Immersion Chiller Vs Plate/Counterflow Chiller

I've been using an Immersion Chiller since day one brewing. It certainly does the job, but I need to stir the wort while running the Chiller to really get things cooled in under 12 minutes.

So, now I'm considering stepping up to a plate chiller/pump (and perhaps some sort of inline oxygenation).

My cold water flows around 62 degrees. Does this mean that I can go from the BK thru the Plate Chiller and straight to the fermenter and have my wort cooled adequately? (Say, under 70 degrees).

I don't want to have to get into reflowing the wort into the BK.

If this works, the only drawback to the Plate Chiller I can see is with the Immersion Chiller I get all the cold break to occur and can leave it behind in the BK and out of the fermenter. I like that a lot as it makes reharvesting yeast pretty easy.

Or is there something I'm not aware of that allows the cold break to stay out of the fermenter with the Plate Chiller?

Please school me!

This has been beaten to death around here for sure but you've got it right. With the plate, you have to be careful not to clog it with hop gunk. It's bad enough that cold break is formed during the chill. Plate chillers and tube in tube CFC's can both get the wort down to very close to the coolant temp depending on the flow rate. At 62F coolant, you could get the wort to 70F in one pass with both running at full speed (wort via pump). If you slow the wort a bit, it will get closer to like 65F.

You will absolutely get cold break in the fermenter but I don't think it's a big deal if you only reuse yeast once or twice.

Cheers Bobby.

And a big thanks for your videos btw, they've helped me to figure out a lot of stuff.