Chilling with ice

[nyer]

I live in Florida so my water is always in the 80s which makes it almost impossible to chill with an immersion chiller (and its expensive when you are paying water and sewer).I was watching brewdogs and noticed that they pumped their wort thru the immersion chiller that was sitting in a bucket of ice. Has anyone tried this method? I did a quick little test yesterday and it seemed to work. I ordered a few more camlocks so I can set it up correctly. I think it will take a lot of ice but I have a commercial ice machine sitting next to my brewstand so that's easy. I also like that I can recirculate thru the chiller and get a great whirlpool going. That never worked well with the immersion chiller. I'm thinking that I can drain off the water as the ice melts into buckets to use for cleanup and watering plants.

 

[raysmithtx]

I do something very similar. I still put the immersion chiller in the wort but use a bucket of ice water for the source water. I live in Texas where the ground water gets really warm/hot in the Summer. I freeze gallon baggies of water and then beat them with a hammer to break them up and put in the bucket with some water. I have a sump pump in the bucket of ice water that pumps the cold water through the IC and returns to the ice water. I initially start out letting the output go into another bucket so I have plenty of hot water for cleaning up the equipment. Then after a few minutes I move the output to the ice water bucket. It works really well this way. No cost and no inconvenience of having to go to the store to buy ice... and I always have plenty of ice that way.

 

[Hopper5000]

I use this method too although I don't live in a hotter climate I just do it to speed cooling. I usually wait until the wort cooling has dropped down to 100-120F before using ice as the tap water should cool that down pretty quickly.

 

[waldo711]

I moved from Colorado to Florida and quickly discovered the same problem. Thanks to my LHBS, I now use a 1/6 hp submersible pump in a cooler filled with 40-60 pounds of ice (20 lbs for $2 nearby) and a quart of water to prime the pump...similar to raysmithtx and Hopper5000. Immersion chiller is connected to the pump and recirculates back into the cooler. It knocks the temp down just as fast as the groundwater I used in Colorado!

 

[GCPHomebrew]

Just bought an immersion chiller(1/2 inch, 50ft, double coil) with a 1/6hp pump( rated at 1670 gph at 1.25 inch output. Since its reduced to 1/4 inch it's more like 350) Cooled boiling wort to 70 in under ten minutes. That's with 40lb of ice and not returning water to the ice until it was cool to the touch. Damn good for a first time use. I can see where it can be faster and get it cooler.

 

[nyer]

I think I'm switching back to pumping ice water through the chiller. Heading over to harbor freight soon to look for a pump I do have a pretty powerful submersible pump but I imagine reducing that down to my size size would be a pain in the butt.

 

[nyer]

I used my regular tap water to chill down to 140 degrees. I collected the 20 gallons of water and used it to water plants or dump in my pool. I had a small 12 volt bait pump for fishing and I stuck that in my igloo 5 gallon cooler filled with ice and a little bit of water. Irie circulated that water and it easily chilled my wort down to 70 degrees in about 10-15 minutes. The water was still ice cold and I still had plenty of ice left I'm amazed at how quickly and efficiently it worked.

 

[GCPHomebrew]

Nyer, I'll be brewing Tuesday and I will be adding salt to the ice. Should drop the temp of the ice bath to 14degrees. Not that 10 minutes wasn't fast enough. I just want to see if I can get the 3-5minutes that is bragged about. To size down my pump from 1.25" to .25" I went to menards and asked for help. $8 and done.

 

[Cervantes]

I live in Australia and the tap water is warm in summer making cooling difficult.

I also use a bucket if ice slurry, but instead of pumping this through my immersion chiller, I have a second immersion chiller sat in the bucket of ice slurry and run my tap water through this before is it enters my immersion chiller in the wort.

So it's really a pre-chiller I suppose.

This work really well.