Wort Chilling Ideas?

Hey I'm relatively new to this and I had some questions about wort chillers.

My first brew I just used an ice bath to cool and found this to be very slow. For my next brews I will be using a wort chiller. I will most likely be making one myself if I can find the copper at a decent price.

In Tennessee where I live our tap water is not very cold so let's talk about pre-chilling. Would it be effective to just run a long hose from the faucet to the chiller and imerse that hose in an ice bath?

Also. Would it work to imerse the wort chiller in ice and water and run the wort through it like a counterflow for half the price?

It seems like if you made gravity work for you then this might work. Am I overlooking something very simple?

Any help on the subject would be much appreciated!!


Thanks all!!

Submerging a long hose in an ice bath probably wouldn't work well since it wouldn't have good heat transfer properties. Plastic tubing or a rubber garden hose is in essence an insulating material. That's why they use copper - good conductivity. Unfortunately copper prices are really high right now. I'm looking at doing an immersion chiller but 3/8" copper is now $45 for 20' at Home Depot.

Running wort thru the copper would work - but I like the idea of having the wort on the outside - it's much easier to clean - just put the immersion chiller in the boil for 10 minutes to sanitize it. Plenty of people use counterflow chillers so there must be a good way to clean them (running cleaner thru them probably). I think the immersion would be easier IMHO.

Right.. garden hose in ice does nothing. To insulating and the water moves too fast.

Copper coil in icewater is called a hybrid chiller and it works great. However, sanitizing the inside of the copper is not so easy unless you have a pump. I have a CFC and I pump boiling wort through the coil for 5 minutes to sanitize. You can gravity feed sanitizer though it but it's not exactly convenient.

One final note, if you run the wort through the coil, you have to keep stirring that ice water in a similar way you have to stir the wort in an immersion style chiller.

You could get a second immersion chiller... one goes in the pot the second goes in a bucket of ice water.

Faucet-->Chiller one in ice water bucket--> chiller two in pot-->drain.

Mix some salt/rock salt in the water.

I am a really cheap guy.

I made a pre-chiller for free....

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=15797&highlight=free+chiller

Cheers,

knewshound

The best idea I have seen is recircutlating ice water with a pond pump sitting in a tub or sink of ice water. I brew on "the cheap", though. I use frozen juice juice bottles. Quickly sanatize in Idophor and put directly into wort and a sink bath.

mrk305 said:

The best idea I have seen is recircutlating ice water with a pond pump sitting in a tub or sink of ice water.

Click to expand...

This work very well and you can get pumps for cheap. I paid 19.95 for mine @ Lowes.

The best method, by far, using an immersion chiller is the ice water recirculation method, as stated above. It's the only way to go if your tap water temperatures are on the high side.

Use the IC with your tap water until the temperature of your wort is down to around 100˚F. Then use an inexpensive pond pump sitting in a bucket of ice water, connect the inlet of the IC to the discharge of the pump, put the hose from the outlet of the IC back into the icewater bucket and let her rip. You will be able to bring the wort temperature from 100˚F to under 65˚F in just a few minutes.

I''m very happy with the recirculating method here in Hot Austin.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=38235

http://www.krach.org/Homebrew/Chiller5.jpg

I''m very happy with the recirculating method here in Hot Austin.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=38235

If you want to avoid buying a pond pump, another idea is to run down to your local marina or boat parts shop.
Ask for livewell pump. Livewell pumps typically pump 500+ gph and can be had for under $25.00.
Bilge pumps run along the same lines.

Mayfair is a good pump, as is Rule.

Except aren't both of those 12 volt DC pumps? Unless you brew next to your car, that's gonna be an issue.

Bobby_M said:

Except aren't both of those 12 volt DC pumps? Unless you brew next to your car, that's gonna be an issue.

Click to expand...

Not so, you can easily rig an adapter. Just buy a "universal" power adapter from Radio Shack or Best Best (the ones that go from 3.3v DC to 12v DC), just get one with the highest mA rating you can find.

Something like this...
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7152868&st=powwr+adapter&type=product&id=1110266394660

or this...

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7152868&st=powwr+adapter&type=product&id=1110266394660

BrianP said:

Submerging a long hose in an ice bath probably wouldn't work well since it wouldn't have good heat transfer properties. Plastic tubing or a rubber garden hose is in essence an insulating material. That's why they use copper - good conductivity. Unfortunately copper prices are really high right now. I'm looking at doing an immersion chiller but 3/8" copper is now $45 for 20' at Home Depot.

Running wort thru the copper would work - but I like the idea of having the wort on the outside - it's much easier to clean - just put the immersion chiller in the boil for 10 minutes to sanitize it. Plenty of people use counterflow chillers so there must be a good way to clean them (running cleaner thru them probably). I think the immersion would be easier IMHO.

Click to expand...

I actually just found 3/8 20' copper at Home Depot for $24. I made the whole chiller for about $40 but just putting vinyl tube with hose clamps on both ends.

Anyway thanks for all the help guys! I have a couple pond pumps laying around so I think I'll try the idea of using the chiller down to about 100 or so and then switching to the ice water pump.

Thanks again!

Cheers

I went back and found cheaper copper at HD. Ignore my earlier post. I didn't realize that they carry different grades of copper - I was looking at the thick-walled stuff.

By the way - is a chiller made of 20' of 3/8 good enough for a 5 gal boil? My options are 20' or 50' - but 50' seems like overkill.

I bought 50' and made 2 - 25' CFC's. If you want the second one, shoot me an offer in a PM. Would be happy to sell for what I spent on copper, tubing, fittings, etc....

Whiskey® said:

Not so, you can easily rig an adapter. Just buy a "universal" power adapter from Radio Shack or Best Best (the ones that go from 3.3v DC to 12v DC), just get one with the highest mA rating you can find.

Something like this...
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7152868&st=powwr+adapter&type=product&id=1110266394660

or this...

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7152868&st=powwr+adapter&type=product&id=1110266394660

Click to expand...

I don't want to seem argumentative but even the smallest bilge pumps run a few amps, not 1/2 amp (500mA). A cheap pond, utility, or sump pump for $30 or so bucks is a great solution that doesn't need alternatives.

Here's what I've been doing lately:



15 gallons down to pitching temp in 10-15 minutes through a copper coil immersed in the keggle of icewater.

Bobby_M said:

I don't want to seem argumentative but even the smallest bilge pumps run a few amps, not 1/2 amp (500mA).

Click to expand...

I agree. I had a pumptec 1.2gpm pump (60psi) that drew 10A @ 12V.

How difficult is it to clean an immersion chiller after it has been sitting in wort for awhile?

I just rinse mine with some water and use a brush if I get some hop goo up at the top.

BrianP said:

...
By the way - is a chiller made of 20' of 3/8 good enough for a 5 gal boil? My options are 20' or 50' - but 50' seems like overkill.

Click to expand...

I made mine from a 60' coil my plumber brother-in-law gave me. May be overkill now but when I move up to 10 G batches I'll be ready.

JamesKY said:

How difficult is it to clean an immersion chiller after it has been sitting in wort for awhile?

Click to expand...

I'll save some of the hot runoff water from chilling the wort and put it into my mash tun with some PBW. Drop my IC into it after I've transfered to the fermenters and let it soak. Comes out nice a shiny after a quick rinse with the garden hose. Also, plenty of hot soapy water to clean up the brewery.

I bit the bullet and bought 50' of 3/8 copper. Better to do it right the first time....

I posted this in another wort chilling thread and would love to get some comments/suggestions.

I've been running an idea through my head over the past few weeks. Currently, I put a 1/4" x 25' copper IC in my 7g kettle (while simultaneously giving a salted ice bath), which cooled down my wort to pitchable temps in 20 minutes (in the Florida heat - as recent as August 10).

However, I just recently purchased a 15.5g Keggle and I'm itching to use it, but I'm fairly certain my old IC won't get the job done - even with an ice bath - in less than 20 minutes. I'm also considering that my hose water doesn't exactly get "cold" (temp is something close to 70ish, by my estimation).

I've investigaged a couple other IC options as I'm not really interested in the CFC route at the moment. One of them is to purchase and/or build a 50'x1/2"(or 3/8") IC and attach it to my old 25'x1/4" IC (which will be submerged in a salty ice bath) - which is subsequently hooked to my garden hose. So essentially, it'd look like this:

Garden hose -->25'x1/4" IC (in a salty ice bath) -->50'x1/2"(or 3/8") IC submerged in wort.

This would work similar to using a pump submerged in a salty icebath pumping cold water through the IC, with the benefit being that I wouldn't have to refill the ice bath from time to time.

My thought is that I would get extremely chilled hose water running through the 50' IC. Even without putting the keggle in an ice bath, I'd assume that I'd get pitchable temps within 15 minutes or so.

Thoughts? I'm wondering if that's a better option than hooking up a $15 pump from Harbor Freight. Don't forget that I need to get a 50' IC anyways due to the larger kettle. I'm just thinking outside the box. Does 1/2" work better than 3/8" (in terms of faster chilling time)?

Thoughts:

• Lots of people use pre-chillers (what your turning your old IC into).
  
• Salt is corrosive and I don't think it really buys you a lot in this instance. Time it once with and once without and see though.
  
• 1/2" vs 3/8" also kind of depends on flow rate. Since your flow is going to be choked through the 1/4" pre-chiller I don't think I'd bother with 1/2" for the IC. I think you will get sufficient contact time/surface area with the 3/8". Note that I haven't worked through any real math here, I'm just guessing (hopefully an educated guess).
  
• I think which ever way you go, I'd start with just hose water until you drop to 150 or so, then switch to the pre-chiller. You will use less ice that way.