wort chiller design

Hey all ! After what i will reluctantly refer to as my 1st attempt failure to chill my wort using the Ole snow bank and spooning the wort, I've been reading alot of post on chillers as well as looking into whats on the market for sale, I've decided to design and produce the ultimate chiller.
I guarantee it will do a great job, it will be solid and not the typical coil design, which i believe to be flawed. All I'll say is from what I've seen all the chillers address the matter of cooling the wort from the outer edges, my intention is to approach not only the outer edges but the center as well. Now what i need to know is, is there a such thing as cooling the wort to fast ? the answer to this question will determine certain particulars in my design. After its been built and tested I'll gladly post my design prints and pic's.

i don't believe it is possible to cool it too rapidly. There are some fancy-schmancy radiator chillers out there that will cool 10 gallons of boiling hot wort in 5 minutes. I've cooled 3 gallons in just a few mintes with ice blocks.

Go for it!

I would love to see a design when you get it finished. I have a chiller I made already, but one that works even better wouldn't be a bad investment.

Walker , could you direct me to these chillers you mentioned ? dont want to waist time doing something already done, even though i'ld make myself one reguardless .
i'ld be doing strickly 5 gal batch's for now and 10 gal in 5 minutes wouldnt be bad at all but as limited as my plans are at this stage, i'ld be realisticly thinking 5 gallons in 1 minute. I know thats likely to be pushing things and even possibley a far streach of my emagination , but only time will tell ?
My intention for joining this forum is to exstact useful infor and as i exspected i would i have done so , now for my part i'll try to be a possitive contributor and in my limited knowlage and despite my enability to spell i am nonetheless a person who loves the tinker and invent things, so just wish me luck and maybe a few of us here will benifit from my endevours.

brewdude said:

could you direct me to these chillers you mentioned?

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Northern Brewer has the following chiller styles available:

Immersion Chiller w/tubing leads
Immersion Chiller w/garden hose fittings
Immersion Chiller for 10-20 gallons
Phil's Counterflow Chiller (garden hose)
Chillzilla Counterflow Wort Chiller (convoluted)
Therminator (plate-type wort chiller)

Then there’s the Chill Wizard

The only idea not listed is the pre-chiller. This uses a second Immersion Chiller set in icewater and salt to pre-chill faucet water before it hits the wort.

Does your idea include convoluted tubing within another convoluted tubing all within a larger tube? This could alow the wort (running through the second convoluted tubing) to be chilled on the inside and out.

Wild

brewdude said:

Hey all ! After what i will reluctantly refer to as my 1st attempt failure to chill my wort using the Ole snow bank and spooning the wort, I've been reading alot of post on chillers as well as looking into whats on the market for sale, I've decided to design and produce the ultimate chiller.
I guarantee it will do a great job, it will be solid and not the typical coil design, which i believe to be flawed. All I'll say is from what I've seen all the chillers address the matter of cooling the wort from the outer edges, my intention is to approach not only the outer edges but the center as well. Now what i need to know is, is there a such thing as cooling the wort to fast ? the answer to this question will determine certain particulars in my design. After its been built and tested I'll gladly post my design prints and pic's.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't say that a coiled counterflow chiller is flawed, in fact mine is very efficient. Cools from 90C to 15 C in the time it takes the wort to flow throught the chiller. As for the question on cooling to fast, this is exactly what you want to achieve as you want to get the wort past that temperature window during which spoiling microbes can get a grip. The faster the better!

I am intrigued by your "ultimate chiller" though...keep us posted with build progress pictures etc...

wild said:

Does your idea include convoluted tubing within another convoluted tubing all within a larger tube? This could alow the wort (running through the second convoluted tubing) to be chilled on the inside and out.

Click to expand...

How would you reliably clean something like this if the wort is flowing THROUGH the tubing?

-walker

Walker said:

How would you reliably clean something like this if the wort is flowing THROUGH the tubing?

-walker

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Flush through with Oxiclean (soda crystals) and sanitise with star san or iodophor. Also, copper can be cleaned effectively with distilled white vinegar I think. Another method of "sanitising" is to run boiling wort through the chiller (and dump back into boiler) before letting the cold water flow and cooling the wort.

BlightyBrewer said:

I wouldn't say that a coiled counterflow chiller is flawed, in fact mine is very efficient. Cools from 90C to 15 C in the time it takes the wort to flow throught the chiller. As for the question on cooling to fast, this is exactly what you want to achieve as you want to get the wort past that temperature window during which spoiling microbes can get a grip. The faster the better!

I am intrigued by your "ultimate chiller" though...keep us posted with build progress pictures etc...

Click to expand...

How do you hook up and position you counter flow for use? I built one also but i am having a hard time trying to figure out how to use it well? I figured i would put clear plastic tubing on the copper wort path to connect to my boil kettle to the chiller and the same to connect the chiller to my fermentation vessel. But how do you position it? Just let it hang there or set it on a table above the carboy but below the kettle? If any one can post a pic of it in a mock up i would appreciate it.

Walker said:

How would you reliably clean something like this if the wort is flowing THROUGH the tubing?

-walker

Click to expand...

BlightyBrewer is right on the money.

Wild

what i'm talking about is an emersion type chiller,where water from your sink flows though the tubing,not the wort ! suprised you didnt pick up on that beings i mentioned the things seem to cool from on the outside edges, and yes these thing are flawed . I believe they should cool a larger area to allow them to cool faster, namely the center not just the outsides of the bucket, follow me now ?

I think follow. You are talking about having inner and outer coils, right?

I don't know if this would actually improve anything or not, but.... I've never used an immersion chiller before (mine arrives via UPS today).

Is the water that comes OUT of the chiller on a standard model the same temp as the wort it flows through, or does the water come out of the chiller a good bit cooler than the temp of the wort?

If the water comes out at the same temp as the wort, then adding more coils isn't going to do anything... the water has already exchanged as much heat as it possibly can and no additional amount of tubing will let it do a better job.

If the water comes out cooler than the wort, then adding more coils (more outer coils or more inner coils) will improve the cooling power.

-walker

With mine, the water is still at a lower temp than the wort. The reason that I do not have more coils is that I am still doing partial boils. Once my Keg is done, I am expanding

AHammer16 said:

How do you hook up and position you counter flow for use? I built one also but i am having a hard time trying to figure out how to use it well? I figured i would put clear plastic tubing on the copper wort path to connect to my boil kettle to the chiller and the same to connect the chiller to my fermentation vessel. But how do you position it? Just let it hang there or set it on a table above the carboy but below the kettle? If any one can post a pic of it in a mock up i would appreciate it.

Click to expand...

The chiller needs to be below the level of the kettle so that gravity can do its thang. I position mine on a kitched chair beneath the level of the kettle, but above the level of the fermenter, which is on the floor. The chiller also needs to sit with the coils flat, hot wort inlet at top (where hot water aslo exits from the garden hose), and cold side at the bottom. You can use clear plastic tubing to connect..that's what I do. It goes a bit soft on the kettle end with the hot wort flowing through it, but it's okay.

I have noticed that an immersion chiller is more effective when stirred around every few minutes. The amount of wort it comes in contact with is a rather small volume. I could totally see a chiller that places copper tubing at more even intervals throughout the wort may be more efficient. It seems logical that spacing the outer coils an inch or so apart and adding coils in the center would be an improvement. I could be wrong, I'm a graphic designer, not a fluids engineer. I don't even know if that's a proper title.

The water coming out of my immersion chiller comes out ice cold unless I rock the pot to get warmer wort circulating around it. The more coils the better the way I see it.

RichBrewer said:

The water coming out of my immersion chiller comes out ice cold unless I rock the pot to get warmer wort circulating around it.

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if it comes out ice cold, then doesn't that imply that it's completely ineffective (no heat transfer happening)?

From what I'm reading wouldn't the best imersion chiller fill the space inside the boiling pot? We allmake a coil that rests on the outer edges of the pot but something that was more of a spiral or circles of tubing that were wide and then small and then wide would hit more areas of the pot. Does this make sense
?

When running my immersion chiller, I periodically lift it up a couple inches, then put it back down. I feel that this disturbs the wort enough to keep the cooling process going, but not enough to risk hot aeration. if needed, I will sometimes "stir" with my brew spoon (sanitized again, of course). I think that a thermal barrier can form between the cold coils and the hot wort, and all that is needed is a little disturbance to overcome it. This has been my experience, at least.

Walker said:

if it comes out ice cold, then doesn't that imply that it's completely ineffective (no heat transfer happening)?

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I think it means that the water flow is too high. That is not a bad thing unless you are trying to save on water bills.

Walker -

How do you chill with ice blocks? Placing them alongside the pot or inside somehow?

I think the cold water coming out the end indicates that it loses effectiveness over time. Stir it up or lift it up and down and it comes out hot again.

I've also read about that "cold barrier" that forms around the coils. It'd be interesting to see a design that redistributes the coils as evenly spaced across the entire kettle as possible. I imagine the limitation would be how much the copper can curve without breaking.

stldrum said:

Walker -

How do you chill with ice blocks? Placing them alongside the pot or inside somehow?

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I don't do it anymore, but what I used to do was:

buy bottled water, open, dump out a cup or so (to allow room for expansion), recap it.

... OR ...

boil tap water, put it into sanitized jugs (leaving room for expansion), cap it.

Then I put this in the freezer the day before brewing and let it freeze overnight.

When I was ready to use it, I used a sanitized knife to cut the plastic jugs open and dropped those ice blocks directly into the 3 gallons of wort that I just finished boiling.

The temp drop was VERY rapid. It works great, but I just got tired of cutting the damn jugs open (especially the milk jug type that have the handle full of liquid/ice). One time I almost cut my left hand wide open (my wedding ring saved me!) so I stopped doing it and switched to using an ice-bath instead (no cutting of the jugs required anymore).

Now, I have an immersion chiller scheduled to be delivered today, so I won't be messing around with ice anymore at all.

-walker

Walker said:

I have an immersion chiller scheduled to be delivered today, so I won't be messing around with ice anymore at all.

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correction.... UPS says my wort chiller was delivered an hour ago. it's at home waiting for daddy!

-walker

Hey, brewdude....

Is this the kind of chiller you are thinking about?

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=6188

-walker