Cooling 15 gallons

Myself and 2 friends joined in on brewing and we got a 25 gallon pot to brew15 gallon batches...What is the best way to cool this much? Immersion Chiller? We did not think of the cooling part when we bought the thing haha.

If an Immersion chiller is best, then how big? I would make it myself. How much copper and how wide of tubing would you suggest? .

Thanks

I would build a counter flow chiller.

hereis a good thread on building one.

You could also search for Bio Diesel plate chillers on ebay. Those are failry cheap as well, at least compared to therminator.

CopperTubingSales.com :: ICS Indsutries ::

These guys are cheap. Get a 50' coil of the soft refrigeration tubing. Get 4' of rigid tubing, some copper elbows, "In" and "Out" connections for a garden hose, and some soldering equipment locally.

Find something at home to re-bend the tubing around for your coil. Don't bend it too much though as you will work harden the copper.

It's an easy build.

If you go the IC route, the largest diameter tubing you'd probably want to work with is 5/8" OD.

Would 50' of the tubing cool it efficiently with just the water straight from the spigot? I've read of recirculating ice water on here...does that just entail getting a water pump and filling a tub full of ice water instead of using the spigot?

TheMan said:

Would 50' of the tubing cool it efficiently with just the water straight from the spigot?

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Depending on tap water temps, IC's work great during the winter months, and not nearly as well during the summer.

I personally think that longer is not better (with an IC). If you think about it, at some point the water inside the pipe will reach the same temperature as the wort and after that point, will be worthless for cooling. If it takes 15 feet before the pipe water temp = wort temp, then the other 35 feet is worthless.

Using this idea, I constructed my IC with two coils that are 25 feet each. This way, given the same scenario where the water gets too hot at 15 feet, I actually have 30 feet worth of usable tubing.

I hope that made sense....

I would build a CFC for this large of a batch. I started with an IC, then straightened it out to make a CFC and could NOT be happier! And I don't use a pump. Gravity fed CFC.

I am a big supporter of the immersion chiller with a whirlpool. For your large volume I would also suggest a dual circuit chiller as described by ajwillys.

If you use a counterflow chiller I would recommend circulating the wort back into the kettle to cool the full wort volume as quickly as possible.

AjWillys - I thought of this, but at some point when the wort cools enough the water should stay cooler longer and longer and make up for it, no?

Pulse - not sure how to phrase this....how far down is your cfc from your stockpot? And what method do you use to get the wort from the pot to the cfc?

Currently I gravity feed my CFC I just keep it a few inches below my keggle and dont have any problems. My exhaust water goes into my HLT and MLT and I use that for cleaning later.

As far as wrapping it around something I would use a Cornie keg... and some zip ties to make the form of it.

Mine is also just about 4-6 inches below my ball valve on my keggle. I use a High Temp section of hose from the ball valve to the CFC and gravity.
I plan on buying a pump to recirculate but more to separate out Cold Break than chilling reasons. The wort chills fast enough as it goes through the CFC and takes less that 15 minutes to drain a complete 5G batch to fermenter. 15 minutes IMO is plenty fast enough to cool a batch.


*disclaimer - These are all estimated times and measurements. I don't have my equipment at work to measure and have never actually timed anything with a watch.*

TheMan said:

AjWillys - I thought of this, but at some point when the wort cools enough the water should stay cooler longer and longer and make up for it, no?

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Yeah, sure. But its not that hard to make it with two coils. Just need some tee's and elbows and what not. Lowe's sells 'handi lengths' of the flexible tubing which makes it easy add little pieces to make the connections.

The only time a longer coil would be a waste of extra copper is if you run the coolant so slow that a certain amount of the coil is filled with wort-temp coolant. If you use 1/2" or even 5/8" OD tubing and flow it quickly, the output will never be at wort temp. Of course, it's impossible to tune perfectly, but the ideal flow speed would have the coolant just about reaching wort temp before it dumps out.

The pot does not have a valve. I suppose I should fix that problem first!

AJ, can you describe what you are talking about a little more? I'm having a tough time picturing it. Are the two coils intertwined? And you have one hose providing water to a splitter that goes to both coils?

And what about cooling the wort at seperate times? I've read on here that the advantage of an immersion is that it cools the entire boil at the same rate. The CFC would be taking about 10-15 minutes per gallon (if Irregular Impulse's non-scientific study is correct haha). So the first gallon is done 20, possibly 30 minutes prior to the last drop. How much of an issue is this or is it?

Yeah, my IC has the two coils one completely inside the other. I have a hose connected to 1/2" (regular, not refrigerant stuff) copper. Then, I have a 1/2" tee that splits it into two. After that, two reducer fittings to get to the size I need for 3/8" refrigerant tubing which connects to the two coils. At the other end of the coils (the bottom), I have elbows and some 3/8" to bring it back to the top. At the top, the tee and reducers work in reverse back to 1/2" copper and then to a hose. It's ugly, but it works great. I wish I had a picture but I'm at work now and don't think I have one.

If it is possible to get a picture that would be great. I like this idea and I think I'm leaning toward the immersion chiller unless someone can convince me otherwise. It seems like the immersion chiller would be more space efficient as well

Another vote for CFC. Our tap water here in Portland is pretty cold but I have no difficulty chilling boiling wort as fast as it can drain...actually have to throttle the cooling water way back to avoid chilling the wort down into the high 50 degree range. CFC is only 25', but I did add a 12 guage copper wire soldered in spiral fashion down the inner tube. I think that may be helping ensure the cooling water is moving efficiently over the whole surface of the tubing carrying the wort.

I can't imagine tap water being so warm that this setup would require multiple passes.

50' of 1/2" copper plus recirculating it chilled 16.5 gallons from 212 to under 140 in under 5 minutes. Time to 80 degrees was under 30 minutes on a 95 degree day.

Ed puts up a good argument there lol...when you say recirculating do you mean you are recirculating the wort? that's what it looks like.

Yeah, if that was recirculating icewater into the IC, it would have been more like 10 minutes total.

Sounds like it wouldn't be the cheapest, but recirculating ice water into the IC would be best?

TheMan said:

Sounds like it wouldn't be the cheapest, but recirculating ice water into the IC would be best?

Click to expand...

It depends on how fast you can circulate it. Your hose bib puts out about 10GPM. If you can't get close to that the ice won't matter, you'll have less cooling.

TheMan said:

If it is possible to get a picture that would be great. I like this idea and I think I'm leaning toward the immersion chiller unless someone can convince me otherwise. It seems like the immersion chiller would be more space efficient as well

Click to expand...

OK, finally got a picture of my IC. Don't know if you've already made yours, but this is how I did mine. It's ugly but it works pretty good:

If you're going to use a CFC for large volumes, you need to recirculate it. Otherwise, you're just going to have wort sitting at near boiling temperatures for the entire time you're chilling. 5 gallons, no problem...but I'd try to recirc for anything much larger.