Plate Chillers

I am getting ready to convert a keggle and the only thing holding me up is chilling the wort. I was about to get my 50 feet of copper when I remembered I had a plate chiller from an old bar. There are some posts about plate chillers but not much info on how to use them and I dont even know if this one will work.

The design was for soda water to be pushed via CO2 through this chill plate that was immersed in ice in a sink. The soda water got mixed with syrup to give you a cold bar coke or pepsi.

Has anyone used this system and could it work to chill wort?

Pics of what I have are below (the brand tag is illegible).


Thanks for the input

That's a cold plate to chill beer/carbonated drinks, before it's served NOT to chill boiling wort. An actual plate chiller will have in/out for both the wort and chill water (flowing in opposite directions).

Look at these to see a proper wort plate chiller.

He's asking if the thing he has will work and the answer is maybe. You might be able to accomplish chilling wort by immersing this in ice. I would have some trepidations and would definately dry run with boiling water. Biggest concern is that isnt designed to have boiling water inside it. It might just crack and be a failed experiment.

It's designed for low temperatures. Even when it's in use, it's room temp (at the most) beer going through to be chilled to serving temps. Not boiling hot to pitching temps.

IMO, wrong item for the task. You can use it to make a jokey box later on if you wish.

Thanks for the input....that is what I was thinking....wrong tool for the job, but then again, isn't that what creating a kettle out of keg is....sort of?

Back to chilling my wort though....pluses and minuses of immersion chiller vs. the wort plate chiller that golddiggie referenced?

I can easily sweat the copper for an immersion chiller, but copper is not cheap right now...and I don't really like the idea of the bulk and delicate nature of an immersion chiller...so it comes down to cost and ease to clean. What do you guys think as far as price vs. ease of use/cleaning?

I think what you have goes in a Jockey-box, very cool and hard to find. When you buy all the stuff for a IC, for the same money you could get a plate chiller. They are not hard to clean if you do it after every use. A plate chiller will take an hour off your brewday. If your ground water is warm, you should spend more on a better plate chiller.