running wort through immersion chiller

I have the economy chiller from midwest, works ok in a 5 gallon batch about 45 minutes or so from boiling... i just picked up a keggle and plan to do a 10 gallon batch in a few days and will attempt putting the chiller in ice water and gravity feeding the wort through the chiller into a carboy.. has anyone tried this?

It may not work as well as you plan. I did a test run over the summer with ice water on my small immersion in an attempt to pre-chill tap water at 78 degrees before it got to a bigger immersion that use for larger batches. It didn't work very well just letting the chiller sit in the ice water. However, I started stirring the heck out of the ice water to get it moving past the coils and it started dropping the temperature by 20 degrees or so. I seriously doubt that you will be able to chill the wort from boiling to pitching temp using this method. You'll need a couterflow, a plate chiller or a larger immersion to get the job done.

I would think it COULD be done. You would need to make sure you keep the ice bath moving around the IC so the wort will be cool enough after flowing through and then make sure you have enough ice to cool off all 10 gallons to your target temp. Maybe use a drill with a mixing paddle to keep the ice bath flowing so you don't have to stir constantly. I'm not sure how much ice it would take to chill 10 gallons but I'm guessing a lot.

It may be easier to use the IC the way it was designed. Hook up the water then sit back and drink a few brews while the wort is cooling.

I would be worried about anything inside the copper coil, you can't necessarily see if it's corroded or has a patina inside of it, or if some buggie curled up and died in there...talk about a breeding ground for nasties.

I've always been told that copper patina is toxic. But not sure if it's true or not.

Would you be running some of the boiling wort through the coil before chilling it to sterilize the coils like you do with a plate chiller?

I'd use the IC the way it was intended, with the beer on the outside of the coils, where I can see the condition the copper is in.

I was doing something similar. I used a pump to recirculate the wort through a coil that sat in ice water. This worked great. If you're just using gravity to flow through the coil you will want to use a valve, optimally on the output side, to slow the flow rate of the wort.

However, as metioned above, you need to be extreeeeeeemly careful about keeping that coil clean. I dumped out 3 batches before I figured out the contamination problem as coming from my coil. Blasting water through it at the end of your brew day doesn't quite cut it.

Would dry ice work? Also i was planning on running either hot water or sanitizer through the lines first.. the only reason i cant use is as IC is the lines sit low in my keggle..

You could do a test run with water to find out how well it will cool. Counterflow chillers are made of copper so I don't know why one couldn't cleanse an IC the same way CFCs are cleaned and then run some boiling hot water through it before using for wort.

I'd use it as a IC to get the wort cooled down to 100 or lower first. It will be as sanitary as your tap water after using it as a IC.

You can turn it into a cf chiller very easily. You only need a few parts and a little solder.

I had the same idea last Saturday when I brewed. Tried to feed the outlet from immersion chiller through the drain of the cooler I was using for the ice bath.
Here's what I experienced:

Ran into some leakage at the cooler. Had to keep topping off the cooler with water/ice due to leaks/melting.

Sterilized chiller in the boil, no sign of contamination so far. Used compressed air in order to remove as much hose water as possible.

Used 1lb of rock salt in icewater- dropped temp of ice bath down to 27 deg F without ice bath freezing.

Had to have valve on boil pot cracked in order to get to correct temp after passing through chiller. Chiller is 70ft of 5/8" copper tubing. Wrapped around a corny-keg for uniform coil size.

There was more trub present in fermenter than with previous method. I usually chill in pot, then swirl and settle before cracking open the valve.

All in all, took just as long(if not longer) to chill batch down to pitching temp; plus it was a lot more work. If you're as tired as I was after a 8hr brew day (I have a love for decoction mashing) any increase in time/effort in final stage is not looked upon well. My two cents! Hope it was helpful.

Ok did a test run.. boiled water ran it through the chiller for a few minutes, put the chiller in a pot full of ice and drained through stirring ice every minute or so.. water coming out was around 65 and got up to 80 if i stopped stirring. I will attempt this again tomorrow on brew day and run starsan through before wort. Its only a 3/8" 25' chiller.

Thanks for everyones input. It took one hour as an IC when i did a 5g batch and it stuck at 80. Through the lines is a pretty slow flow.. catch 22, Looks like i'll have to get a bigger IC or a PC soon.

With my buddies IC we just ran hose water. From the tap it was 64 degrees, from boil we got it down to 76 degrees in under 10 min.
He has a 1/2 inch 50" chiller. we swirled the IC around in the pot to make a mini vortex. plus moved it up in down. We did this the entire cool down time.
It was for a 5g batch.

we were amazed how quick it was.

cwilliamsccn said:

Thanks for everyones input. It took one hour as an IC when i did a 5g batch and it stuck at 80. Through the lines is a pretty slow flow.. catch 22, Looks like i'll have to get a bigger IC or a PC soon.

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Yeah, what you're trying to do is basically build a ghetto-rigged version of a plate chiller.

Honestly, with 25' of tubing, there's no way you're going to get it to work. You might make it get the wort down to temp, but the only way to do that will be to slow the flow down so much that it takes longer than just using the IC the way it was intended.

You've hit that point where you probably need to look at buying a new piece of gear.

S0meB0dy said:

... I'm not sure how much ice it would take to chill 10 gallons

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The latent heat of fusion of water is about 150 BTU/lb. It takes that much heat to convert one pound of ice to water. One BTU is the heat required to heat/cool 1 lb of water 1 degree F. Thus, melting 1 lb of ice chills 10 gal of wort a little less than 1.7 degrees F, leaving about 4.8 qts of 32^F water. (Figuring 1.080 wort weighs 9 lbs/gal and behaves like water.)

My 25 ft IC cools adequately to about 110^F using 70^F tap water. It sticks at 90^F if I wait long enough.

The kettle itself has about as much "wetted" surface area as my IC. I just put the whole kettle in an ice bath once it cools to 110^F.

To end with 80^F wort, I like the chill water no warmer than 60^F for adequate cooling. For 5 gal batches, this works out conveniently to 5 lbs ice plus 5 gal 70^F tap water. In the depths of winter with 58^F tap water, the IC is more effective and I don't bother with the ice bath.

For 10 gal. batches, 70^F tap water, try 12 lb ice and 7 gal. water (starting with 110^F pre-chilled wort).

subliminalurge said:

Yeah, what you're trying to do is basically build a ghetto-rigged version of a plate chiller.

Honestly, with 25' of tubing, there's no way you're going to get it to work. You might make it get the wort down to temp, but the only way to do that will be to slow the flow down so much that it takes longer than just using the IC the way it was intended.

You've hit that point where you probably need to look at buying a new piece of gear.

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It absolutely is a ghetto version of a PC. However my keggle is to big for my economy chiller so this will have to do for this batch.. and i'll save on my water bill by not running a IC for 3 hours.

Revvy said:

I would be worried about anything inside the copper coil, you can't necessarily see if it's corroded or has a patina inside of it, or if some buggie curled up and died in there...talk about a breeding ground for nasties.

I've always been told that copper patina is toxic. But not sure if it's true or not.

Would you be running some of the boiling wort through the coil before chilling it to sterilize the coils like you do with a plate chiller?

I'd use the IC the way it was intended, with the beer on the outside of the coils, where I can see the condition the copper is in.

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it's called verdigris and it is toxic, you should wash your hands after touching it and it should never be ingested.

eastoak said:

it's called verdigris and it is toxic, you should wash your hands after touching it and it should never be ingested.

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Would sterilizing and sanitizing be good enough?

Unfortunately, no. If verdigris is present but hidden inside the tube, there is not much a homebrewer can do to remove it. Never use acetic acid (vinegar) to clean your chiller, as this seems to be the fastest (but not the only way) for verdigris to form.

I would stick with wort on the outside of the tube. Trust me, it's not any faster, and is more labor intensive.

Redneck82 said:

Unfortunately, no. If verdigris is present but hidden inside the tube, there is not much a homebrewer can do to remove it. Never use acetic acid (vinegar) to clean your chiller, as this seems to be the fastest (but not the only way) for verdigris to form.

I would stick with wort on the outside of the tube. Trust me, it's not any faster, and is more labor intensive.

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To expand further, the fixation on acetic acid comes from formation of copper acetate, one form of verdigris, if the acetic acid is allowed to remain on the copper when it dries. Oxidation then forms copper acetate, rather than the more benign copper oxide or carbonate. Copper acetate is very dark, almost black, and is easily distinguished from the much lighter, faintly green oxide coating. Definitely take special care to rinse off all the acid, whether from the wort or vinegar cleaning solution before storing.

Since the wort itself is a fairly good copper cleaner, I have to disagree with Redneck's admonition to not use vinegar to clean the chiller coil. If the oxide layer is left on the coil, and the coil comes out shiny clean from your wort, you can be reasonably certain the copper oxide was left behind in your brew. In fact, in clear cleaning solutions, you would see the dark colored nodules that precipitate out of solution.

Vinegar alone, or especially with a pinch of simple table salt in solution, is one of the best, most readily available cleaners for copper. The brass used in pipe fittings is an alloy of copper, and also is cleaned in that same solution. Again, be sure to rinse off all the acid before storing, and make double sure the little nodules of (possibly verdigris) precipitate are flushed away.

There is something to be said for fastidious attention to cleanliness and possible toxic contamination in your food processing. I haven't gone the extreme route of all stainless, all welded tubing with tri-clover fittings, but my consumption is relatively low. For what it's worth, it is said that yeasts feed on the minerals and metals, and may find minute quantities healthful.

If you scour the web long enough and take all the admonitions literally, you'll eventually conclude that no substance is safe for use or consumption. You should make an informed decision of what's reasonable. Do some experiments. Copper and vinegar reactions are commonly taught as early, relatively safe experiments for young, budding chemists. You'll find lots of teaching material on the web. See for yourself what's possible, but keep in mind the concentrations you'll encounter in your brewing.

cwilliamsccn said:

It absolutely is a ghetto version of a PC. However my keggle is to big for my economy chiller so this will have to do for this batch.. and i'll save on my water bill by not running a IC for 3 hours.

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WTF? Who runs their IC water for 3 hours?

LVBen said:

WTF? Who runs their IC water for 3 hours?

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When i did a 5g batch it took around an hour to get to 80.. it was a hot day.. so is today though and im cooling 10g.. I stuck a q-tip in the chiller line today and it came out black.. looks like i'll be using it as an IC after all.

I live in AZ, so cooling the wort is a huge PITA.

The water out of the tap, is 100 degrees.

So a Ice bath in a cooler, with a pump and IM was the only way to go, but the amount of ice was huge, and expensive.

One of the guys on this site said to run the 100 degree water first, to remove the very high heat and then use the ice bath, this was the ticket.

Place the pump in the cooler, then a garden hose to the cooler, turn on the hose and overflow the cooler (drains down the driveway). When the temperature gets to 150 degrees pour out the hot water in the cooler, add cold water and 20 lbs of ice.

For 10 gallons probably 40-50 lbs.

This will get's me down to 70 degrees in one hour. 10 gallons, probably 2 hours.

Go have a home brew, or get a counter flow. Either way your going to be happy.

It's not okay to run wort through copper? It's a good thing no one is using copper counter-flow chillers or copper plate chillers. Whew.

This will make your undersized immersion chiller an effective counter-flow chiller.

itsme6582 said:

It's not okay to run wort through copper? It's a good thing no one is using copper counter-flow chillers or copper plate chillers. Whew.

This will make your undersized immersion chiller an effective counter-flow chiller.

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I mean my house water lines are copper i dont get what the deal is but im not sure about the black film inside the lines.?

itsme6582 said:

It's not okay to run wort through copper?

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You can do as you like, of course, but do so knowing the facts. Copper oxide reacts to form copper salts in acidic environments. The typical use of copper lines in homes is as water supply lines. Supply lines are almost always continually submersed under pressure in potable water. Conversely, wort chillers are in direct contact with food at pH 5.2 or thereabouts. They form oxide coatings on those contact surfaces during dry storage.

I can tell you haven't ever cleaned copper tube outside the murky contents of your boil kettle. The cloud of insoluble copper salt precipitate that forms in a vinegar bath is easily visible. If the IC went into your wort with an oxide coating and came out without, it's easy to hypothesize with near certainty where it went. I wouldn't want to drink it, with beer or without, but you are still free to do as you wish. Of course.

The maintenance is relatively simple. Clean off the oxide before putting it in your food. Rinse it clean with clear water after use. If you can't see it to inspect it, you should at least be suspicious of what's on it, or no longer on it.

As an aside, acetic acid is a byproduct of fermentation. The word vinegar has the Latin root vin, or wine. Vinegar means literally sour wine. Copper oxides in your wort eventually comes in contact with acetic acid during fermentation. They react to produce copper acetate. Copper acetate is also known as verdigris, a known toxin, the start of this part of this conversation.

You might also be interested to know that the main ingredient in StarSan is phosphoric acid. Left to dry on copper tube, StarSan combines with copper oxide to produce copper phosphate, yet another yummy insoluble copper salt. We use that one to make pesticides.

To sum up, copper oxide is unavoidable in our use. Wort is acidic, and reacts with copper oxide to form copper salts. Copper salts are toxic. We don't want to ingest it. The problems are surmountable. Clean off the oxide before putting it in your food. Rinse it clean with clear water after use. Relax. It's all good. Have a home brew.

I have been letting the chiller sit in star san for an hour then rinsing with water before use it seems to make it look clean.. is that a proper way to clean an
IC?

I feel like this is a big joke thread and I'm totally missing it.

MikeYoung, you need to learn to paraphrase.

cwilliamsccn said:

I have been letting the chiller sit in star san for an hour then rinsing with water before use it seems to make it look clean.. is that a proper way to clean an IC?

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I would dump the solution you used to cleaned the copper immediately. The little black floaties are copper acetate if cleaned in vinegar; copper phosphate if you used StarSan. The temptation with StarSan is to continue to use the solution to sanitize everything else.

itsme6582 said:

MikeYoung, you need to learn to paraphrase.

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Yer killing me. I don't do keypad ebonics. Look up copper poisoning.

For everyone else, along with a long list of very common ailments, wikipedia goes on to say: "Mammals have efficient mechanisms to regulate copper stores such that they are generally protected from excess dietary copper levels." Likely, they're referring to the liver.

MikeYoung said:

I would dump the solution you used to cleaned the copper immediately. The little black floaties are copper acetate if cleaned in vinegar; copper phosphate if you used StarSan. The temptation with StarSan is to continue to use the solution to sanitize everything else.

Yer killing me. I don't do keypad ebonics. Look up copper poisoning.

For everyone else, along with a long list of very common ailments, wikipedia goes on to say: "Mammals have efficient mechanisms to regulate copper stores such that they are generally protected from excess dietary copper levels." Likely, they're referring to the liver.

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I never re use the star san after dunking the chiller in it.

eastoak said:

it's called verdigris and it is toxic, you should wash your hands after touching it and it should never be ingested.

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Yeah, that's what I was getting it. Thanks for clarifing (this goes to Redneck as well.).

If you have Verdigris on the outside of the chiller, you can take whatever measures are necessary to clean it up, plus I always figured the outside of copper tubing was maybe somehow treated with something to prevent or limit it's formation, as would be the inside of a plate chiller made of copper.

But we couldn't see the inside of the tubing to know if it was simply oxidyzed or verdisgris did indeed form inside it.

Thanks for clarifying MikeYoung!

One of the reasons I joined...practical application of chemistry to brewing.

Odd note, but has anyone tried soldering their IC to the outside of the brewpot? Obvious disadvantages, but it wouldn't need to be as clean(never direct contact with wort, with a tight fitting lid would allow shaking for aeration/better cooling, would not need to be sterilized, and you could (takes slug of homebrew...burp!) keep a lid on the brew to help prevent the odd fly that had previously landed on a dog turd from trying to taste (contaminate) that tasty, fresh, cool hoppy sweet wort.

Just use non pb solder in case it doesn't work so you don't ruin your IC completely.

Y'all have a good night! (with dreams of yeast hopps water and barely running through their heads...)

Edit: Nevermind. I wasn't thinking clearly.

Redneck82 said:

Thanks for clarifying MikeYoung!

One of the reasons I joined...practical application of chemistry to brewing.

Odd note, but has anyone tried soldering their IC to the outside of the brewpot? Obvious disadvantages, but it wouldn't need to be as clean(never direct contact with wort, with a tight fitting lid would allow shaking for aeration/better cooling, would not need to be sterilized, and you could (takes slug of homebrew...burp!) keep a lid on the brew to help prevent the odd fly that had previously landed on a dog turd from trying to taste (contaminate) that tasty, fresh, cool hoppy sweet wort.

Just use non pb solder in case it doesn't work so you don't ruin your IC completely.

Y'all have a good night! (with dreams of yeast hopps water and barely running through their heads...)

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I can't imagine that would work well. I don't think the metal-to-metal contact would be sufficient enough to cool within any reasonable time.

cwilliamsccn said:

I have the economy chiller from midwest, works ok in a 5 gallon batch about 45 minutes or so from boiling... i just picked up a keggle and plan to do a 10 gallon batch in a few days and will attempt putting the chiller in ice water and gravity feeding the wort through the chiller into a carboy.. has anyone tried this?

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I plan on doing pretty much the same thing but with a few important changes.

I'm building a eherms rig and plan to reuse the herms coil as a chiller. Heat the water bath, circulate wort through it to heat the mash. Cool the bath and circulate wort through it to chill before pitching. It's simple and elegant and I see no reason why it would not work.

That said, I would use a pump and continually recirculate the wort through the coil until pitching temp is reached. This means you need a pump. Since you need a pump you probably also should use bigger copper tube so as to not restrict the flow to much - I'm going with 1/2" by 20. The length, for me, is really irrelevant since I will be recirculating through the coil.

I would also begin with tap water in the water bath which is quite warm (about 80 F) in FL in the summer and recirculate until the water bath and wort reach equilibrium or close to it. Then drain and add ice and recirculate some more to get it down to pitching temp. This would minimize water waste and also the quantity of ice you'd have to buy/make. What matters is the temp difference between the wort and the water bath. The difference between 80F and 212F is sufficient enough to do the bulk of the cooling (of course this is only true if you are recirculating).

Your setup, gravity feeding through the coil, requires a longer coil to insure adequate chilling in a single pass. But longer means more difficulty cleaning and slower (or no) flow. How long is right? I honestly don't know. It also requires vigorous stirring of the water bath to maximize single pass cooling. I second the recommendation of drill + paint stirrer (paddle). I would also just use ice. You gain nothing with the rock salt except having salt water everywhere which is corrosive and can't be dumped on the lawn or used in the laundry and would be particularly bad if it somehow made its way into the wort. The salt simply lowers the freezing temp of the water it doesn't give the ice any additional "cooling capacity."

The initial runnings would be the coolest and probably below pitching temp but subsequent runnings would be warmer as the ice melts, water bath temp rises, and temperature difference shrinks. Your hope would be that the temp of the runnings would average out to somewhere around pitching temp.

I think in principle it is a great idea and that's why I'm designing my rig this way. But as you have the setup designed based on spare parts you have on hand I would be hesitant. It may work. It may not. Worse case scenario you pitch this batch warm or let it sit and cool overnight before pitching. Then modify the system (probably with a pump) before trying it again.

As to the copper cleaning issue it is a non issue. Copper has been used in breweries for ages. Patina on the copper is fine and it will be removed by wort and consumed by the yeast. You don't want verdigrass which is different from patina (blue green) but I have never ever seen that on my coils or copper manifold. You can clean with a vinegar soak and I do from time to time, particularly if the manifold hasn't been used in a while. Vinegar is super cheap anyway. I would sanitize by running boiling water through the coil before chilling (or by pumping boiling wort through it).

Look at CFC and plate chillers. This would be easily as sanitary as a CFC chiller and far cleaner than the plate chillers everyone is so enamored with. I shudder to think about what could be trapped in all those little passageways and yet everyone uses them without any apparent issues.

I decided to just buy 20 more feet of soft copper and solder it to my existing chiller.. now its 45 feet. Should be sufficient.

There are times that I read about the temperature of other users' tap water and I just have to sit back and thank my lucky stars.

45-50*F Tahoe tap water year-round My crummy 25' IC gets 5.5 gallons from boiling (202.6*F here) to 60*F in about 25 minutes.

Reno_eNVy said:

There are times that I read about the temperature of other users' tap water and I just have to sit back and thank my lucky stars.

45-50*F Tahoe tap water year-round My crummy 25' IC gets 5.5 gallons from boiling (202.6*F here) to 60*F in about 25 minutes.

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Yeah, here in Iowa/Illinois we get some brutally cold winters so the water pipes are all buried pretty darn deep. Aside from them not freezing in the winter this brings with it the bonus that the water stays nice and cool even during the blazing hot summer months.

The purpose of the salt is to allow you to add more ice without freezing your bath. Also, the addition of salt WILL lower the temp of the water, albeit a couple tenths of a degree.

Lost- nice idea on the pump...think I'll borrow it! There has to be a more efficient way of cooling wort while retaining the simplicity/inexpensive characteristics of an IC.

Lost said:

As to the copper cleaning issue it is a non issue

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Your statement is correct, but only by adding "to me". As in:

As to the copper cleaning issue it is a non issue to me.

Lost said:

Copper has been used in breweries for ages.

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That is excellent logic. I assume you prefer using leaded solder also. Better yet, just use lead pipe for all your brewery plumbing. That is an even older and therefore a more proven technology. The symbol for lead, Pb, is even based on its use in ancient plumbing. With that endorsement, how could you go wrong?

Are you aware that virtually all new "copper" brewery equipment is simply a decorative cladding on the outside of stainless vessels?