Chilling in hot weather

[user 163849]

I am getting setup to brew my first extract kit.

I have a Bayou Classic SQ14 which I modified with wind and heat shields as well as longer legs. For a kettle I am planning to use a 40 quart stock pot in which I have already installed a weldless ball valve, planning to start out with full boils. And I have mangled 25 feet of copper tubing into something kind of shaped like an immersion cooler. I guess it is obvious that I have spent a bit of time in the DIY section of this forum.

I have the basic brewery kit from Williams Brewing for my fermenter etc. And I have the extract ingredients kit for a brown ale from Williams also. So it would seem that I am all set up to make a batch of beer.

This morning I fired up the burner to burn the paint off and test the set up. I managed to bring 6 gallons of water to a quite vigorous boil in 31 minutes, I can live with that.

I live in the Texas hill country where the temperatures are hovering around 100 degrees in the afternoon this time of the year so when I checked this morning my tap water was at 81 degrees straight from the tap. Well, it seems that 81 degree water running through my homemade immersion chiller was able to drop the temperature of the 6 gallons of water down from boiling to 90 degrees in 39 minutes but only 4 more degrees (86) in the next 20 minutes which is where I called off the test. Tap water was up to 82 degrees, kettle water at 86, discharge water at 84.

I would really like to get the chilled temp down a bit from there when I actually brew a batch, before pitching yeast. I do have a "real" immersion chiller ordered, 50 feet of 3/8" copper. I am aware that a better chiller will not completely remedy this situation if I simply substitute if for the one I used today. It might speed up the cooling a bit but my tap water is too warm to get the job done.

My current plan is to use the 50 foot chiller in the kettle and use the 25 foot chiller in an ice water bath to bring down the temp of the tap water. Hopefully this will bring the wort temp down to a level more suitable for pitching the yeast.

Question is; Should this work, or is it a lame brain idea?

 

[BrokenKnucklesBrewery]

I live in West Houston and know all to well the temps coming out of our house faucets. I built this 50' 3/8" copper chiller and just used it on my last batch. I use straight tap water to get down to about 90* and then hook up my pre-chiller in an ice bath. It took me about 8 minutes to hit 90* and then another 10 minutes with the pre-chiller to hit 67*

 

[danielbt]

My current plan is to use the 50 foot chiller in the kettle and use the 25 foot chiller in an ice water bath to bring down the temp of the tap water. Hopefully this will bring the wort temp down to a level more suitable for pitching the yeast.

Question is; Should this work, or is it a lame brain idea?

No need to do this. Get a submersible pump and recirculate ice water through your 50' chiller.

This one works perfectly: http://www.harborfreight.com/16-horsepower-submersible-utility-pump-68422.html

I use Hill Country tap water to get down below 100F and then switch over to ice water to hit 63F-ish. Stirring gently also greatly decreases the time it takes to chill.

 

[user 163849]

Thanks for the quick replies.

When the immersion chiller shows up I will run another test or two, and see what works best with what I have.

I know I still have a couple of old pumps laying around from when I lived in a more flood prone area, hopefully one of them will work for recirculating ice water. They both might be too big for the job though.

And of course I already have the 25 footer which I can use as a pre chiller. I might try both methods and see which works best for me.

This is what I am working with;

 

[Beer-lord]

No need to do this. Get a submersible pump and recirculate ice water through your 50' chiller.

This one works perfectly: http://www.harborfreight.com/16-horsepower-submersible-utility-pump-68422.html

I use Hill Country tap water to get down below 100F and then switch over to ice water to hit 63F-ish. Stirring gently also greatly decreases the time it takes to chill.

+infinity
I started doing this a few brews ago and with my tap at 81-82, I get my beer down to 115 or so with tap water then switch over to the pump. 8-10 minutes later, I'm in the mid 60's. Works great!

 

[BigFloyd]

+infinity
I started doing this a few brews ago and with my tap at 81-82, I get my beer down to 115 or so with tap water then switch over to the pump. 8-10 minutes later, I'm in the mid 60's. Works great!

I do the same. Hit it with hose water (not recirculated) to get it as cool as I can, then switch to a $39 Northern Tool pump sitting in a cooler with recirculating ice water through my plate chiller.

Last brew was a lager which I was able to get it from 87*F to 44*F with 30# of ice.

 

[Nefariouss]

North Houston here. Brewed today and could only get wort down to 87. Stuck it in my fermentation chamber for 4 hrs to bring temp down to 70 to pitch yeast. Think next time I'm going to dump a 10lb bag of ice in to bring it down once IC has run its course. Just need to compensate for the water addition at the end of the boil.

 

[ballsy]

Go to dollar store, pick up two 4 packs of cheap tupperware (thin plastic, maybe 1qt each?). Either dip em in star san then fill w/ tap water or go one step further and either boil water first or use distilled. Put in freezer day before brewing, and on brew day you have 6 blocks of clean ice to pop out (thin plastic works here) into fermenter and pour hot wort onto. I get my wort down to low-mid 60's in less then 5 min's, (I also use cool water to get rest of way to 5 gal mark pending how short I am after ice blocks are in).

 

[sok454]

Like that last idea w the ice etc.

 

[user 163849]

Okay I found my Wayne submersible pump. It is 1/4 horsepower 1800 gph at 0 ft (1020 at 10 feet lift). I'm sure that's a bit of overkill (but it is paid for), is there any reason that it will not work for recirculating ice water through an immersion chiller?

I also have a small impeller type pump, 1/10 hp and somewhere around 300 gph at 10 ft lift. But I do remember this particular pump being finicky to use in the past.

I'm hoping to use the submersible pump if it will serve the purpose. I know it just emptied a 5 gallon bucket in much less than a minute so I might need to restrict the flow a bit for the chiller. A ball valve on the discharge side should take care of that though.

 

[BigFloyd]

That Wayne submersible should work just fine. If you're running an IC that is 3/8" and uses vinyl tubing, you may have to knock down the flow a bit.

 

[user 163849]

Did a bit of testing/timing using the 1/4 horsepower submersible pump in a 5 gallon bucket. I have about a 1 foot riser of 1/2 galvanized pipe on the pump with an elbow and a full flow ball valve at the top. It will consistantly empty the 5 gallon bucket through the valve in 14.8 seconds, so without the chiller in line I measure approx. 1200 gph (lower than specs for 1 ft head).

There was little or no difference in flow rate between the 25 foot and the 50 foot immersion chillers (both 3/8 tubing). But the measured flow through either of them is only about 1 gallon per minute. This was with the chiller sitting on my burner in a bucket and the pump on the ground so the head will be the same in actual use. I did try it with the chiller connected directly to the output of the pump by removing the riser completely, there was no measurable difference. I never realized that submersible pumps were so intolerant of restrictions, when I used this pump before it was with 125 feet of 2 inch diameter discharge hose and very little rise, it could empty a large mud hole rather quickly in that configuration.

Will 1 gpm actually be enough flow for the ice water through the 50 foot coil? Or should I be looking for a different pump?

 

[BigFloyd]

1 gpm is awfully slow. Almost a trickle.

I haven't measured it, but I'd guesstimate that my 1/8hp pushes the water at least 5 times that through the tiny passages of my plate chiller (and did the same through my old 22ft 1/2" copper IC).

 

[user 163849]

I just tried out the little WaterAce 1/10 hp pump. It does seem to handle the back pressure slightly better despite it's small size. This one is small, noisy and hard to prime, but it did fill my one gallon jug, through the chiller, in 47 seconds, that's 13 seconds (1.3 gpm) quicker than the larger pump. Not really much difference in the flow rate through the chiller with these two pumps.

Just for grins I tested the flow from my garden hose. Straight to the jug was 6 gpm, through the chiller was 4 gpm. So, if the pumps prove not to move enough water to do the job I can always try using the smaller of the two chillers as a pre chiller and letting the city water pressure do the work. I have not tested flow through both chillers yet, might not be much better than the pumps.

 

[AkTom]

Being an absolute NOOB, not even 1 batch under my belt (pun intended), even a small pump putting out 3 or 4 gallons a minute should be good. Remember you are recirculating the ice water in the bucket thru the chiller, back into the bucket, so massive quantities shouldn't be need. If you are concerned about cooling , the the 50' chiller will (duh) have lots more chilling power. At least that's my theory for now.

 

[masskrug]

I had an epiphany today: Why not run my garden hose (headed to my wort chiller) through my pool? The water is about 80'. I suppose you could get a plastic child's pool, fill it with ice and get a better result.