Chiller/pump Question

We just bought a Chiller from our local brewer. He suggested stainless steel and ice bath cool it. He said to use a small transfer pump to pump from the brew keg to the chiller sitting in ice/ice water and then pump back to kettle. Well we tried a pond pump didint work well. Does anyone else use this method.

That would work, but why not just use it as an immersion chiller? Put it in your kettle and run cold tap water though the coil.

That was our first idea. We are brewing in a building with no water right now. Plus this was a suggestion from a brewmaster of the local brewry.

I'd still recommend putting the coil into your wort (do it while it's still boiling to sanitize) then pump your ice water through it.

For one thing, pumping wort requires a special pump that can handle high temps and is OK for food contact. Second, it's not as easy to sanitize the inside of the coil. The brewmaster is suggesting a complicated method that no one here would suggest for a beginner.

pantherbrew said:

That was our first idea. We are brewing in a building with no water right now. Plus this was a suggestion from a brewmaster of the local brewry.

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How do you get the iced water and water to brew with?

I would suggest that brewing with out a water supply is not a good idea.
How do you sanitise and clean?You'll need copious water to clean and sanitise the chiller immediately after brewing.

I'd say if possible put you efforts into finding another brewing location and use the chiller in the wort instead of the wort in the chiller.

I'm just a home brewing rookie, but it seems to me that the pump may not even be necessary. If you placed the chiller in an ice bath below your hot wort, and then the fermenter below the chiller, couldn't you just start a siphon and let gravity do the work? Has anyone tried that? In theory, it should work, and if it does, it seems like it would be a lot simpler than setting up a counter flow chiller, and could be more effective than immersion.

Happy Brewing!!!

You're creating a reverse immersion chiller, like a CFC in a way. Problem is that the wort is going to QUICKLY heat up that water. Unless you want to spend a lot of money on bags of ice, I too would recommend finding a new location.

Kai was doing what you were talking about (using a pump to circulate ice water through an IC) this weekend. Of course, he was getting the wort down to like 40° so that he could pitch a lager yeast, but still...

You would need a lot of water, though, 'cause the first blast, getting from boiling to around 100, is going to raise the temp of the recirc water quite a bit. I suspect that you'd have the recirc water and the wort temp equalizing in the 90°s, obviosuly depending on how much you used and how cold you started. It's hard enough to get those last few degrees when you have a steady supply of cold water; if you're trying to get down to pitching temp with lukewarm, well, that's not going to happen.

My roomies and I used to do it that way (siphon wort through chiller) and had the chiller sitting in a bucket that we would let overflow with water. It worked well, but as mentioned is a pain to clean and also makes a big mess of water. This won't work if you don't have a water supply, unless as previously mentioned you want to spend a bunch of $ on ice. If you do decide to go this route, get yourself some Beer Line Cleaner (BLC) so you can clean out the chiller.