Anyone built a hybrid chiller?

Palmer has this in his book and it seems like an interesting option...



They don't seem to be the popular choice, but the design seems easy enough to build and I'd think the performance would be pretty good. Any comments or opinions??

What does he suggest for the canister that the coil is in? And how much coil does he suggest?

It seems like a really good concept just from looking at it... the lazy man's counterflow chiller I like it and would be willing to try it if I knew the materials involved.

texasgeorge said:

What does he suggest for the canister that the coil is in? And how much coil does he suggest?

It seems like a really good concept just from looking at it... the lazy man's counterflow chiller I like it and would be willing to try it if I knew the materials involved.

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troegs uses one like that. It is about 15' long. they said it works much better than their old plate chiller did.

With the large open area in the center the lack of turbulent flow would greatly reduce the performance. The water around the coils would warmup and decrease the ability of heat to flow from the wort to the cooling water without a means to push the warmer water away from the coils. The counterflow design chillers gain a lot of efficiency from the turbulence in the water flow around the tubing and the larger continous temperature difference across the full length of the liquid flow.

The outer shell is PVC.

Palmer suggests that adding a smaller PVC pipe in the center would reduce the dead space and eliminate one of the problems kladue mentioned.

I was thinking that keeping one of the ends detachable would allow you to fill the entire thing with ice for when your tap water isn't cold. I'm just not sure how you'd go about securing it and keeping it water tight.

Keeping a steady slow flow of water through the ice would chill it, but the movement should keep you from getting that hot layer of water that forms around the pipes

Technically you could do this in a 6.5g bottling bucket. Put the coil inside and the output would have to exit the bottom through a water tight bulkhead. You could fill with icewater through the open top and let it trickle out the spigot. You would do best if you contantly stir the water and replenish the ice as it melts.

This method would be really close to a CFC (in that wort flows though it) but negate the use of a prechiller or icewater pump. Of course, having water pouring out of the spigot makes it an outdoor operation.

Yeah, I've got one of those. My PVC is about 3 feet long so that the water moves slowly by the coils. It works. It leaks though. I am going to rebuild it as a regular counter flow chiller, with hose over the copper tubing.

The bucket is actually an interesting idea. You'd have to keep the flow pretty show to avoid blowing the top, but it's workable. I actually have an immersion chiller that I could probably convert pretty easily. I might have to give it a try.

rdwj said:

The outer shell is PVC.

Palmer suggests that adding a smaller PVC pipe in the center would reduce the dead space and eliminate one of the problems kladue mentioned.

I was thinking that keeping one of the ends detachable would allow you to fill the entire thing with ice for when your tap water isn't cold. I'm just not sure how you'd go about securing it and keeping it water tight.

Keeping a steady slow flow of water through the ice would chill it, but the movement should keep you from getting that hot layer of water that forms around the pipes

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After I posted I thought this same thing. I guess we're talking the larger-diameter PVC Pipes... couldn't you just get PVC caps that screwed on or were otherwise removable so you could replace ice, etc but still maintained a closed environment.

The inner-diameter pipe is a good idea too!!

I wonder if this setup could be used to make some sort of cheap hybrid glycol chiller..... compact freezer, cheap fluid pump, hmmmm......

brewman ! said:

Yeah, I've got one of those. My PVC is about 3 feet long so that the water moves slowly by the coils. It works. It leaks though. I am going to rebuild it as a regular counter flow chiller, with hose over the copper tubing.

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Same here after 2 weekends trying to get the thing to stop leaking I decided to make an emersion chiller so I could brew something.

Haven't gotten around to fooling with it any more. I used a 6" pipe then used reducers to take both ends down to male garden hose connectors. I didn't plan on cementing the end reducers together unless I just had to.

At first I used compression fitting that didn't work worth a crap. Then used flare fitting it's better but it still leaks part of my problem is I'm using 2 connectors to piece 3 sections of pipe together. But it also leaked at the connectors on both ends.

Probably could have bought the most expensive name brand unit for less $ if I figure my time at $5 hr.

I like the idea of putting a smaller pipe inside to take up some of the dead space.

I just made one of these with 3" ABS pipe and 1/4" ID copper pipe. I used it for the first time last Sunday.

I'm going back to the immersion chiller. The problem is that the wort moves too quickly through the copper to cool affectively. I had to slow it to a slight trickle to get the wort cooled to 85F and it took about 30 minutes.

My immersion chiller only takes 15 minutes and cools to 70F.

It only cost me about $26 for parts to make it and it was a good learning experience. I may try to improve the efficiency, but am not leaning toward wasting the time.

Rd, why are you worrying about your chiller? It's frikkin' freezing out there.

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Cheesefood said:

Rd, why are you worrying about your chiller? It's frikkin' freezing out there.

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Well, mainly I'm concerned that my immersion chiller won't work well with my keggle and I was trying to come up with a way to convert it so that I don't need to buy a different one.

And I'm slow with projects, so I've got to start thinking about it now. The grain mill is a simple drunken night when SWMBO goes to bed early and my wallet and laptop are within an arms length away - lol

Either that or a nice Hold-em pot!!

Geologist has one. Pics are in his gallery.

I also wonder if one could insert something to spiral the flow of water around the coil, sort of like an auger blade. That might really improve the cooling rate.

rdwj said:

Well, mainly I'm concerned that my immersion chiller won't work well with my keggle and I was trying to come up with a way to convert it so that I don't need to buy a different one.

And I'm slow with projects, so I've got to start thinking about it now. The grain mill is a simple drunken night when SWMBO goes to bed early and my wallet and laptop are within an arms length away - lol

Either that or a nice Hold-em pot!!

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You need one of those stir rod dealies.

tron said:

I wonder if this setup could be used to make some sort of cheap hybrid glycol chiller..... compact freezer, cheap fluid pump, hmmmm......

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This got me thinking about using a refridgerant instead of water to cool.

At work I usually deal with two part sealants. Like epoxys where you need to mix them to get them to set up. When I was in Germany I saw this device where they drop an inline helical sealant mixer in a small vat of RV refridgerant to freeze the chemical reaction. The vat was like -30'F but it was still liquid. The purpose being is to shut down for the day and go home with bleeding out the sealant from the mixer.

If you pump wort through something like this, in a counter flow fashion is would be very efficient at chilling.

knipknup said:

I just made one of these with 3" ABS pipe and 1/4" ID copper pipe. I used it for the first time last Sunday.

.

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How many feet of 1/4" pipe did you use?

I used 30' of 3/8" and don't want to waste any more time either if the thing isn't going to work any better than my immersion chiller or not work as well.

For those folks that want to dabble in glycol cooling, look for the remote water fountain chillers or even the refrigerated water fountain cooling units. Typical cooling capacity is relativly small but works quite well if you use an insulated tank for enough storage to cool 6-10 gallon batch. Watch places like Ebay or building demolition and recyling operations for the remote water coolers, and a mag drive pump to eliminate the seal leakage problems. Building glycol cooling systems will test your ability to make good piping joints as the glycol in the solution is as bad as #2 fuel oil for seeping through threaded joints.

I saw this design in Palmers book too and thought to myself hmmmm.....what a good idea for a HERMS unit. I plan on on making a coper in copper CFWC (i.e. chillzilla) and sticking it in a setup like this, that way I can heat the mash and cool the wort in one unit........work in progress......

rdwj said:

Well, mainly I'm concerned that my immersion chiller won't work well with my keggle and I was trying to come up with a way to convert it so that I don't need to buy a different one.

!!

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I wouldn't think you'd have any problem using your immersion chiller with your keggle. Anyway if you've got something that works I'd be hesitant to mess with it as you might end up with a nonfunctioning chiller.

2 of my mottos are:

Buy cheap and Buy Twice & If it ain't broke don't Fix it.

abracadabra said:

How many feet of 1/4" pipe did you use?

I used 30' of 3/8" and don't want to waste any more time either if the thing isn't going to work any better than my immersion chiller or not work as well.

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I only used 10 feet of copper, but that fit pretty tight in the ABS tube. I coiled it by wrapping it around a shovel handle, so it was crude at best. It could probably be done better, but I was doing a quick experiment. There is still room for improvement, but it did seem to use more water than the immersion chiller.

abracadabra said:

I wouldn't think you'd have any problem using your immersion chiller with your keggle.

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Well, the junction between the hose and copper is going to sit well within the keggle.