Chilling question

[Emc]

I was hoping for some insight as to what im doing wrong. Have a brutus inspired keggle set up. Blickmann Therminator mounted under the boil kettel burner probably 16 inches of clearance, maybe a little more. Being in a water sensitive area I use a pump recycle cooling water through a ice chest/ igloo type cooler. I always see posts of people getting the wort chilled in 10 minutes or less. One pass through the chiller into the carboy or conical. This is not the case for me. Have tried slowing down the drain flow from the boil pot, 6 gallon batches or 11 gallon batches result seems to be the same. Straight hose water with the outflow going to the yard seems to get me the same results. I usually need 30-40 minutes, couple refills of cold water into the cooler to get the wort down to the mid 60's for pitching temp. Thoughts, advice, suggestions?

 

[crowconor]

You could try putting a chiller in between the return line and the cooler. I am assuming that its taking so long because your water in the cooler is becoming to warm to do a whole lot of cooling. You could try adding some ice to the cooler also.

 

[Emc]

Ice in the cooler already. Added a second bucket with coiled up tubing in it with ice to try and act as a secondary chiller for the return water. Other thoughts?

 

[kombat]

Well, all I can offer is to describe how I do it. I use a Dudadiesel plate chiller and recirculate the wort back into the boil kettle (instead of straight into a fermenter in one pass) until the temperature on the boil kettle reads 65° F. That takes about 10-15 minutes with my setup.

Initially, I run straight tap water through the chiller until the wort temperature has dropped to 100° F. I collect the (piping hot) waste water in 2 buckets (one containing a scoop of Oxyclean) to be used later in cleaning my equipment.

Once the wort is down to 100°, I turn off the faucet and switch to circulating water from a camping cooler with a pump. I prep my cooler of chill water as follows: The night before brewing, I put a bucket of cold water in my fridge. I also freeze several juice and Gatorade bottles of water. Finally, I collect a grocery bag's worth of ice cubes from my fridge's ice maker. Then during the boil, I add the frozen water bottles, ice cubes, and chilled water to the camping cooler.

Some differences I can see between our processes is that I recirculate into the kettle instead of straight into a fermenter. I also run both circuits (hot wort and chilling water) wide open, rather than throttled down. This ensures that liquid is contacting all sides inside the chiller, getting exposure to maximum surface area. Finally, I use plain hose water until it gets below 100° F, and I don't dump that waste water into my ice-cold chilling water. However, after the wort drops below 100° F, I do indeed direct the output water back into the cooler. By that point, the water isn't going to heat up that much, and the motion helps ensure the chilling water remains evenly mixed.

Hope this helps.

 

[VladOfTrub]

If I'm getting this right. When you hook the chiller to the homes domestic water, you get the same results as when you use the cooler/ice water mixture? If that is the case, the pump isn't pushing enough GPM through the water side of the chiller. Or, like the other brewer mentioned, coolant temp is rising. Remove the extra coil, it is adding pressure drop and try without it. Just keep the coolant temp low. Think of it this way, when it comes to adding a secondary coil. You have to dump ice and water into another bucket along with the coil. Ice by weight removes a set in stone amount of BTUs when it melts. By adding another bucket with ice, the weight of ice is increased. Hence, more net cooling affect. That is it, nothing more. Just add the extra ice and water you would use in the extra bucket, into the main cooler. Transfer of heat through a coil goes away, along with pressure drop. Blichmann has a chart that tells you what to expect with flow rate and temps. It performs as the chart indicates. For 8 years I have used Blichmanns Therminator. I use 42F coolant. With the pressure drop of my system, using a March pump running full bore. I run 18-20G of wort dropped to the lower end of lager temps with one pass in 15 minutes...You do have the chiller hooked up the right way?

 

[Emc]

Yes to the chiller hooked up the right way. Perhaps that's the problem, the pump. I've been using a pond pump, type you would use for an outdoor fountain. I currently do run the wort back into the boil kettle, recirculating till it hits the proper temp. I will dry a run with just water, remove the extra coil, but use a march pump and see what happens

 

[Emc]

One more question, you said one pass, so I assume you have the coolant full bore and the kettle flow restricted?

 

[VladOfTrub]

A March pump doesn't have the GPM for the pressure drop of the heatX, for the water side. The pump is OK for the process side and works well. I don't throttle anything down. The system pressure drop created from the chiller, hopback, hop blocker and the interconnecting tubing does the restricting. Every inch of tubing is 1/2" ID except for the dip tube in the kettle and conical. Valves are full port. Chiller heat of rejection formulas use GPM as one of the numbers in the formula. The more GPM through the water side the greater the cooling affect on the medium being cooled. The coolant temps, TD, flow rate and temp through the process side go along with it. I use a brine chiller from a bulk tank to cool the heatX. The coolant circ pump is 1/2 HP with a pressure actuated bypass for flow control. I run the eutectic plates at 34F to maintain a 42F coolant temp. If your coolant circ pump is big enough to create the flow needed and the coolant temp is about 42F and it still doesn't work, fouling of the heatX has occured. Realize, that if you are making high OG brew it takes more energy to cool it. Also, realize, that 1 ton of ice changing state, produces only 12K BTU in 24 hours. So, the 10 or so pounds of ice you're using to cool a 10 gallon mass from boiling to 55F is nothing. One pound of water frozen produces 144 BTU/Hr during change of state. To cool 10 Gallons of wort in 10 minutes from 212F to 55F, requires a cooling system capable of producing 78.5K BTU/hr. That is a refrigeration machine of almost 7 ton capacity. Tour a brewery cooling system. They use large air over water outdoor cooling towers to pull the top heat from the wort before pumping it through the mechanical chiller.

 

[Emc]

Thanks for all of the info. So clearly I need to either except the water waste and length of time or seriously look into going more industrial with my cooling system. I was always under the impression that brine systems were just as nasty as glycol? Guess it's time to start researching small scale industrial cooling systems and plan something else to build into garage.