CFWC Question

I'm looking to upgrade to a CFWC and the one I am looking at is 50ft. long.

I know you can run the wort thru a 25ft one using gravity, but will this same method work on the 50ft one with the longer race?

Your thoughts appreciated.....

I don't have experience with CFCs (I use a whirlpool IC), but would think that you could still do it via gravity, except that it will be slow (as with any gravity-fed CFC). The risk with this is that the time it takes to chill all of the brew will be fairly long, causing a good portion of the wort to sit around hot for an extended period. You then risk increased DMS (because the DMS pre-cursors had a chance to convert in the hot wort), decreased hop aroma (which can be overcome by dry hopping) and increased cold break into the fermenter. I think the latter will also increase your chances of chill haze in your final product. As you likely know, the goal of a chiller is to get the wort under 140F as quickly as possible. I target getting under 100F in 6 mins or less. So, you might consider getting a pump.

Folks who have CFCs should chime in since my thoughts on this are purely academic.

Read BobbyM's tutorial on the CFC and according to him, "the 25ft. is the sweet spot on length", so that is what I pulled the trigger on this afternoon.

I am going to be using my old IC as a pre-chill ring in order to bring the cooling water down as far as possible before it starts to cool the wort.

I am brewing on this Thursday, so I won't have a chance to try this out until my next batch.