Tandem Therminator Plate Chillers

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marcb

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I am moving up to 20 gallon (and hopefully larger) batch sizes and want to be able to cool down the wort quickly to pitching temperature at the end of the boil. I also whirlpool and have been using a Therminator with 10 Gallon batches very successfully. I am thinking about hooking up the flow of wort in series through a second Therminator and paralleling the ground water (Garden hose) hookup. I am also going to add a valve for doing an ice water recirc after I drop to about 100 degrees to keep things moving along. I am currently using a March 815 pump for whirl pooling and pumping through the plate chiller(s) and am curious if it even has enough oomph to get a good whirlpool going on a 20 gallon batch. Has anyone hooked up more than one plate chiller and had good or bad results? Any thoughts on what I'm planning or am I totally nuts : )

Happy Brewing! :mug:
 
I'm disappointed with my chuggers performance getting a decent whirlpool with 10 gallons, and that's without going through any plate chillers. Good luck! Let us know how it works!
 
Build and then use this:

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The motor is a very low RPM unit and the stirrer and prop is something I designed and built.

Something like this will keep your water/wort in a strong sheer motion. No need for a whirlpool pump.
 
Nice, does Your setup cone all of the trub? Do you use a side pickup to minimize disturbing the cone?
 
At the brewpub I do my pro-am beers at, we use a Therminator and Chillzilla in series for 23 gallon and 1-barrel batches. Tap water goes through the therminator, and cold water from a Sanke keg goes through the counterflow chiller. Works very effectively. No reason why this wouldn't work with cold water in a couple of corny kegs as well - just takes some CO2 to push it through the chiller. Similar concept to recirculating ice water.
 
Nice, does Your setup cone all of the trub? Do you use a side pickup to minimize disturbing the cone?
No. It is the set up for the HLT. Pump your brew through the coil after you do your initial chill through the Therminator. Just use very cold water in the HLT and you will drop the wort temp in one pass through your system.
 
I use a therminator on 30 and 35 gallon batches and it works fine. I pump directly from BK into fermenter. My well water is 55F and I have no problem chilling to 60F at a wort flow rate of about 1 gallon per minute.
 
P-J said:
No. It is the set up for the HLT. Pump your brew through the coil after you do your initial chill through the Therminator. Just use very cold water in the HLT and you will drop the wort temp in one pass through your system.

Ah, got it. I was scratching my head as I thought it was your BK! I already use a convoluted heat exchanger in the HLT which is where I intend to do the ice bath with a valve on one of the therminators to switchover from tap to ice bath coil. What temp do you cutover on your rig?
 
stevehaun said:
I use a therminator on 30 and 35 gallon batches and it works fine. I pump directly from BK into fermenter. My well water is 55F and I have no problem chilling to 60F at a wort flow rate of about 1 gallon per minute.

Good to know, thanks! So no recirc, just slow flow into the fermenter.... Cool, I'm also looking to recirc and whirlpool to keep the trub and gunk from making it into the therminator as I make some really hoppy beers and even with bags the hop pellets leave a lot of crud.
 
Cool, thanks. That is exactly what I'm looking to do. I notice that you mount them in different orientation in each of the pictures, I'm fabricating a small stand that allows me to chill with them horizontally and then rotate them for sanitizing as recommended by the manufacturer. I was surprised that there were not any examples of rotating plate chiller mounts out there but then again maybe you don't need to run them one way or another???
 
The port orientation changes from brand to brand. The goal for cleaning is a gravity drain of the wort side after clean-up. I don't orientation is critical for chilling.
 
Got it, I solved the problem with some nested stainless tube that allows me to rotate 360 degrees and has a set screw. Works like a champ!
 
I've been using twin plate chillers for years now due to the hot ground water in Florida most of the year. The first one uses tap water, and the second is fed by a 1/2hp submersible pump in a ice water bath. I just added tri clamp sanitary fittings for the current configuration as I wanted a more modular solution, and to minimize lost wort. The previous config you can see on my website had all of the pieces connected by hoses and that was too much lost wort. In a previous configuration with them inline like this the quick connects would still flex and leak sometimes no matter how good the o-rings and lube and the chillers had to be unbolted to address issues. Now with the tri-clamps they are very solid and quick to reconfigure. I know due to the threads this isn't truly sanitary, but they are better overall for sanitation than the previous poly fittings, and I sanitize with boiling water and/or wort prior to use and at the end of the boil.
pump_and_chill.jpg
 
Here's an update of this one in action. Lots of stuff still to tweak but with inline aeration I'm able to transfer my wort right into the fermenter and pitch!

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image-221174766.jpg
 
Dean Palmer said:
I've been using twin plate chillers for years now due to the hot ground water in Florida most of the year. The first one uses tap water, and the second is fed by a 1/2hp submersible pump in a ice water bath. I just added tri clamp sanitary fittings for the current configuration as I wanted a more modular solution, and to minimize lost wort. The previous config you can see on my website had all of the pieces connected by hoses and that was too much lost wort. In a previous configuration with them inline like this the quick connects would still flex and leak sometimes no matter how good the o-rings and lube and the chillers had to be unbolted to address issues. Now with the tri-clamps they are very solid and quick to reconfigure. I know due to the threads this isn't truly sanitary, but they are better overall for sanitation than the previous poly fittings, and I sanitize with boiling water and/or wort prior to use and at the end of the boil.

Nice setup! I thought about horizontally aligning my setup but ended up with a more compact design... I need a more permanent plumbing linkage on the wort side. Currently I split two tap water feeds and get 70 degrees out from boiling in.
 

Cool, thanks. So you are using 90 degree street elbows and camlocks to connect in the silicone tubing... I sort of need a 90 to another 90 to barb to go from the wort out on the bottom around to the wort in on the second one.
 
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