What do you NOT like about your wort chiller? (Senior Design Project for School)

Entering my final year of Mechanical Engineering College and I'm considering doing a form of improvement on current methods of wort chillers out there for homebrewing.

Is there a wort chiller that you use and there's an aspect or feature of it that you wish it had? Or maybe something that it does that you just don't like.

I've already got some ideas that I'm kicking around. I don't have much experience with wort chillers so I thought I'd throw this out there and see what some of you guys had to say about your experiences with various wort chillers on the market. Or maybe even some that you made yourself. Thanks.

A 40 plate chiller that one could take apart with some common tools and reassemble easily.

I would also up some sort of hanger or mount on the thing.

An immersion chiller that had a mechanical stirrer or something attached that kept the wort in turbulent flow, and possibly even created a whirlpool.

I hate having to constantly stir the pot and I don't want to buy a March pump just to recirculate/whirlpool.

BendBrewer said:

A 40 plate chiller that one could take apart with some common tools and reassemble easily.

I would also up some sort of hanger or mount on the thing.

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This is exactly what I want. It would be nice if it also cost around $150.

comet909 said:

What do you NOT like about your wort chiller?

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1. Costs money
2. Uses water
3. Requires cleaning
4. Costs money

+1 on the immersion chiller with a stirring feature.

The reason I've not gone for a plate chiller is cleaning / sanitising, so you could look at that.

However if you'd really like to think outside the box the one thing I'd really like is a chiller that doesn't use water as a coolant. I don't know about in the US but over here we pay for our water depending on how much we use and I know that in certain parts of Australia they're not allowed to cool with water. If you can work this one out put me down for one... at a reasonable cost of course!

Plate chillers can be troublesome to keep clean/sanitary, and IC's / CFC's can be a bit cumbersome (bulky). So if you could make something that's easy to clean, uses less/no water and isn't too bulky I'd be on board.

You don't need to use water for any chiller. Glycol pumped from a freezer would work fine, just like in commercial breweries.

orangehero said:

You don't need to use water for any chiller. Glycol pumped from a freezer would work fine, just like in commercial breweries.

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Until I find that free glycol chiller on craigslist, that sort of thing is cost prohibitive to many of us. Though, now that I'm not going to be using this AC unit for my ferm chamber, I might try to turn it into a glycol chiller...

Used Air Conditioner + Custom Heatsink (think computer water cooling waterblock, etc.) = Cheap(er) Glycol Chiller

Not to go OT but I think we could learn a bit from the guys over at the procooling.com forums. They have a similar plight to cool down hot stuff too.