Immersion Chiller Takes too long??

I just moved to full boils and for the first two batches, did not have an immersion chiller and quickly learned how much I need one. I did my first full boil last night in which I used the immersion chiller (50' at 3/8) but it took about 23 minutes to cool down to pitching temperature.

I realize that it depends on the temperature of the water coming out of the faucet, but did not think that it would take that long. The water out of faucet is at about 70 F.

Does it seem like this took too long? I understand the water is not that cold, but 23 minutes seems way too long. The only thing I can think of is that all the coils are at the bottom of the chiller. Should I spread the coils out?

Thanks for your help!

It takes about 15 minutes for me to drop my wort from boiling to 90F, so 23 minutes to get to 70F sounds pretty good. I can't actually get mine to 70F right now with tap water, so after 15 minutes, I switch to a sub pump and push ice water through it. Last weekend, it took almost 30 minutes to get it from boiling to 60F.

I work my immersion chiller pretty good.
If you're just letting it sit there, it's going to take a while.

Work the chiller around in a circle, up and down, and repeat constantly until the wort is at the temp you want.

I typically can chill boiling wort down to 65 degrees in 5-8 minutes, depending on the air temp.....

My summer water temp is about 80. I run the plastic line through ice water in the sink but the plastic acts as an insulator and the water doesn't get very cold on its way to the chiller. Several stores sell a "pre-chiller" to put in ice water and I may have to try that.

Not with 70F water. The heat transfer rate drops rapidly as the wort temperature approaches the inlet water temperature. I wouldn't be surprised if you are getting down to 100F in 5-7 minutes.

Brewed in the winter, dropped from boiling to 90 in about 5-7 minutes. Just brewed on a 92 degree day, took about 25 minutes to get it below 100.

I'm in the habit now of dropping it as low as it will quickly go, then closing up the fermenter and letting it ride down to pitching temperature on it's own in the coolest part of my house. Could get a pre-chiller and really get it cold, but I don't know if I'm quite there yet on the equipment investment. After 3 all grains, I'm eyeing a tiered brewing system a lot harder. Tired of lugging heavy, hot pots.

A few things that helped me were spraying the outside of the pot with a spray bottle of water...... and stirring the wort gently to keep it moving.

I dont think 23 minutes is too bad. I can usually get temps down to 80-85 in 15-20 minutes on a hot day. I dont think your going to get much quicker than 15 minutes with just tap water on a warm day.

23 minutes is pretty good. it depends on ground temp. i brewed a 12g ipa last weekend. took about 45 minutes to hit acceptable pitching temp of 85, even

Moving the water quickly through the chiller is not really necessary. Maybe try slowing the flow rate down a bit and allow the water to warm up a bit more before it is expelled from the chiller may help. But 23 minutes does not sound too long.

This is the reason I will be building a counterflow chiller soon though.

Read this thread which I posted last week.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/ic-v-ic-whirl-pooling-192012/

sounds about right. i use 25ft chiller + sumbersible aquarium pump that i put inthepot with runing tap water and ice, works well, but you do have to move chiller around quite a bit. and the cooler wart gets longer it takes to cool more as heat transfer is much more efficient with higher temperature diferential

My routine is to use tap until I get to the mid 100s, the switch to ice water. I notice that the wort chills down very fast from boiling, but takes forever to get to pitch. Thinking the best thing other than agitation/whirlpooling is the differential between wort and chiller temps. Tap to start (to save ice) and then iced water.

SankePankey said:

My routine is to use tap until I get to the mid 100s, the switch to ice water. I notice that the wort chills down very fast from boiling, but takes forever to get to pitch. Thinking the best thing other than agitation/whirlpooling is the differential between wort and chiller temps. Tap to start (to save ice) and then iced water.

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Same here, 100 degrees is the magic number to switch from tap water to ice water.

Are you pumping ice water through the chiller, or using a pre-chiller in an ice bath?

Gammon N Beer said:

Moving the water quickly through the chiller is not really necessary. Maybe try slowing the flow rate down a bit and allow the water to warm up a bit more before it is expelled from the chiller may help. But 23 minutes does not sound too long.

This is the reason I will be building a counterflow chiller soon though.

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I'm going to disagree. I noticed a huge difference in the chill rate, leaving it alone in the keggle versus just stirring. You need to have some kind of physical movement, otherwise you do end up with weird thermal things, the wort right next to the chiller is cooled off but the wort that's further away doesn't chill as fast. It'll equalize eventually, but it takes time unless there's some kind of physical stirring of the wort.

As to slowing down the flow rate - that might make the chiller work more efficiently, but it's absolutely not going to speed things up. The more cold water that flows through, the faster it's going to chill. Simple physics. It can be wasteful to run the hose through full-blast, but if you're expelling hot water at the end, that water wasn't doing much chilling during the end of its voyage through the chiller.

Since I use a counter-flow chiller, I simply added a "post-chiller" to my system and after the wort leaves the main CFC it then cycles through a copper coil in a bucket of ice water.

I like the ice water being after the main chiller so the CFC does the bulk of the temp drop and the post chiller can take it from 80F to 65F. I can cool the entire batch without replacing the ice.

brrman said:

Since I use a counter-flow chiller, I simply added a "post-chiller" to my system and after the wort leaves the main CFC it then cycles through a copper coil in a bucket of ice water.

I like the ice water being after the main chiller so the CFC does the bulk of the temp drop and the post chiller can take it from 80F to 65F. I can cool the entire batch without replacing the ice.

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I should do that. I've been using a CFC recently, and since one pass (with the hose water on full and the pump going full-blast) only brings me down to ~95°, I've just been recirculating back into the kettle until the exit temp is where I want it to be (which does have the benefit of bringing the whole mass of the wort down under 100° in about the same time the immersion chiller did, to limit the chance of DMS).

But, I've got an old SS immersion chiller, I could clean that out and use that as a post-chiller. Would make chilling go a little faster.

Thats pretty much what I did - took my old immersion chiller and used it as my post-chiller. It really works well. I have quick-disconnects on all my hoses and the chillers, so that I can chill without the post-chiller in the winter.

I totally agree: moving the wort (string or moving the chiller) is key, once the wort hit about 120° feel the water coming out of the chiller and then string the wert and you can feel the temp. of the water coming out of the chiller rise: more heat being exchanged from the wort to the chill water.
That being said I use a 5/8th 25’ copper chiller my ground water is max 50° in the summer and it takes me no more then ≈ 25 min. to chill 10 gallons. You might say water hog but if I use exactly what it takes to fill my washer machine I can hit a good pitching temp for Ale and get the whites done too.

Captain_Bigelow said:

Are you pumping ice water through the chiller, or using a pre-chiller in an ice bath?

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Not sure who you are asking.

but if it's me, on my brewhouse my HLT recirc pump is what serves as the chill water pump. The HLT recirculates the strike water onto itself when heating so as to prevent stratification and speeds heating. My water source input is on the same line. So during chilling, I just hook up the chiller to the recirc and pump fresh tap in, thru and out the chiller to the drain, and then I disconnect the output of the chiller and let it recirculate onto itself with big ice blocks in the HLT.

lumpher said:

23 minutes is pretty good. it depends on ground temp. i brewed a 12g ipa last weekend. took about 45 minutes to hit acceptable pitching temp of 85, even

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Lumpher, are you using a chiller hooked up to your hose? I am also here in Texas and was thinking about making a chiller, but i am concerned with the heat around here.