uh oh! need quick temporary wort chiller ideas

So the "Fermentation Sciences Club" here at the college I attend is having our inaugural brew day on saturday. so that several people can take home a carboy/bucket full of wort (to which they must add their own yeast, assuming they are of legal age (so we dont get in trouble with the university)) we are brewing about 30-35 gal. apparently we have a 30 gal kettle to use as well as some keggle's and a couple MLT's. along with the other miscellaneous things needed.

here's the problem. I just found out today that we have no wort chiller of any kind. as of now the best plan we have is to fill a trash can full of ice/water and let the kettle sit in that. but i doubt a 30 gal kettle could fit, and cooling enough would take quite a large amount of time.

so, does anyone have any ideas on a quick fix for this? i wish i would have known sooner we dont have one, as i was planning on making one for myself anyway.

also does anyone happen to live in columbia, MO who has any type of chiller and would like to lend it to us or even join us on saturday?

If you were gonna make one for yourself anyway, why not just make one? you should be able to do it tomorrow and find all the stuff at a big box hardware store.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=51793

Building a counterflow chiller takes about 1 hour. If you don't know how to pipe solder, Home Depot sells "Snake Bite" fittings that keep a seal and do not require soldering.

The chiller will cost about 50 dollars total. All you will need is access to a hose.

Let us know if you need help.

It will be far more effective than trying to cool down 35 gallons of wort in an ice bath.

plus you'll be the coolest kid in the fermentation sciences club!

tuckferrorists said:

plus you'll be the coolest kid in the fermentation sciences club!

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LOL^

Thats really the best idea...

If you posted your general location, you might find yourself with some offers of loaners. If you are in San Diego, I would certainly let you borrow mine. (that is if I actually had one. I still just have tubing, a bunch of fittings, and a good understanding of why you might need to borrow rather than drop everything and build one on the spot)
The counterflow really is your best bet for the situation. It will allow you to dispense cooled wort directly from your various kettles to the different fermenters.

for those that didnt catch it in the first post, I'm in Columbia, MO.

i would make one, but was leaning towards making something like this
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=57091
to try and avoid having to use a hose (i live in an apartment). i'm assuming this set up would be highly inefficient for brews larger than 5-10 gal.

we would make one for the club, but we don't get our funding until the beginning of the next semester, and since we will probably only do this one brew until then our president doesn't want to spend our own money from dues on the copper. i might try convincing him to just make a CFC now, or maybe that would be the best way for me to go for myself

im assuming that since new (hopefully cool) water is constantly flowing thru that 25' should be large enough for a CFC regardless of batch size correct?

I considered building a hybrid chiller until I spoke to one of the hydraulic engineers at my company. Sparing you the fluid dynamics of heat exchangers, he stated that the CFC concept would be superior. I would just bite the bullet and build a CFC. If you only use it once, just sell it on ebay or throw it on craigslist. If there are 5 guys in your club, it would cost 10 bucks a piece to make. That 10 bucks could be spent on beer or women, but it will only get you cheap versions of both.

BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

EDIT: Yes, 25 feet seems to be the sweet spot and anything longer is considered a negligible gain.

NoClueBrewMaster said:

I considered building a hybrid chiller until I spoke to one of the hydraulic engineers at my company. Sparing you the fluid dynamics of heat exchangers, he stated that the CFC concept would be superior. I would just bite the bullet and build a CFC. If you only use it once, just sell it on ebay or throw it on craigslist. If there are 5 guys in your club, it would cost 10 bucks a piece to make. That 10 bucks could be spent on beer or women, but it will only get you cheap versions of both.

BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

EDIT: Yes, 25 feet seems to be the sweet spot and anything longer is considered a negligible gain.

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I'd like to know the details of that conversation.

I am building a "Hybrid" chiller...but a TRUE Hybrid chiller...no stationary ice water.

The basis of the conversation was that because in a CFC the water only surrounds the inner piping, heat transfer is more effective. In a CFC, whether or not the water is still cold or really hot, it is being forced out of the heat exchanger by colder water. In a hybrid chiller, the water surrounding the coil transfers heat into the rest of the water bath and the hot water is not forced out. Also, in a hybrid you will have hot spots and cold spots just like with an immersion chiller that sits untouched in a hot pot of wort.

I'm not sure what your background is as far as engineering goes, so thats the nitty gritty.

KingPing said:

for those that didnt catch it in the first post, I'm in Columbia, MO.

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:cross: Uh, oops... I scanned the OP for the gist and then looked for the location on the left. Where's the smiley for "feeling stupid".

While a hybrid chiller like the one in the link you posted would be fine with a 5gal batch, I would not use that for a 30gal batch. It wil take TONS of ice to cool that much wort with a hybrid. Well, maybe not tons... but it would take a lot.

+1 on build the CFC. A good CFC would allow you to cool 1 gallon, 5 gallons, 30 gallons, or even 1000 gallons if you wanted, as long as you have a good flow of coolant water flowing through.

well it turns out that our president, who got the 30 gal kettle from someone he knows (his dad perhaps), asked around again and someone had a chiller too. he didnt say which type, but I can only assume that it is an immersion chiller. hopefully its at least 50', but even so chilling a 30 gal batch (or 20+ after boil off) will probably take at least an hour right?

as for a CFC, ill probably make one for myself after the summer is over (ill be away interning in a northwest coast brewery, its a big beer town from what i hear, so you can prolly guess which city). for some reason our club prez thinks that CFC's need to be custom made depending on the system to, as he put it, "prevent cavitation and unbalanced pressure buildup from attaching different sized tubes/valves." i havent looked into that too much, but judging from the fact that it would be a low flow rate and only minimal diameter differences i doubt that either of those would be a problem ever on home system. plus tons of people here on HBT do it with no problems that i have read. wonder who told him that, as he is only a food science major i think (yet i am a ChE and one would think would be more in tune with such things).

either way, it seems that we have at least some sort of chiller for tomorrow. looking forward to it either way as i will get to put to use my MLT for the first time as well as maybe my keggle (first time for ME using the keggle, got it from my old boss)

thanks for all your input guys, you are a wealth of information

no problem! post some pictures of your giant brewday!

NoClueBrewMaster said:

The basis of the conversation was that because in a CFC the water only surrounds the inner piping, heat transfer is more effective. In a CFC, whether or not the water is still cold or really hot, it is being forced out of the heat exchanger by colder water. In a hybrid chiller, the water surrounding the coil transfers heat into the rest of the water bath and the hot water is not forced out. Also, in a hybrid you will have hot spots and cold spots just like with an immersion chiller that sits untouched in a hot pot of wort.

I'm not sure what your background is as far as engineering goes, so thats the nitty gritty.

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the problem is, you aren't describing a true hybrid chiller at all. In a hybrid chiller the hot water is forced out. What you are describing is just a reverse immersion chiller.

http://www.howtobrew.com/images/f160.jpg

Thats the only hybrid chiller I have seen in regards to making beer...

NoClueBrewMaster said:

http://www.howtobrew.com/images/f160.jpg

Thats the only hybrid chiller I have seen in regards to making beer...

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So, tell me how hot water is not being forced out? Cold water comes in one side...hot water goes out the other.

You can also put something solid in the middle of the coil to provide more turbulent flow around the coils. You can also direct the water to spin in the opposite direction of the flow of wort.

What you have been describing, and what the OP originally described was sticking an IC in a bucket of ice...which is nothing like the hybrid chiller in the picture in that link.

You can turn a reverse immersion into a hybrid by flowing tap water in and letting it drain out the spigot (assuming it's a bottling bucket). There's nothing inherent about the name "hybrid" that links it to Palmer's design. I think it's more appropriately called a coil-in-tube exchanger.

KingPing said:

we are brewing about 30-35 gal. apparently we have a 30 gal kettle to use

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I don't think that will work

Bobby_M said:

You can turn a reverse immersion into a hybrid by flowing tap water in and letting it drain out the spigot (assuming it's a bottling bucket). There's nothing inherent about the name "hybrid" that links it to Palmer's design. I think it's more appropriately called a coil-in-tube exchanger.

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yea, you're right. But there has been a lot of talk about 'hybrid' chillers lately and how ineffectuve they are, and every one links to that palmer description. The problem though is that people say they are putting an IC in a bucket of ice and standing water, which is not what Palmer is describing at all.

wow that was a fun yet tiring day. all in all it took about 6 hours, which isnt too bad i guess. we ended up just makeing about 25 gal. we ran into a couple issues, one being the one guys massive 30 gal cooler that he didnt attach the SS braid to properly, so what came off, but luckily i had mine to just drain into and lauter in. then during cooling of the wort, we had 2 coils that were connected via some tubing, and part way thru the connection failed for some reason and started spewing hot water all over.

but overall things went fairly smoothly for semi winging it. OG ended up being about 1.048. we had only about 55% eff, but our crushing/mashing/lautering techniques definitely need some tuning.

im glad to officially have my first AG home brew under my belt and cant wait to do it some more. ill try and get ahold of the pics that were taken for you all to see

o, and 25 gal of wort + kettle is mighty heavy to lift

So, tell me how hot water is not being forced out? Cold water comes in one side...hot water goes out the other.

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Not to speak for NoClueBrewMaster, but I'd assume it's because you can get a straight flow-through of water in the center of the chamber and leave hot spots all around the outer dimensions of the chamber. Any modification (putting the "IN" at the top left and the "OUT" at the bottom right or such) would still leave hot spots in places.

Rick

That's why you put something solid in the middle I will prove you all wrong soon !!!

Sorry Ben, but you are assuming that I don't know what I'm talking about. I'd be happy to give anyone a lesson on fluid dynamics and Heat Exchangers.

The inherent problem with a hybrid chiller is that you aren't forcing out the hotter water with cold water. Because there is a large body of water surrounding your coil, the water insulates itself and achieves a median temperature between the incoming water and the water that is being heated by the hot wort through the coil.

The CFC is different because you are pushing the colder water through a smaller "vessel" (the hose) Since pressure is exerted equally in all directions, a smaller vessel is more efficient in pushing water out than a larger vessel. The smaller vessel allows for more pressure, which will force out water regardless of temperature. The larger vessel allows for temperature equilibrium to develop faster.

You can do many things to make a hybrid chiller more effective, however in the end, you don't need to do anything to a CFC to make it more effective. I'd be happy to build both a hybrid chiller as well as a CFC (I have 2 CFC's already) and compare temperature margins. I'll throw a temperature probe on the intake and output of the CFC's water vessel. To be fair, I will also add a temperature probe to the hybrid chiller and measure the water inside the vessel.


To keep the experiment fair, I will do the following:

The CFC is built with 25 feet of 3/8" soft copper. The hybrid will be built with the same. Both heat exchangers will use tap water at the same temperature. While I realize that many people use ice water in "true" hybrid chillers, its not a controlled experiment if we use ice water in this comparison. I will use boiling water in place of wort.

I will document all build specs for both heat exchangers. I will also use NIST calibrated temperature probes and chart recorders to prove the findings of this comparison. If there is anything else you'd like to see out of this experiment, let me know!

I didnt assume anything. I just stated that you were describing sticking an IC in a bucket of water with no flow.

I'd love to see the results of that experiment. I'll let you know how my hybrid works out too.

I'm not trying to argue with you ben, but I never described putting an IC into a bucket of water. I even posted a picture (well, a link to a picture) of what kind of hybrid chiller i was talking about.

oooo look what my silly lil thread started

KingPing said:

oooo look what my silly lil thread started

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yea, why'd you have to go and open your big mouth, haha.

I could be wrong (even tho I never have been before ) but I think a hybrid type chiller, if done right, can be extremely efficient.

One love!

Hybrid chillers would be number three on the list of "Most Effective Heat Exchangers for beer making"

1. Plate HE
2. CFC
3. Hybrid "Coil-in-Tube" HE

Just in case anyone comes back across this thread, the Mizzou Fermentation Sciences Club has come a long way since this discussion started. For one, that was the last time we ever brewed 30 gallons in single pot! The final decision was two immersion chillers in series, which caused only one serious injury and cooled the batch in about 40 minutes. Also the failure of the mash tun created isobutyl alcohol so we had 30 gallons of mediocre beer. Here are our club's current chillers:

1. Counterflow - works very well with a pump, still works with gravity which can cool 10 gallons in about 15 minutes. 25' of 1/2" copper run inside of a garden hose with a copper wire coil around the copper tube.
2. Plate - Requires a pump but now our go to chiller, worth every penny of the investment.
3. Sabco Chill Wizard - Haven't figure this one out yet, but so far no more effective than the plate chiller.
4. Good ol' immersion - Still on standby, we train our members with them because they will likely use them in their own system.