Automated all in one systems versus a conventional stand... convince me ?

brewman ! said:

I bought one, haven't used it yet. Afraid to, afraid of plugging it. I'm probably going to sell it and build a CFC. I sold the one I had... :smack::smack::smack:

Click to expand...

The plate chiller is just the same as a CFC regarding sanitation and cleaning, they are just as hard to clean, but neither one is THAT hard.
It has the advantage of being much much smaller and really maximising water usage and creating a good hot/cold break
Why are you afraid of plugging it??

CFC is better than IC. That has been proven worldwide by many well-known brewers. It's an argument that is not worth getting into. For begginers and small set ups it may work, but CFC will always be more effective.

nanogi said:

CFC is better than IC. That has been proven worldwide by many well-known brewers. It's an argument that is not worth getting into. For begginers and small set ups it may work, but CFC will always be more effective.

Click to expand...

ICs are (relatively) cheap and easy and they work. Those are their big benefits.

I've been using a single copper coil as my HERMS and IC for the last several years. It's been great. That being said, I've already purchased a plate chiller for the next system.

I think it is better to put the herms in ice-cold water and make wort go through inside (kind of a CFC) than using it as an IC. This is because below 40°C wort can get contaminated, and when using an IC nobody puts a lid on the pot. You also reduce DMS and oxidation precursors

JKoravos said:

I've been using an IC for years. It uses a metric crap-ton of water.

Click to expand...

If you brew outside, hook the other end to sprinkler and water you lawn. That is what I did in OK. You need you flow rate high enough that the water, after leaving the sprinkler and before hitting the grass is under 115 f but that is rarely hard to accomplish.

JKoravos said:

If you're recirculating your cooling water (which apparently is common now?) it won't necessarily use less water. A typical IC setup, where the water just goes down the drain, will use much more water. Although the trade-off for squeezing all the cooling power out of your water using an IC is much slower cooling times.

Click to expand...

An IC uses way more water, even if you recirculate it. To get the wort down to the same temp as a CFC, you'll have to drain and replace the recirculating water because it warms up as you go. You'll need to do this several times, and the temp of the water you are draining is going to be nowhere near boiling like it would be from a CFC. Thus it uses way more water.

Every ounce of water used by a CFC goes from the tap temp to near boiling. There is not a way to be any more water efficient, nor time efficient.

My first criteria for all these systems is that they chill the wort, at least with an IC, but most preferably with a CFC. And that almost demands a pump, though some guys get by with gravity. I like to circulate boiling wort or water through a CFC before I use it, just to make doubly sure that its sanitized. If I'm not running that fluid down the drain, that needs a pump.

If you put a pump before the CFC you DON'T need to sanitise it. Boiling wort will do the job

nanogi said:

CFC is better than IC. That has been proven worldwide by many well-known brewers. It's an argument that is not worth getting into. For begginers and small set ups it may work, but CFC will always be more effective.

Click to expand...

Hence all the jacketed tanks...which work using the same process as an IC. Granted, most places do "pre-chill" before going to the jacketed fermentors.

"Better" is so relative that hate it when folks make a blanket statement on an opinion as if it is a fact.

CFC's are better at chilling wort in a single pass if there is adequate cooling fluid flow and temperature and the adequate drop or pump to move the wort at the correct rate. I requires that the wort be transferred a second time IF you wish to leave the cold break behind. They also do not require stirring to reach a consistent temperature.

IC's also can create excellent cold break when sized correctly and using an ice bath recirculation or very cold water. Simpler to maintain as all they need is a rinse...the rest of the sanitation can be done by the boiling wort. Do not require the wort to me moved twice. Do not require the wort to be moved while hot (though I really have never seen HSA happen...I am sure it is real). MUCH easier to use with whole leaf hops. Set it and forget it (potentially possible with a CFC as well but I have never achieved it) so you can clean gear while it chills.

Both probably have other advantages and disadvantages I do not personally know of maybe do not recall but the statement that one is proven better is similar to saying my work truck is better than my race car because it holds more stuff and gets better gas mileage.

brewman ! said:

An IC uses way more water, even if you recirculate it. To get the wort down to the same temp as a CFC, you'll have to drain and replace the recirculating water because it warms up as you go. You'll need to do this several times, and the temp of the water you are draining is going to be nowhere near boiling like it would be from a CFC. Thus it uses way more water.

Every ounce of water used by a CFC goes from the tap temp to near boiling. There is not a way to be any more water efficient, nor time efficient.

My first criteria for all these systems is that they chill the wort, at least with an IC, but most preferably with a CFC. And that almost demands a pump, though some guys get by with gravity. I like to circulate boiling wort or water through a CFC before I use it, just to make doubly sure that its sanitized. If I'm not running that fluid down the drain, that needs a pump.

Click to expand...

I was factoring in ice in the IC recirc scheme. Using straight tap water, the CFC is more water efficient.

JKoravos said:

I was factoring in ice in the IC recirc scheme. Using straight tap water, the CFC is more water efficient.

Click to expand...

Ice doesn't change anything ! The thermodynamic principles are still the same.

If you want to make the best use of ice, set up a 2 stage CFC. Use tap water to get the wort down to near tap temp in the 2st stage and use ice to get it down further in the second stage. DO NOT RECIRCULATE THE ICE WATER. Run it slow enough that you won't run out for the entire chill process and that is the maximum efficient use you can get from it.

nanogi said:

If you put a pump before the CFC you DON'T need to sanitise it. Boiling wort will do the job

Click to expand...

NOT true.

If you need 180F for a period of time (a couple minutes) to sanitize the wort coil, you need to circulate it prior to chilling.

If you don't circulate and go straight to chilling, the wort is near tap water temp at the end of the wort coil and thus it never sanitizes.

A hot (near boiling) fluid must be run through the wort coil with nothing running in the cooling coil to sanitize a CFC. Thus when I look at these all in one systems, I'm looking for a pump, maybe 2 and a CFC. When someone tells me that you can add the CFC externally, I say sure you can and also that you are one big step closer to a conventional single tier brew stand. Someone needs to build the CFC right into the brewstand.

FYI, I'm building a steam powered brewstand. I have 2 options for boiling wort. Put the steam through a coil in the boil kettle or run the wort though a steam heated CFC below the boil kettle. The same CFC could be used to used to heat mash liquid as well as chilling wort, making for a pretty neat all in one. HOWEVER, boilers are big and bulky, so unless your kitchen has a steam line in it, this would not be a feasible all in one. There are some other issues too.

Onkel_Udo said:

Hence all the jacketed tanks...which work using the same process as an IC. Granted, most places do "pre-chill" before going to the jacketed fermentors.

"Better" is so relative that hate it when folks make a blanket statement on an opinion as if it is a fact.

CFC's are better at chilling wort in a single pass if there is adequate cooling fluid flow and temperature and the adequate drop or pump to move the wort at the correct rate. I requires that the wort be transferred a second time IF you wish to leave the cold break behind. They also do not require stirring to reach a consistent temperature.

IC's also can create excellent cold break when sized correctly and using an ice bath recirculation or very cold water. Simpler to maintain as all they need is a rinse...the rest of the sanitation can be done by the boiling wort. Do not require the wort to me moved twice. Do not require the wort to be moved while hot (though I really have never seen HSA happen...I am sure it is real). MUCH easier to use with whole leaf hops. Set it and forget it (potentially possible with a CFC as well but I have never achieved it) so you can clean gear while it chills.

Both probably have other advantages and disadvantages I do not personally know of maybe do not recall but the statement that one is proven better is similar to saying my work truck is better than my race car because it holds more stuff and gets better gas mileage.

Click to expand...

Okey, want some reasons?
When sized correctly IC will create a good cold break? Yes, but you will use a wole lot of more tubing than CFC. With just 6 meters of 3/8" copper tubing in my CFC i drop the wort to pitching temperature. 50 liters in 20 minutes. And using just tap water. How long is your IC?
To sanitise a CFC you just need to recirculate boiling wort (without the water open of course) 5 minutes before finishing boiling. Or making alcohol or vortex pass through it before wort, and that's it. Why would you move the wort twice?? I use something which don't know how it is called in English, 50 cm of SS tubing attached to the hose that goes to the CFC. So i take the wort from the pot controlling from where it takes it, avoiding trub, hops and all that stuff. I only leave 2 or 3 litres of wort in the pot and no solid garbage in the fermenter. And CFC can be set and forgotten about, just plug it to the tap in your pot and that's it. And with an IC you need to remove the wort from the pot afterwards, so you have 2 steps, chilling and then emptying the pot. With CFC you just empty, as chilling is done as you empty. Your truck may be better than your race car, i know about beer, not cars. And ask in any brewery, do they use IC, CFC or plate chillers? They will always use the best, more effective and efficient, none uses an IC.

brewman ! said:

NOT true.

If you need 180F for a period of time (a couple minutes) to sanitize the wort coil, you need to circulate it prior to chilling.

If you don't circulate and go straight to chilling, the wort is near tap water temp at the end of the wort coil and thus it never sanitizes.

A hot (near boiling) fluid must be run through the wort coil with nothing running in the cooling coil to sanitize a CFC. Thus when I look at these all in one systems, I'm looking for a pump, maybe 2 and a CFC. When someone tells me that you can add the CFC externally, I say sure you can and also that you are one big step closer to a conventional single tier brew stand. Someone needs to build the CFC right into the brewstand.

FYI, I'm building a steam powered brewstand. I have 2 options for boiling wort. Put the steam through a coil in the boil kettle or run the wort though a steam heated CFC below the boil kettle. The same CFC could be used to used to heat mash liquid as well as chilling wort, making for a pretty neat all in one. HOWEVER, boilers are big and bulky, so unless your kitchen has a steam line in it, this would not be a feasible all in one. There are some other issues too.

Click to expand...

Sorry, i was referring to just the pump, not the CFC. It's like you say, you need to circulate wort without cooling it to sanitise

The faster the temp drops on a unit of wort, the better the cold break. There is no IC in the world that can drop the temp of 5 gallons of wort as fast as a CFC can drop the temp of an increment of wort.

Better hot break = cleaner wort into the fermentor, providing you rack the clear wort off of it once it settles out. If you aren't going to rack the wort off the hot break, it probably doesn't matter.

I'm gonna throw myself into this...

I use a plate chiller. It's the same principle as a counter flow in terms of the thermodynamics. The main difference is that a modest plate chiller has much more surface area than a modest CFC. Only benefit I can see to immersion is no potential for clogging.

I've refined my process over the years to:
-15 mins prior to BKO, recirculate wort loop for about a minute. Outlet temp from plate chiller should read at least 190-200F. Let's stand. Every 3 minutes, turn pump on for about 15 seconds to recirculate cooled (but still hot) wort back to kettle. This takes care of sanitation.
-At BKO, start wort loop and use TAP WATER to chill.
-Once kettle temp has reached into the low 100s and rate of cooling slows, switch cooling water to ice water loop. I use my MLT filled with ice water.
-Once wort leaving the plate chiller is a few degrees below desired set point, begin flowing to fermenter(s).
-To clean chiller, flush and back flush plate chiller 4 times each direction. Recirculate forward and back with hot PBW, then flush with tap water 4 times in each direction again.

brewman ! said:

Ice doesn't change anything ! The thermodynamic principles are still the same.

If you want to make the best use of ice, set up a 2 stage CFC. Use tap water to get the wort down to near tap temp in the 2st stage and use ice to get it down further in the second stage. DO NOT RECIRCULATE THE ICE WATER. Run it slow enough that you won't run out for the entire chill process and that is the maximum efficient use you can get from it.

Click to expand...

Ice and tap water are very different. I'd say using ice changes things quite a bit. Using ice means you use less water, which was what i was getting at.

The thermodynamics are what they are, but you can change a lot of things to manipulate them and get them working to your advantage.

Given the same temperature water and wort, the CFC is always more efficient (I don't think anyone is debating that). IC users have taken to using large amounts of ice to make them more water and time efficient. It actually cools the wort pretty quickly, too.

The thing i never liked about the CFC is the bulk of the wort still sits at near boiling temps as you chill, where as recircing back to the kettle drops you down below DMS formation temp very quickly and keeps hop oils from volatilizing. Going from CFC to whirlpool IC made a big difference in hop presence in my beers.

Of course, you can recirc back to the kettle with a CFC, but then you lose some of that efficiency as your bulk wort temp drops.

brewman ! said:

DO NOT RECIRCULATE THE ICE WATER. Run it slow enough that you won't run out for the entire chill process and that is the maximum efficient use you can get from it.

Click to expand...

I disagree. You should recirculate your ice water if your return water is colder than your supply water. This is very typical once your wort is below 100F. In the summer my tap water will be 85F, but after the ice water has gone through the plate chiller it has warmed from 32 up to ~50. If i sent that 50 degree water down the drain I have to replace it with 85F tap water, which wastes more ice. Now with that said, the first minute or so it might be worth sending down the drain because it's likely between 85 and 100F, but i usually just recirc with it because it's a miniscule amount of ice and a lot of hassle to move hoses around and monitor.

For years I have been running a 2 stage cooling process. Stage 1 uses tap water to take it from 212 down to the low 100s, then step 2 uses a recirculating ice loop to take it from the low 100s to pitch temps.

I've brewed for years using a three tier system and had a lot of fun brewing some great tasting beers, but now I see that was a lot more labor intensive than my current eBIAB brewing system.

schematix said:

I disagree. You should recirculate your ice water if your return water is colder than your supply water. This is very typical once your wort is below 100F. In the summer my tap water will be 85F, but after the ice water has gone through the plate chiller it has warmed from 32 up to ~50. If i sent that 50 degree water down the drain I have to replace it with 85F tap water, which wastes more ice. Now with that said, the first minute or so it might be worth sending down the drain because it's likely between 85 and 100F, but i usually just recirc with it because it's a miniscule amount of ice and a lot of hassle to move hoses around and monitor.

Click to expand...

Given the choice of circulating a set amount of cooling fluid though a CFC OR running the same volume of fluid through ONCE, at a slower rate, the latter will result in the coolest wort.

Recirculating the cooling fluid dramatically reduces the efficiency of a CFC because the temperature of the cooling fluid climbs as the chilling process goes on, resulting in warmer wort.

FWIW, adding salt to the ice water mixture lowers its temp below 32F. Mythbusters did an episode on this.

brewman ! said:

Given the choice of circulating a set amount of cooling fluid though a CFC OR running the same volume of fluid through ONCE, at a slower rate, the latter will result in the coolest wort.

Click to expand...

Your statement is correct. However, I content that it is not the best method.

What I am suggesting is that you have an essentially infinite quantity of cold(ish) ground water, and a finite quantity of ice. It would take a LOT of ice to cool a batch to pitching temps in a single pass. It is far easier to use your nearly infinite supply of ground water to take care of your initial cool down phase, and then switch to a recirculating ice water loop. Yes it does use more water than your method, but it uses much less ice, and is much easier to hit very low temps (in the 40s) than trying to single pass (which requires full supply of cold water in the low 30s). This also allows you to easily perform things like hop steeps, and also bring your entire volume of the wort below DMS temps.

On my 10G system I can bring my entire volume of wort from 212 down to 140 is about 3 minutes, regardless of tap water temp (which varies from 40F in the winter to 80F in the summer). The next period from 140 to 100 takes another 5 minutes or so (give or take a min depending upon the tap water temp), at which point the efficiency lowers since my delta T is getting smaller. So i'm running tap water for 8-10 minutes, which is probably about 25-35 gallons (I throttle back to about half rate after the initial period). At that point i switch to recircuting ice water, which is about 8G total.

I think there is some room for optimization here by monitoring source cooling water temp, coolign water return temp, wort return temp and wort temp (which everyone already has with the thermometer on the BK).

EDIT: I am aware that salt drops the ice water temp, but it takes quite a bit to drop it significantly, and the last thing i want on my equipment is a corrosive salt.

I agree that a 2 stage chiller is the way to go. Regards, don't circulate the ice water used in the 2nd stage. Pump it through very slowly. The principle is the same whether its done in a single or dual stage system.

Wouldn't the ideal be to stop recirculating as soon as the ice has all melted?

orangehero said:

Wouldn't the ideal be to stop recirculating as soon as the ice has all melted?

Click to expand...

Nope.

Lets say your wort is sitting at 55F after chilling with tap water.

If you recirculate until the ice has melted, you've taken your cooling water from 32F solid-liquid slurry to 32F liquid.

If you pump the ice water once through, you've taken your cooling water from 32F solid-liquid slurry to 52ishF liquid.

See the difference ?

The chilling water is much warmer if you pump it once through. For every BTU you heat the chilling water, you are cooling the wort by the same 1 BTU. Thus if your CFC warms the chilling water to a higher temp by pumping the chilling water once through, it must be making the wort much cooler. And, in fact, it does.

brewman ! said:

I agree that a 2 stage chiller is the way to go. Regards, don't circulate the ice water used in the 2nd stage. Pump it through very slowly. The principle is the same whether its done in a single or dual stage system.

Click to expand...

OK so we can agree that cooling in stage 1 (212F -> 80-120F*) using tap water is the right thing to do. Without question it makes the 2nd stage using ice (a relatively expensive and hard to come by commodity in the quantities required here) much easier if you pre-chill with an essentially limitless resource.

Can you explain your logic behind not recirculating your ice water chill loop in the 2nd stage? In my experience i just can't store enough ice cold water to take my wort down to lager temps after the first stage. Recirculating let's me reclaim chill water that is still cold (colder than fresh tap water).

*depends on your ground water temp and tolerance for sending water down the drain

schematix said:

OK so we can agree that cooling in stage 1 (212F -> 80-120F*) using tap water is the right thing to do. Without question it makes the 2nd stage using ice (a relatively expensive and hard to come by commodity in the quantities required here) much easier if you pre-chill with an essentially limitless resource.

Click to expand...

FWIW, what is the temperature of your tap water if your wort is only cooling to 80-120F ?

Can you explain your logic behind not recirculating your ice water chill loop in the 2nd stage? In my experience i just can't store enough ice cold water to take my wort down to lager temps after the first stage. Recirculating let's me reclaim chill water that is still cold (colder than fresh tap water).

Click to expand...

If you circulate the wort once through and you circulate the ice water once through and you do so at a speed that you don't run out of either, theoretically with a counter chiller 5 gallons of ice water will go from ice water to 80F while 5 gallons of wort goes from 80F to ice cold. In the real world it will probably take 8 gallons. This assumes that both liquids are going once through, that you have an efficient chiller and you flow the liquids through at a speed that allows the heat exchange to occur. You know this is happening when the outlet temp of the ice water is high and the outlet temp of the wort is low. Ideally you will have thermometers on both outlets to monitor this while running the chill process.

I don't know how to explain the thermodynamics. One liquid goes from ice to hot and the other liquid goes from hot to ice. If you start recirculating either liquid then the temperature differentials get messed up and the ice water doesn't get hot and the hot wort doesn't get cool.

As soon as you recirc the ice water, its temp goes up. You can no longer get the wort ice cold.

As soon as you recirc the wort, you aren't heating the ice water up as much and you aren't getting full thermodynamic value from it.

I suggest you hook your CF up to 2 taps and play around with it. Put a very hot tap on the wort side and a very cold tap on the hot side. Play around with flow rates and watch the exit temps.

Like I said, it should only take 8 gallons of ice water to get 5 gallons of wort really cold if you are doing things right.

The other thing to watch is the directions. The fluids need to flow in opposite directions, thus the term "counter flow".

brewman ! said:

Nope.

Lets say your wort is sitting at 55F after chilling with tap water.

If you recirculate until the ice has melted, you've taken your cooling water from 32F solid-liquid slurry to 32F liquid.

If you pump the ice water once through, you've taken your cooling water from 32F solid-liquid slurry to 52ishF liquid.

See the difference ?

The chilling water is much warmer if you pump it once through. For every BTU you heat the chilling water, you are cooling the wort by the same 1 BTU. Thus if your CFC warms the chilling water to a higher temp by pumping the chilling water once through, it must be making the wort much cooler. And, in fact, it does.

Click to expand...

Your explanation doesn't make sense. The chilling water coming back from the heat exchanger, right out of the heat exchanger, has absorbed the heat from the wort and thus will be at a higher temperature, regardless of whether you dump it back into the icewater container or use it to water your lawn.

I'm by no means an expert in thermodynamics, but as I understand it you would need much less water and ice as the heat coming back would be absorbed by the melting ice. Depending on how fast you recirculate the temp of the ice water won't increase until you've melted all of the ice. You can think of it as another water heat exhanger feeding coolant to your wort heat exhanger.

I'll leave you guys figure it out.

brewman ! said:

FWIW, what is the temperature of your tap water if your wort is only cooling to 80-120F ?

Click to expand...

It varies seasonally. This February I measured it at a chilly 40F. With that water I was able to get 10G to 48F in the ferm with 0 ice (2 stage, but 2nd stage was direct to ferms)! This is the temp I want to be at for lagers (most of my brews). Two Septembers ago I measured the tap water at 80F (highest it got). The reason I stop my first stage at 80-120F is because the efficiency is so poor after that point that it takes me another 10 minutes (and another 25-35G of water), to drop the wort another 20-30 degrees. As you have alluded to, temperature differential is key here.

brewman ! said:

If you circulate the wort once through and you circulate the ice water once through and you do so at a speed that you don't run out of either, theoretically with a counter chiller 5 gallons of ice water will go from ice water to 80F while 5 gallons of wort goes from 80F to ice cold. In the real world it will probably take 8 gallons. This assumes that both liquids are going once through, that you have an efficient chiller and you flow the liquids through at a speed that allows the heat exchange to occur. You know this is happening when the outlet temp of the ice water is high and the outlet temp of the wort is low. Ideally you will have thermometers on both outlets to monitor this while running the chill process.

I don't know how to explain the thermodynamics.

Click to expand...

Here's a good link that describes the thermodynamics: http://web.mit.edu/16.unified/www/FALL/thermodynamics/notes/node131.html

I don't disagree with your statement that what you're doing is most efficient in terms of heat transfer, but in my experience it requires a significant quantity of ice water to make it work. By recirculating the ice water you allow yourself to not need as big of a tank to hold all that ice water, or even have to control your flows precisely enough such that you don't run out.

I'm going to study up on that webpage a little more and see if i can put some real numbers to this. Should be enlightening.

schematix said:

It varies seasonally. This February I measured it at a chilly 40F. With that water I was able to get 10G to 48F in the ferm with 0 ice (2 stage, but 2nd stage was direct to ferms)! This is the temp I want to be at for lagers (most of my brews). Two Septembers ago I measured the tap water at 80F (highest it got). The reason I stop my first stage at 80-120F is because the efficiency is so poor after that point that it takes me another 10 minutes (and another 25-35G of water), to drop the wort another 20-30 degrees. As you have alluded to, temperature differential is key here.

Click to expand...

Something is wrong here. With a CFC, you pump the wort through once. You pump it slow enough that it comes out at a temp near the incoming coolant temp. You don't recirculate the wort back to the kettle. It goes through once, period, end of story.

I don't disagree with your statement that what you're doing is most efficient in terms of heat transfer, but in my experience it requires a significant quantity of ice water to make it work.

Click to expand...

That is because you are recirculating the ice water !!!!

By recirculating the ice water you allow yourself to not need as big of a tank to hold all that ice water, or even have to control your flows precisely enough such that you don't run out.

Click to expand...

Believe me, 8 gallons of ice water will make 5 gallons of wort very cold. You are pumping the wort through too fast for it to transfer heat to the chilling liquid.

Good luck.

I'm going to study up on that webpage a little more and see if i can put some real numbers to this. Should be enlightening.[/QUOTE]

brewman ! said:

Something is wrong here. With a CFC, you pump the wort through once. You pump it slow enough that it comes out at a temp near the incoming coolant temp. You don't recirculate the wort back to the kettle. It goes through once, period, end of story.

Click to expand...

I do in fact recirculate the wort back to the kettle. This has several advantages outside the scope of this discussion. Do you have any idea how much ice water it would take to cool 10G of boiling wort down to 50F in a single pass? There is little difference between tap water and ice water when your delta T is high. Might as well take advantage of cheap tap water for cooling until your delta T gets small so you don't need as much ice.

orangehero said:

Wouldn't the ideal be to stop recirculating as soon as the ice has all melted?

Click to expand...

Ideal would be to not run out of ice....

If you did then it would depend upon how much more water you needed to cool the wort.

If you needed more water than was remaining, you'd want to recirc until your coolant tank hit the same as the ground water temp, then divert that to the drain. Once you run out of water then you'd want to go back to tap water.

schematix said:

Do you have any idea how much ice water it would take to cool 10G of boiling wort down to 50F in a single pass?

Click to expand...

Yes I do. Theoretically, 10 gallons. In real life, 15 gallons.

You aren't getting this.

*ANY* CFC, if the fluids are pumped through slow enough, will transfer nearly 100% of the heat differential from one fluid to the other.

So the wort will go from near boiling to near ice and the ice water will go from near freezing to near boiling. In one pass.

Once this occurs, there is no use recirculating the fluids. Once the cooling water is near boiling, its no longer useful. Discard it. And once the wort is chilled near the coolng water, why dump it back into the boiling wort ? Its at the desired temp ! Put it in the fermentor.

The key is that both fluids go through ONCE ! And they go through slowly enough that the transfer occurs. If you go faster than the heat can transfer, then all bets are off. If you recirculate either of the fluids, all bets are off.

Don't believe me ? Hook your CFC up to 2 taps, one hot and one cold and play with the flows.

I once burnt my hand on the cooling water coming out of a CFC. In winter with 40F tap water, its easy to get 45F wort in one pass. Just adjust the flow rates.

BTW, the hot break is tremendous when you do this.

You want to the coolant to be flowing as fast as possible.

The problem I always had with my CFC was I had to flow the wort really slow, even when I was blasting cold tap water through it, to get the wort temp down to pitch temp in one pass.

I don't know about what you guys are using, but mine wasn't very efficient.

Also, you should keep recircing ice water until the ice is gone, because you should be able to keep the ice bucket temp near freezing as long as there is ice in there. Usually we want to get our wort to 45-65F, so really as long as the water is less than that and you can get your flows right you can keep recircing.

Good luck with your brewing endevors.

brewman ! said:

Yes I do. Theoretically, 10 gallons. In real life, 15 gallons.

Click to expand...

I can't buffer 15G of ice water, nor can i make and store enough ice to make 15G of ice water.

brewman ! said:

You aren't getting this.

Click to expand...

I completely get what you are saying, and I'm not saying that that you are wrong. I don't think you get what I'm saying. I'm saying it's much faster and uses far less ice to chill my way.

brewman ! said:

*ANY* CFC, if the fluids are pumped through slow enough, will transfer nearly 100% of the heat differential from one fluid to the other.

So the wort will go from near boiling to near ice and the ice water will go from near freezing to near boiling. In one pass.

Click to expand...

True. But i'm not waiting an hour to chill 10G of beer, especially while its sitting near boiling. One of the many benefits of the wort recirc is that you chill the entire batch below DMS levels very rapidly. Also easy to perform a hop steep.

brewman ! said:

Once this occurs, there is no use recirculating the fluids. Once the cooling water is near boiling, its no longer useful. Discard it. And once the wort is chilled near the coolng water, why dump it back into the boiling wort ? Its at the desired temp ! Put it in the fermentor.

Click to expand...

You're missing my original point here with using tap water first, THEN ice water. I only recirculate ice water once my wort is sufficiently cool such that the warmed cooling water IS STILL COLD. The process is overall faster if you have both flows as fast as possible. At max flow its not ready for the fermenter in 1-pass.

brewman ! said:

Don't believe me ? Hook your CFC up to 2 taps, one hot and one cold and play with the flows.

I once burnt my hand on the cooling water coming out of a CFC. In winter with 40F tap water, its easy to get 45F wort in one pass. Just adjust the flow rates.

Click to expand...

Yep and that hot water goes right down the drain because its worthless. However, that ice water is still cold after a pass.

brewman ! said:

BTW, the hot break is tremendous when you do this.

Click to expand...

You mean cold break.... yep and mine mostly stays in the kettle.

Biab only results in cloudy beer if you fail to take other measures to clairify. Whirfloc , whirlpool, cold crash and you get crystal clear beer every time. Efficiency and a few small extra steps is the main difference.

I'm out of this discussion. Good luck.

schematix said:

True. But i'm not waiting an hour to chill 10G of beer, especially while its sitting near boiling. One of the many benefits of the wort recirc is that you chill the entire batch below DMS levels very rapidly. Also easy to perform a hop steep.

Click to expand...

Recirculating back to the kettle was one of my better brewing breakthroughs when it come to beer flavor. I noticed an immediate change in hop flavor and aroma when I went from single pass CFC to recirculating IC.