Issues with counter flow chiller

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chriscraig

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I've been using my 25' CFC for a few months now, and it's doing what I need it to do for now. Right now it's gravity fed, and with my water temperature being about 48F, I chill the wort down to about 68F.

I'm wondering if I should be getting colder wort in the end. I have the water faucet wide open, and the valve on my kettle wide open.

I'm planning on using a pump to move wort through the CFC so that I don't have to lift a kettle full of boiling wort in order to chill it. I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to cool the wort down enough.

Any ideas? The output temperature of the water from the chiller is about the same as the wort.
 
That sounds perfect to me.

But, to cool it down more when you're using a pump, you can either slow the flow from the pump and/or hookup an immersion chiller to use as a pre-chiller for your tap water.

Run the tap water through the immersion chiller that is sitting in a bucket of ice water. That chilled tap water is then pumped through your counter flow chiller.
 
My CFC works great. Whatever the incoming water temp is, is what my wort comes out at. I have to throttle down the water flow during the winter when the water temp is in the 40s. I also gravity feed. What size is your tubing/hose?
 
If you want to stick with gravity, then restrict the kettle valve. If you want to go with a pump, restrict the pump.

Basically, you need to slow down the amount of wort entering the CFC. You can try this with just water...boil water and then try various openings of your kettle valve and measure the output temperature.
 
My CFC is 3/8 OD copper inside 5/8 ID garden hose.

What I'm trying to determine is what I should be expecting from my CFC. I've read that many people have to restrict the flow of water to avoid over-chilling the wort.

Since my ground water is pretty cold, is my problem simply a matter of cold water flow rate? There's not much I can do about that...

A 50' chiller would further restrict the flow rate too...
 
Well, I get decent water pressure in my house. It's just that after water going through 12' of hose to get to the CFC, and then through that 25' of fairly obstructed hose, the output is pretty slow.

I think maybe a pump before the chiller would help raise the pressure in the hose, and improve flow rate. It's kind of like balancing CO2 for a kegerator. Though, I'll likely buy some sort of transfer pump from Home Depot instead of using a march pump.
 
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