made CFC it still ends up ~6-7 degrees hotter than the tap water. Speeding the flow up with a pump would just make it worse.

I was just thinking on amount of time it takes to chill the wort, considering that most of it will still be sitting extremely hot in the brew kettle waiting for if to meander through the chiller. On a quick dry run, it took a good 15-20 minutes just to get about 3-4 gallons into the fermenter. At that rate, it would take about an hour to get a good 10 gallon full boil into carboys. I figured the whole point of the CFC was to QUICKLY chill it it.

I'm wondering now if a plate chiller would end up being better. I could probably pump the whole 14 gal pot in under 15 minutes...the question just becomes if the wort actually can cool at that same rate.

We'll give the gravity a go this weekend and see how it does on a 10g batch.

Here's an idea, if you have either a CO2 bottle or an air compressor, you could slightly pressurize the kettle. I can see putting an air fitting into the lid and set the regulator to 5-10 lbs. Put something heavy on the lid. I know, sounds a bit Macguyver.

jezter6 said:

I was just thinking on amount of time it takes to chill the wort, considering that most of it will still be sitting extremely hot in the brew kettle waiting for if to meander through the chiller. On a quick dry run, it took a good 15-20 minutes just to get about 3-4 gallons into the fermenter. At that rate, it would take about an hour to get a good 10 gallon full boil into carboys. I figured the whole point of the CFC was to QUICKLY chill it it.

I'm wondering now if a plate chiller would end up being better. I could probably pump the whole 14 gal pot in under 15 minutes...the question just becomes if the wort actually can cool at that same rate.

We'll give the gravity a go this weekend and see how it does on a 10g batch.

Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure that when people say "quickly" chill the wort, they're talking about a different type of quickly. The whole point of a CFC is to take a small amount of wort and rapidly cool it from near boiling to pitching temperature. Since most of the bacteria that produce off flavors grow at about 100-140F, cooling from boiling to 80F in a few seconds keeps the wort keeps them from growing. You also get a better cold break, resulting in clearer beer.

If you use an immersion cooler it cools the entire pot down at the same time, but it does it very slowly. This means that the wort spends a good deal of time in the 100-140F zone where the bacteria can multiply.

In my earlier post I mentioned gravity feeding as what "I do." Certainly it's worked for me, and it really doesn't take long. However, I guess I should've mentioned my other technique - now preferred.

I gravity feed the wort down to a mag-drive pump about as fast as it will flow. From the pump, it goes through my CFC and up into my fermenter. I put the CFC into a cooler full of ice water. The outlet end remains open, the other gets connected to another pump (mine is food safe, but that's not necessary) that recirculates the ice water through the outer CFC coil. My wort comes out at sub-60 degree temps so long as I add more ice as the ice in the cooler melts. It takes about 40 lbs of ice to cool 15 gallons that way.

There's a link to the "Frankencooler" in my signature - the pic was taken when I was brewing smaller batches, and I've since refined the system to what I describe above.

Lustrekung

Here is a picture of the wort wizard you requested. You casn see how it is hooked up by refering to the Morebeer url referred to in my prior reply.