Wort chiller question

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MooDaddy

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Have a little extra dough and I'm considering acquiring a wort chiller. However, I'm getting the impression that using an inside faucet that has a sprayer as part of the set-up will not allow use of the chiller, yes? I really have only two good inside sinks/faucets and both have sprayers. Guess unless I head outside I'm looking at playing the ice game in the sink huh?
 
You could get a pond pump and just pump the water out of your sink. That way you could also add ice once the wort gets down to about 100 or so to get better heat transfer. Harbor Freight has pumps for less than 20 bucks.
 
I have that sort of faucet in my kitchen also. I attach my WC to my hose spigot. You could run a hose from outside to your kitchen maybe if you don't want to just move the whole operation outside.
 
Barrooze,

Are you saying you run a hose from an outside spigot into your kitchen to to use the WC in the kitchen? Hmm. Hadn't thought of that but that would probably work.
 
I have a super easy, no faucet or pump solution that works great. I attach my immersion chiller to my bottling bucket's spigot with regular 3/8 inch plastic hose, and another 3/8 inch hose that I send to the sink. I use the Screw-Type Metal Hose Clamps to attach the hoses to the chiller.

Right before I begin brewing, I fill my bottling bucket with as much ice as I can find. I use a combination of blocks and cubes, about 15-20 pounds worth. After I add the ice, I put the bucket up high - on top of the fridge works great - to create enough water pressure to force the water through the cooler. Then, I top off the bucket with cold tap water. I find that an empty plastic water jug works great for this.

When it's time to cool the wort, just double check the connections and open the spigot. I would keep the kettle on the floor, so that you have maxim height difference between the bottling bucket and chiller.You'll be sending a wonderfully cold 40 degree water through your chiller. The key is to add more water to the bucket as the level starts to drop.

Using this method, I dropped my 200+ degree 5 gallon wort to 75 in 20 minutes. I did gently stir the wort every couple of minutes, and I use a 25 foot chiller. I went though about 10 gallons of water.

All you need to buy is some additional 3/8 hose. I wouldn't reuse the hose used for chilling for racking purposes as the ends do get a bit hot from the copper, and that slightly distorts them.
 
Barrooze,

Are you saying you run a hose from an outside spigot into your kitchen to to use the WC in the kitchen? Hmm. Hadn't thought of that but that would probably work.

No, I do all my brewing out in the garage and I attach my WC to my garden hose that way. I was saying that if you do your brewing in the kitchen but want to use a WC that can't attach to your kitchen sink faucet, you may consider running a hose from an outside spigot to your sink and connect your WC to the hose. That essentially just extends your garden spigot to your kitchen.
 
i dont really understand whats going on? i have a wort chiller with two- three foot 3/8 hoses coming off of it. at the end of one hose is a female hose adapter, at the end of the other there is nothing. on my faucet is a hose adapter. with the hoses, clamps, and adapters i probably spent ten bucks. what is all this "running hoses from outside" and "attaching hoses to buckets and throwing ice in"? i have to be missing something, because all of these other methods seem as though they would take more time and be more trouble than they are worth.
 
:) RDWHAHB.
MooDaddy was having an issue connecting his wort chiller to his kitchen sink because the faucet does not have threads to make the connection. I offered the idea of extending the outside spigot by using a hose.

If your sink has threads to which you can attach your wort chiller, you're good to go! It really doesn't matter how you get the water moving through the chiller, just as long as it cools your wort (otherwise, why use one, right?).
 
I ran into a similar problem when I first bought a chiller. Besides having a spray head that I couldn't hook up to, I had a filter on the cold water line that really killed the pressure. What I did was to install a T before the filter, put in a ball valve and a barb adapter. This way when I want to run the chiller, I have high pressure cold water, not wasting my filter. I just got two pieces of 10' long 3/8" tubing so I could chill on my stove.
 
If the spray head is built in to the main faucet then there would be no threads to hook to.
If the spray head is a separate thing off to the side then you can unscrew the aerator (little round ring hanging down from the end of the faucet) and attach a faucet hose adapter.
I was confused at first because we don't have the built in kind and I wondered why it wouldn't work with a wort chiller.
 
Berniep,

Thank you for clearing that up - I was just thinking today that it made no sense that I couldn't still use my main kitchen faucet with an adaptor as long as my spray head was a separate attachment off to the side - then this response. Much appreciated - wort chiller here I come.
 
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