Are you happy with your plate chiller?

My big question is if I can blast 10 gallons through a plate chiller in X minutes then is there really going to be that much of a difference in DMS/hop aroma/etc vs. a slow IC?

I guess that comes down to whether the IC can cool 10 gallons of wort below 140F before the plate chiller can cool 10 gallons in 10 minutes at 1 gpm to pitching temp.

Lemme work up some equations and graphs...

EDIT: This post from another thread on DMS provides a lot of good discussion. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/dms-where-does-140f-come-132559/#post1501662 And for just brewing ales the DMS/cooling rate issue doesn't seem to be a big deal.

Okay, so I've set up a simple cooling model for a plate chiller and immersion chiller working on a 10 gallon batch.

The plate chiller converts 212F wort to 68F wort at a rate equal to its flow rate (gpm). I've set it for 1 gpm, which is not unreasonable.

The immersion chiller starts at 212F and decays to 68F. I've picked a cooling coefficient so it does the job in 45 minutes - a number I got from a random post but seems good for my LHBS coil. This is highly dependent on the cooling water temperature so any compelling arguments from people of Antarctica have to be taken with a grain of salt.

These two models give temperature as a function of time and we see in Figure 1.



Average temperature doesn't tell the whole story for the plate chiller model - we're averaging two extreme temperatures. Figure 2 retells this as the volume of water above 140F (the cited/uncited critical temperature for DMS).

The area under the plots in Figure 2 is in gallon-minutes. The smaller this area the less water we have above this critical temperature for less time. The area of the IC plot (65 gal-min) is 30% higher than the PC plot (50 gal-min). For the two to be equal and the IC to start to exceed the PC in this respect, the IC would need to chill the 10 gallons in 35 minutes with a cooling coefficient 27% higher than the one I defined.



This doesn't take into account any complex relationships like the exact temperature dependence on DMS production (180F is as good as 150F in this case). In which case, we would need to put the area of those plots to some exponential function where higher temperatures are worse and worse (though that might not be the case).


An interesting note I read from that thread I linked in my last post is that keeping a portion of your brew at high temperature (in the plate chiller case) can allow for DMS to continue to boil off like it does in the boil. DMS is a small molecule and so keeping it at high temperatures and not warm temperatures like in the later stages of the IC would help to keep driving it off.

In that scenario, I could see an IC pushing the temperature into a region where the temp is too high to stop DMS production but too low to allow DMS to evaporate out efficiently. The PC would allow the bulk of the wort to remain in that high enough to evaporate DMS and then immediately get cooled bit by bit to halt DMS production in the cooled wort.

Had a copper IC then switched it a 30 plate PC.... After using and cleaning a half dozen times I am now using a 50' SS IC again with my whirlpool while my PC stares at us in envy and disgust.
Just couldn't keep the thing clean enough.... Plus it paranoid me not being able to see what was inside there after cleaning.... I would hate to loose a batch to an uncertainty like that.

Had a 50' IC that I used for my 5 gallon batches. When I switched to 10g, I got a 40 plate chiller and use the IC as a pre-chiller for the Input water of the chiller. The water down here in Florida is pretty hot most of the year, so its def. needed. Couldn't be happier with it.

I am currently using a gravity-fed CFC to cool my wort and chilling takes 15-20 minutes for 5 gallons (unrestricted gravity-feed). I'm about to get myself a 30 plate long-style chiller and Chugger pump from Bobby at brewhardware.com as soon as I have the dough.

To my mind, the comparison of cleanup time between IC and PC is a moot point. I want my wort cooled, in the fermenter, and pitched with yeast as fast as I can get it done. Here's my thought process:

• Late kettle and flame-out hop additions will suffer because of a longer time spent on the hot side (both with an IC and gravity-fed CFC/PC).
• The risk of contamination increases both in the kettle (with an IC as the wort moves between 140˚F and pitching temp) and in the fermenter (with a gravity-fed CFC or PC) as cooled wort slowly transfers in.

I have never had a contaminated batch in the 5-6 years I've been brewing, so my sanitation process must be pretty good. But, if for some reason a sanitation mistake is made, I would be very angry to have to dump 5 gallons of spoiled beer. So, the lesser chance of contamination during cooling is enough reason for me. An extra five minutes of cleanup on the back end is a non-issue.

Cheers!

So what I'm seeing here is that there are two very distinct camps: Immersion Chillers and Plate Chillers.

This is like politics. Or trucks (Ford vs. Chevy).

And I'm even more confused. lol

I have a Therminator it cools 15 G @ 205F to 48F in 8 minutes with 40F coolant. March pump. Pressure drop created from the hop blocker, hop back and chiller. Chiller capacity @ 40F @ 8F superheat = GPM x TD x 500 = BTU/Hr

For my 5 gallon batches, the IC worked great (50' 3/8" copper). When I went to 20 gal, an IC isn't really feasible. Plate chillers do chill faster, but flushing, backflushing, recirculating cleaner back and forth, another flush, another clean, another flush takes me at least a half hour of hooking up hoses and running water, and I have a setup of electric three way valves to make those switches without switching hoses. Any time you save chilling you will spend at least that in cleaning. I love my chiller, but before someone dives in because they think it's the "best", make sure it makes sense in your brewery.

mpcluever said:

For my 5 gallon batches, the IC worked great (50' 3/8" copper). When I went to 20 gal, an IC isn't really feasible. Plate chillers do chill faster, but flushing, backflushing, recirculating cleaner back and forth, another flush, another clean, another flush takes me at least a half hour of hooking up hoses and running water, and I have a setup of electric three way valves to make those switches without switching hoses. Any time you save chilling you will spend at least that in cleaning. I love my chiller, but before someone dives in because they think it's the "best", make sure it makes sense in your brewery.

Click to expand...

I'm not worried about saving time our spending more time cleaning or whatever... I have a DIY CFC and while it works fine, it's big and heavy and ugly. I'm trying to scale down the footprint of my bench and make it look as nice as it works.

The warmest I've seen my tap water in Northern Maine is about 48F so I imagine no matter which method I use will be effective.

tally350z said:

Had a 50' IC that I used for my 5 gallon batches. When I switched to 10g, I got a 40 plate chiller and use the IC as a pre-chiller for the Input water of the chiller. The water down here in Florida is pretty hot most of the year, so its def. needed. Couldn't be happier with it.

Click to expand...

Hi, Gents What brand of chiller do you have and how do you clean it? I'm thinking of switching from IC to plate/pump and in SoCal where our water, like that in Florida runs warm. Also a little concerned about the cleaning/sanitizing aspect. Any issues at all?

I have a 30 plate Duda Diesel plate chiller. I live in SW Ohio where the ground water temps can be in the 70s in the summer. I recently brewed with the ground water temp at 72F. I used a pre-chiller, my old IC in cooler filled with ice water, and was able to get 66F cooled wort at ~1gpm. Takes about 5-10 min near the end of the boil to circulate 190F water to sanitize the chiller and ~10 minutes after filling the fermenters to flush and backflush with 190F water to sanitize. No problems so far.

thanks, Mark. I guess I may need to take the plunge. I guess I'll have to evaluate the higher cost of water here in the SW US, and the slower time to chill versus the cost of the plate chiller. As it is, we need to make another IC because we've gone from 5 gal to 10 brews and the 25', 3/8 copper took our first 10 gal batch over 45 gallons of water and about 25 minutes to cool. Lots of time. Appreciate the info and opinion.

No problem. According to Duda Diesel's web site, a 30 plate chiller will chill 10 gallons with less than 30 gallons of water. Of course, it depends on the temp of the chill water. That's why I would use a pre-chiller on the chill water side. Good luck.

I also have a Duda Diesel 30 plate chiller. It was in the high 80's yesterday and it was able to get 6 gallons down to 80 degrees in about 10 minutes. I recirculate PBW through it for 20 minutes afterward followed by boiling water for ten minutes. I don't bother with sanitizer since the boiling water will take care of that for me. Before I had one of the little solar pumps I would just back flush it with a hose then bake it in the oven at 350 for 45 minutes to clean and sanitize it.

Thanks, guys, for the feedback. I'm talking with my brew buddy tonight while we bottle our IPA 10 gallon batch we made last weekend. I think the 30 plate will be sufficient for our needs, too. I like mrk's plan of pre-chilling with an ice bath prior to circulating. We have two pumps from Chugga that we haven't set up yet. Working on our "sculpture" design first, although I think we can play with it before. Appreciate your advice.

I'm able to take off my kitchen faucet nozzle and lean the plate chiller on the divider of the double sink so that the inlet or outlet of the plate chiller can fit up into the sink.

Then I blast hot water through it - the water gets up to a six inch geyser coming out the other side. This does pretty well for taking out a bunch of leftover debris. If you didn't have a pump then this could work as a replacement. I've also used a carboy jet as well but holding on to the thing with the hot water coming through is a bit painful (need to buy gloves).

I'm also doing AG - which seems to cut down on a lot of trub - and the mash tun and kettle both have bazooka screens. Hops are bagged and I've used pellet or plug hops. Nothing really seems to accumulate.

I recirculate the plate chiller back into the kettle prior to filling the carboy (Better Bottle).