Wort whirlpool direction with my immersion chiller?

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Hedo-Rick

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I plan on using a paint stirrer attached to a low RPM motor that has been bolted too my boil kettle lid to decrease my chilling time.

If the water is flowing through my IC from top to bottom in a clockwise direction, is there any added benefit in changing the motor rotation direction to have the whirlpool spin counterclockwise? Or am I over thinking this?

Thanks in advance!
 
I can't decide if you guys are messing around or not. In case your not, North south of the equator doesn't make a difference. It's more about the flow of the liquid at the beginning and the shape of what it's moving in. Once a funnel appears, it's symmetrical to its counterpart. So there's no difference.
If you're truly concerned about this, have a beer, maybe a valium, and chill the funk out.
 
I never gave it a minute's thought at the time, but every commercial system I have brewed on, from 7 to 50 bbl, had the whirlpool set up to go counter clockwise. I don't know if there is a reason, just tradition or pure coincidence... hmmm
 
It's not a totally off-the-wall question, as direction does sometimes matter, e.g., you want your beer to be flowing the opposite direction of your coolant in your counterflow chiller.

The reason it matters for your counterflow chiller is that there's a gradient, or change in properties, along the length of the chiller -- the beer is warmer at the inlet than the outlet, and the coolant is cooler at its inlet than its outlet. Send the beer in the same direction as the coolant, and you have very hot beer next to very cool coolant on one end, and beer and coolant approaching the same temperature on the other, which is a very different scenario than sending them in opposite directions, where you'll have very hot beer next to lukewarm coolant on one end, and sorta warm beer next to very cool coolant on the other.

With your stirrer, there's no gradient in wort temperature as you move around the kettle -- the wort at "twelve o'clock" is the same temperature as the wort at "six o'clock" is the same temperature as the wort as "eight thirteen and seven seconds," so it doesn't matter which way you send it around in. Now, the beer at the top of the kettle is likely to be warmer than beer at the bottom, so, you might get some mileage out of plumbing your chiller such that the cold water starts at the bottom and moves up... but, with the wort being vigorously stirred, it probably doesn't matter much.

TL;DR: it doesn't matter which direction you stir
 
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