Improving chiller performance?

Hi All.

Currently, I'm using an immersion chiller that we hook up to regular house water. I was wondering how well it would work if i bought another immersion chiller, and put it in a bucket with ice and water, and pre-cooled the water before it entered the immersion chiller in the wort.

The alternative would be to purchase a counterflow chiller like this one:
http://www.midwestsupplies.com/products/ProdByID.aspx?ProdID=4486
and pack that in a cooler with ice, which would definitely be more efficient, but much more expensive. My brewing buddy said that if we went with the first idea, we could spend about $40 and have $100 left over. My question is - will pre-chilling the water save us significantly more time?

My hypothesis is something like this: Say that we could get the water down to 35 degrees in the pre-chiller. I think that wouldn't necessarily improve the performance of the chiller *that much*, and that we might shave off a maximum of five minutes from our chilling time. But I'm sure some of you have tried this method, and you could shed some more insight.

Thanks in advance, and happy drinking!

I have two chillers which I made from a 50ft 1/2" copper tube from Home Depot ($30). One goes into the cooler which is filled with ice/water. I have not tried a single chiller to compare but mine goes down to pitching temperature from 5 gallon boil in about 12 minutes.

That works pretty good. There's also a method where you cause a whirl pool to form while the immerssion chiller is in the wort that brings it down it 2 minutes. Whirlpool Chiller

I don't have a pump but I wonder if a motorised stirrer would make this happen? Say a paint mixer on a pulley. with a bearing in the lid?

One of these days, I'm going to buy a pump. Way to handy.

The problem with a CFC is that all the cold break ends up in your fermentor. Currently I take my immerssion chiller and swirl it carefully around every so often to create a bit of a whirl pool. That helps a bit and brings a bunch of the break and hops to the middle of the keggle.

Another way to improve performance is to spray the water coming out of the chiller onto the out side of the brew put. I do this as soon as the water feels cool. I can place my hand under the brew pot and the water is quite a bit hotter after it trickles down.

Denny's Brew said:

That works pretty good. There's also a method where you cause a whirl pool to form while the immerssion chiller is in the wort that brings it down it 2 minutes. Whirlpool Chiller

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From what I understand, this is simply agitating the worth but nothing else. A steering spoon which you already have would do the same. Also, worth remembering is the fact that by agitating/mixing the worth (you can call it whirpooling if it makes it sound more sophisticated) would introduce undesired air into the worth while it is still hot.

not necessarilly and the output of the wort is in the middle and goes through the coils. If the whirl pool action is not to fast then there will be no aeration.

Someone on the jamil show on the brewing network uses this exclusivly.

Besides when you chill the owrt in less than 2 minutes, how much hot siide aeration are you going to get?

Let me tell you guys about the single best way I have found to cool my wort with a single immersion chiller. I brewed on Saturday. It was 96˚F out and my tap water temp was 75˚F. I used my tap water and an IC to get the temp down to under 100˚F. This took about 25 minutes or so. Then I put a submersible pump into a 5 gallon bucket filled with ice water (3 bags from the liquor store). Connected the discharge of the pump to the IC and the outlet of the IC back into the ice water bucket. I let this recirculate for about 15 minutes and got the wort temp down to about 62˚F! I was surprised at how well this worked. I had condensation on the outside of the kettle!

I have tried the prechiller method and it does not even come close to how well this worked. Trust me on this one. The cheapest submersible pump I could find at Home Depot was a Flotec 1/6 hp utility pump for $59. I know that might seem expensive, but I think that with some more time and some more ice I could have cooled down to lagering temps if I needed to.

John

John

I just use an ice bath AND a chiller. It works great-30 min Max from boil to 70F.
I have a big plastic bin which i put 4 10 lb bags of ice in, then some water, then my kettle with immersion chiller in it.

For the submersiable pump go to your local pet store and buy a CHEEP power head Photohand and I used this method with the ice bath resirc and it woorked KILLER. no times to post but the pump was CHEEP.
JJ

Andre Agassi said:

I just use an ice bath AND a chiller. It works great-30 min Max from boil to 70F.
I have a big plastic bin which i put 4 10 lb bags of ice in, then some water, then my kettle with immersion chiller in it.

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I used that method when I did partial boils and it did work great. Not possible to fit my 15 gallon kettle in the sink though.

Ahhh!!! Brew-Gnomes!!!

johnsma22 said:

I used that method when I did partial boils and it did work great. Not possible to fit my 15 gallon kettle in the sink though.

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johnsma22 said:

The cheapest submersible pump I could find at Home Depot was a Flotec 1/6 hp utility pump for $59. I know that might seem expensive, but I think that with some more time and some more ice I could have cooled down to lagering temps if I needed to.

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I was considering something similar and found this pump for $39 at Northern Tool (shipping may offset the price unless you have a store in your area):
http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_6970_792_792

Using my 30' 3/8 chiller I was getting 5 gallons to 65* in 5 min.

Sta I got my 10 gallon batch to 70 in about 11 min.