chilling 40 gallons with therminator and march pump

During August 2009 with my 75-80 tap water I'm trying to chill 40 gallons of boiling wort by march pumping through a therminator. To assist, I'm using a 25' IC in ice batch to chill the chilling water to whatever temperature (haven't measured it). My water flow is pretty good, I don't know, maybe 5 gpm (again, haven't measured but it seems 'normal'). To get my wort to 70 I can baaaaaaaaarely open the march pump ball valve, otherwise the temp-to-fermenter is too high (I'd like to see it in the 60s but . . . ). Assuming my chilling water is around 50, is this normal? I guess I was assuming I could crank the wort through there and still get in the 60s? It's taking me an hour to chill 40 gallons and I just don't dig on that for many reasons. I see other posts of folks chilling 10 gallons in 10 minutes so that would put me at maybe 40 minutes. Anything i could be doing wrong? Should I check my gpm - could it be too low, too high?? Is there any time to be gained by recircing down to 140s with straight tap water and then chilling with ice?

Thanks HBTers.

Chris

Not sure if you would save much time recircing back into the BK until 140 was reached. The time it takes to recirc would counter act the time saved from controling the flow. The decision I think lies with what is more important, the temp into the fermenter or the time to get it chilled. I think you could probably do about 50-55 minutes by recircing back into the BK and then going to the fermenter.

Ed

Thanks for the reply, ed. I got the pump from you! Ten min isn't enough savings unless i happen to get some dms flavor. I'm willing to bite the bullet if 60 min chill for 40 gallons is what it is, but if I am doing something wrong I want to know! I guess the real alternative is a larger plate/frame chiller! I'm waiting to upgrade when i can just go to 10 bbls.

Regardless of time, I would recirc back into the BK as Ed is saying simply to bring the entire body of wort down as quick as possible. Other than that, it's just a **** ton of ice and cold water.

If your cooling time is already an hour, and you are not getting to the pitch temps you want, then recirc is the way to go. It will not speed up your cooling time, but if you recirc for 20 minutes I would think you would be able to then go full flow to the fermenter and hit your pitching temp.

Ed

Brewmasters Warehouse said:

If your cooling time is already an hour, and you are not getting to the pitch temps you want, then recirc is the way to go. It will not speed up your cooling time, but if you recirc for 20 minutes I would think you would be able to then go full flow to the fermenter and hit your pitching temp.

Ed

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This is what I do. With the water temps as they are right now you have to recirc it back and drop the whole thing down some first. Then flow thru the chiller and ice bath.

Here's what you can do to make your chilling system a 1-pass from BK->fermenter at full pump speeds.

Instead of using your IC as a way to pre-chill the cooling water, use it in-line as a post chiller in a bucket of ice water after the therminator. Run ground water through the therminator (this should get the wort to ~ ground water temps), and agitate the IC in the ice bucket until your flow is < 70' (I've got a thrumometer that helps with this, but you could also stick a thermo probe at the output as it enters the fermenter). For 40 gals, you'll probably go through a good bit of ice, but it should only take < 20 mins assuming your march pump can sustain 2 gals/min.

FYI - I do this with my 10 gal system and it works great.

hmmm. I like parts of those ideas. don't want to run wort through my ic really but could try that. Anyone ever put the therminator in an icebath? Somewhere in here is my solution. Thanks for the suggestions and help. This forum is killer. Don't know what I'd do without it.

mandoman said:

hmmm. I like parts of those ideas. don't want to run wort through my ic really but could try that. Anyone ever put the therminator in an icebath? Somewhere in here is my solution. Thanks for the suggestions and help. This forum is killer. Don't know what I'd do without it.

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I don't know about the therminator but my generic plate chiller from ebay gets pretty hot when its cooling, so I bet dumping the whole thing in ice water might help a little bit

The true answer to this is to pump icewater into the therminator. There's no way you're getting your 85F tap water down to 55F in the prechiller unless you run it slow and agitate the coil in the icewater. Pumping the icewater directly avoids this temp gradient and puts 32F water into the chiller and that will allow you to run the wort at full bore.

Here's what works for me - chills 25+ gallons in one pass as fast as the pump will push it directly into the fermenter.

See pics below.

Copper tubing, approximately 50' (?), coiled like an immersion chiller, which is placed in the (empty) HLT during the boil. For the last 10 mins or so of the boil, I recirculate the boiling wort through the chiller to sanitize it. Then I fill the HLT with ice at flameout and continue to circulate for a bit mainly to melt some of the ice. During this time, I will add tap water from the hose to nearly fill the HLT. Then I will turn on the secondary pump, just recirculating the ice cold water through the pump and back to the HLT to help mover the warmer water away from the chiller. Then I hook the wort pump up to the fermenter and pump through the chiller directly into the fermenter. The entire time it is pumping I move/agitate the entire copper chiller up and down (this is necessary) in the ice bath. Also, the ice will melt and more will have to be added througout the chilling process. Wort in 210* +/-. Wort out 60-62*. Takes 20-25 mins to get through the entire batch.

I don't have a pic on my puter at the moment of actually chilling/pumping into the fermenter, but will update this post when I find my camera.

This method isn't for everyone, as it takes maybe 200 lbs of ice to do the job. But, for those with access to a commercial ice machine, it works pretty slick.

Good luck, Mandoman. Nice website, BTW! Wish I were close enough to get some growler fills!

Thanks bobby and sleepy.

sleepy, i thought about the ice machine option but we're on the frugal. Using the HLT is intriguing in a BRUTUS kind of way and gives me more to think about. Thanks for the props. Our website, like our brewery, is ghetto style but it's a start!

bobby_M, I have another pump not in use during the chill (a self priming pump I use for transferring fermented beer to kegs) and think I will try that although I wonder if that would use more or less ice in the long run. BTW, I was agitating the crud out of my ic in the cooler. You can really feel the difference on the IC out, w/out shaking it felt about the same (qualitatively) and with shaking I know it was in the mid 60s or lower. I could also watch the temp change on the therminator - it was amazing how fast it would rise if I stopped shaking or turned the march pump valve past cracked.

Tomorrow I will try either pumping ice water or using my ic as a post-chiller.

Brewing is so amazing - there are sooo many ways to skin this cat!

I don't understand why you don't want to pump wort though the IC. You pump wort inside the plate chiller, and CFCs pump wort through a copper coil - no different.

Pumping ice water through the plate chiller will work, but it will use more ice than what I suggested. Let me explain. You already have 2 chillers, put them to work. If you run ground water through the plate chiller, the output will be ~ whatever your ground water is. Then, if that is run through another HEX (your IC) in ice, the wort temp is already much lower than the 200'+ that's coming out of the BK, so the 2nd HEX won't be exchanging as much heat, thus melting less ice.

Do what you want, but I'm telling you, multiple chillers - one w/ ground water and a 2nd w/ ice - does EXACTLY what you want. Quick chilling, single pass to fermenter, wide open pump, and minimal ice.

BTW - I just hook up both in a recirculation loop back to the BK for the last 10 mins to sanitize. At flameout, I turn on the chilling water, stick the IC in the ice bath, and direct the output to the fermenter. Easy breezy.

Lil sparky. OK, I see what you're saying now. maybe it was the order in which I read your first post but I was missing the point. Therminator takes wort down a big notch more quickly than recirc and then immediately sends 'warm' wort to copper coil (old IC) in ice bath to take it from x to 60s (hopefully). All this sounds like it could happen at full march pump speed or much higher velocity than what I was getting before. I know I'm getting close to 5 gpm at full blast so theoretically that could be a pretty quick chill. Thanks for clarifying that. My brain hasn't been hitting on all cylinders this week. Sometimes my dumba$$ needs a kick in the pants. LAst Friday I drove to a gig at Hungry Mother State Park and somehow ended up going to Grayson Highlands State Park, getting lost and out of cell range, and making it to the gig eventually with about 2 mins to spare. WTF?

I can see how that would be the most 'ice conservative' too. Also, your suggestion utilizes all of the things basically as I already have them, just in a different order, requiring the least amount of change. Thanks, again. I'll post my results from tomorrow.

WORD!

Good luck. Let us know how it goes.

Trying to cool that much near boiling wort quickly is just a matter of physics. You need a really big heat sink. You need a much bigger plate chiller and a lot of cold water.

FWIW, I have a plate chiller (20 plates about 3"x9", i think) and get a similar rate of cooling, takes me a little less than ten minutes to chill five gallons to 65° F.

well, squirrel is right. Chill still took about 45 minutes but temp to conical was 70 instead of waaay higher. Despite not so much a gain in time I got a huge gain in temperature. Now my guess is the 3/8 OD 1/4 ID IC was the limiting factor slowing things down a bit. I think I'm going to try 1/2" copper and make a new IC. I'll be decrease in OD at the IC slowed my velocity down as I had the march pump WIDE OPEN!!! Stoked. Thanks HBTers!!!

So it was just a matter of pump flow, not chilling capacity then? That's cool, pardon the pun. If you change the IC to 1/2", you'll see some increase in flow rate, but I'm not sure how much. Just remember, if the flow rate is higher, you'll really have to agitate your IC regularly to keep the final temp down.

Even now though, 45 mins for 40 gals sounds pretty good. Some people take 20-30 mins to chill 5 gals.

You should be getting awesome cold break going from BK to fermenter in a single pass, too.

Chilled ice water at 32F recirculating will be far more effective than slightly cooled tap water at 50 or 60F. If you wanted to juice it a bit more, throw some salt into the ice bath to drop the temp another 10 to 15 degrees.

Heat transfer is driven by the difference in temperature of the 2 materials (among other variables). So dropping the temp of the water will have a big impact on heat transfer given all else stays the same, like flow rate for example.

I've kinda had the same problem as you mandoman. Except I use a shirron, and 5 gallons. I can only crack the ball valve to get the temps I need. I also have the water running pretty slow to try and conserve water. I found that the more water I use the more I can open the valve off of the shirron. Still, not the temps and spped others get. Wonder if there could be a blockage in some of the plate paths?

Ender, right now your ground water is probably just too warm. Others have had good results pumping ice water through the plate chiller using a good sized aquarium pump. That would definately speed up your chilling.