pseudo counterflow?

http://www.strandbrewers.org/techinfo/chillers.htm

If you look at their counterflow "style 2" idea, could this be easily replicated using an immersion chiller inside a drink cooler of ice-water? I suppose to get the wort all out without any loss you'd want to pump into an inlet up high and let it come out of an outlet down low fitted through a bulkhead fitting. A piece of tubing on the outside would let you attach a throughmometer and direct flow back to the boil kettle until ready to go straight into the fermenter, and if the fermenter is lower than the cooler outlet, it should have less loss.

Would this be less or more efficient than a standard counterflow? All the water is contained, so you loss none and can use it later for watering plants or washing up, but you do need ice...

Some thoughts? By mid-late summer I'd like to settle on the most effective plan for a chiller I can set up on it's own stand and roll over on casters when needed, then wash and roll back to it's storage spot.

Their type 2 idea will still have a counter flow, but it is bathing the entire coil at once instead of actually "counter-flowing" the flow of wort. It would work, but is ultimately less efficient than type 1 CFC.

Your idea is more of what is considered a "hybrid chiller" and is used by a few people. Pros include limiting the amount of water waste you have and still cooling your wort quickly like a CFC, but cons include using ALOT of ice to cool, and you have to find a way to get the cold water to constantly move over your coils otherwise you will not cool efficiently at all.

I suppose it would work, but you still flow water through the 2nd kind of counterflow chiller so it's not just using 5 gal of water to cool your batch.

deathweed said:

Their type 2 idea will still have a counter flow, but it is bathing the entire coil at once instead of actually "counter-flowing" the flow of wort. It would work, but is ultimately less efficient than type 1 CFC.

Your idea is more of what is considered a "hybrid chiller" and is used by a few people. Pros include limiting the amount of water waste you have and still cooling your wort quickly like a CFC, but cons include using ALOT of ice to cool, and you have to find a way to get the cold water to constantly move over your coils otherwise you will not cool efficiently at all.

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I'm not sure why it would be much less efficient, or why you have to use ice at all.

I am going to build a 'Hybrid' chiller like this. I have already cut my immersion chiller So, there's no going back now.

It can be almost as efficient as a normal CFC or even more efficient if you put something solid in the middle of the coil...which I plan on doing. You can have a 1/2" of water flowing on either side of the copper coils which could potentially cool the wort better than a cfc with a fraction of an inch of water around the tubing...right?

::EDIT:: I kinda mis-read the original post. He referenced "Style 2" on the link provided, but what he said isn't anything like style 2 with no flowing water. Mine will have flowing water...no ice.

Maybe I'll just set up a regular CFC, but pump water from a drink cooler of ice water. I have the pump...

I suppose I could then just use running tap water if needed (ours is pretty cold coming from a deep well).

bigben said:

I'm not sure why it would be much less efficient, or why you have to use ice at all.

I am going to build a 'Hybrid' chiller like this. I have already cut my immersion chiller So, there's no going back now.

It can be almost as efficient as a normal CFC or even more efficient if you put something solid in the middle of the coil...which I plan on doing. You can have a 1/2" of water flowing on either side of the copper coils which could potentially cool the wort better than a CFC with a fraction of an inch of water around the tubing...right?

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I am not saying it wont work, in fact, it is done rather often, but it is slightly less efficient in heat transfer (but more efficient in water savings)

Think of it this way, if you put the whole coil in some 70deg water, the hot water is going to heat that water up all at once as the coil runs through it. You would have to have a HIGH flow of coolant around it, or use ice to try and cool the wort down to that 70deg point.

With the traditional CFC, the coldest water at 70deg is entering at the coolest point of the chiller, and as it flows the opposite direction of the wort, it is absorbing the heat from the warmer and warmer wort. Also, because your coolant is in a tube around your wort, its turbulent flow better increases the heat transfer rate from the wort to the water.

Both ideas have their merits and downfalls, so do what you wish. I am just throwing out some of the concepts behind each of them

nathan said:

Maybe I'll just set up a regular CFC, but pump water from a drink cooler of ice water. I have the pump...

I suppose I could then just use running tap water if needed (ours is pretty cold coming from a deep well).

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people do this as well. There is another option that I personally do because my tap water here is usually very warm (80deg plus). After my CFC I have an additional 10' of copper or so coiled in a bucket with ice water. So I use my CFC to cool to tap water temperatures, then the "hybrid post chiller" to cool the last 10-15deg that I need before I pitch. Using this I use verry little ice (about a 1gal bucket full of cubes per batch) and dont need a pump, I just use gravity to do all the work.

Interesting post chiller idea when you have high groundwater temps.

conpewter said:

Interesting post chiller idea when you have high groundwater temps.

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Thanks, but I can't take credit for it, I stole it from someone else

I probably could have gotten away with only using 5' or so for it, but I bought the 10' coil from lowes and said, "what the hay, I will use all of it!

As for how well it works, last summer my tap water was ~85deg, and the CFC could only get it down to that level. With the post chiller I was getting to ~65 with the 1gal bucket of icewater. I would have to keep that bucket shaking so the colwater flowed around the postchiller, but other than that, it worked great. I could chill a 10gal batch from boiling to 65 in about 15 minutes.

can you diagram that out or photo it with some notes?

The coiled hose on the left is the CFC and the copper coil in the right is the post chiller




You can see the keggle with the hose going to the CFC, the CFC going to that bucket holding the postchiller and the icewater, and from there going to my fermenter.

so it's "double chilled"

nathan said:

so it's "double chilled"

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haha, pretty much. Like I said above, if you have cool tapwater you probably will not need that second chiller. But us folk down here in the south that only see ice in glasses of tea and margaritas have to take it that step further to try and reach pitching temperatures.

Here, I found a thread of a hybrid chiller like you were orriginaly talking about, and apparently he can get it to work pretty well.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=57091

Just in case you were wondering....

interesting! with gravity it seems to work well