Dual immersion chiller

[macminn18]

I have a copper immersion chiller, works ok, I do full 5 gallon boils, seems to take longer than my impatient self likes to cool. I bought some equipment off craigslist from a guy who doesn't brew anymore.

I'm wondering if I can use both chillers, one as a pre-chiller, which I'd immerse in ice water.

I haven't been at this that long, but wondering if that might speed things up.

 

[TexasWine]

Yes.

 

[cayohuesobrew]

Yes you can. Living in Florida the ground water is never much colder than 80 degrees. I use two immersion chillers to speed cooling. One chiller is in ice bath, the other is in the hot wort. This is the only way for me to cool my wort below 80 degrees without buying a counter flow chiller.

 

[SHAIV]

If you already have 2 chillers then try it! Can't hurt! Unless one of them has a leak and it leaks into your wort spoiling it. I'm trying to decide if I should do this or get a pond pump and pump ice water through my chiller. I can't figure out which one would be better

 

[schematix]

Pre-chilling will help a little bit, but not a lot. There's not a lot of contact time and unless you're recirculating your ice water, won't be that efficient.

You'd be better off using tap water to get you down to the 100-110F range, then recirculate ice water with a submersible pump until you get to pitching temps.

Are you whirlpooling during chilling? Keeping the wort moving will make a huge difference.

 

[macminn18]

Schematix,
Thanks for the reply. I've read a bunch on whirlpooling. I do it manually I guess. I need to look into that for sure. Any tips greatly appreciated.

 

[schematix]

Schematix,
Thanks for the reply. I've read a bunch on whirlpooling. I do it manually I guess. I need to look into that for sure. Any tips greatly appreciated.

The point is just that keeping the wort in motion will greatly increase your performance. You can do this simply by stirring gently with a spoon in a circle.

You can also arrange pumps to recirculate wort in a particular way to make this happen for you in a more hands off fashion.

 

[GmanNJ]

I just completed a build where I use a bunch of frozen blu-gels in a cooler full of water, a submersible fountain pump and a home made immersion cooler. In my experiment at the one minute mark I got the boiling water to 165 degrees and the cooler water was at 42, at the 8 minute mark the water was at 98 degrees but the cooler water was at 79. I will try this again but swap out the blu-gels for fresh frozen ones when the cooler water is about 60 degrees and see if i can get to pitching temp in less than 5 minutes. I only used 5 gals of water total and then used it for the plants afterwards. Quick, efficient and can be done indoors on a table.

 

[kh54s10]

I built a 20ft copper IC. It was too slow so I made another coil that fits inside the first one. I can put them both in the wort or use one in a bucket of ice water. I do see a difference. And you can go cooler than the municipal water temperature.

I will be trying re-circulation with a pond pump at some point.

 

[GmanNJ]

with the cooler and the frozen blu-gels I got the water to 35 degrees- much cooler than municipal water-specially in the summer!

 

[JmPnTX]

I’m using a single chiller (I have the Jaded Brewing Hydra) with tap water to cool below 100F, then switching the chiller water supply to a submersible pump in a cooler of ice water (two 10 lb bags and fill with enough water to cover the pump). I'll usually just recirculate back to the cooler. Works great for super hot Houston.

Submersible pump: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000X05G1A/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

 

[mongoose33]

I had considered something similar to OP, but in the end I needed a cooler, an immersion chiller, ice, and perhaps a pump if I would recirculate it.

I ended up buying a Jaded Hydra. Pricey, but it works because they've taken pains to greatly increase the surface area exposed to the wort. Went from 210 degrees to 70 yesterday in 4:15. But my water is pretty cool compared to Florida.

Others above are correct in that you have to keep the water moving past the coils for it to cool enough. If you had a pre-chiller made something similar to the Hydra, i.e., a lot of coils, it might work passably well.

Something that also might work is to pump cold water from a cooler filled with ice and water. But--usually this is seen as a closed loop system. If you refilled the cooler with 80-degree water while pushing the hot water down the drain it would work much better.

I've also wondered about using a large chunk of ice (1 cubic foot, for instance), and have the chilling water flow over that ice before it's picked up by the pump to run through the IC in the wort.

 

[Terence]

G'day all, I live in Broome, West Australia and our ground water rarely gets below 28C (82.5F) and over 30C during the wet season, our summer.
I use a primary and secondary chilling system
I use a counterflow chiller as primary and then I run the wort through a stainless IC immersed in one of those 25kg white plastic buckets.
I slurry 1 x 3.5kg bag of ice in this and during the transfer process I generally use 3 bags.
I stir my wort into a whirlpool and let settle for about 10 minutes before transfer. I can regulate the wort temperature going into the fermenter from 14C to 22C depending on how many bags of ice I use. It takes between 20 to 45 minutes to transfer 90 litres wort.

 

[JmPnTX]

Nice setup!

 

[LavaSteam]

I use exactly this system, whirlpool my cooling wort, and it works well.
It works even better when I move the immersion coil that is in the ice bath up and down to keep the coldest water next to the coil. I do this up and down thing every few minutes till the wort temp in the boil kettle is down to 20 Celsius, then I pump to my fermentor that has been chilling in the refrig fermentation chamber. Our ground water here in HI is 22-24 Celsius. I buy 50# non food grade ice from the ice plant for ~ $6.

 

[Dixon9717]

OP that's exactly what I do 25' IC in ice water and 50' ic in boil kettle. Pushing water with outdoor faucet. Cools 6 gallons to 65* in under 15 min.

 

[Kampenken]

Last fall during my last warm tap water days I put my IC in a bucket of water and froze it solid. Then hooked up as a prechiller to my CFC. Worked really well during my test about 20 min before I needed it. When I went to use it the water in the line froze solid! Next time no need to test!

 

[McDicker]

I have a copper immersion chiller, works ok, I do full 5 gallon boils, seems to take longer than my impatient self likes to cool. I bought some equipment off craigslist from a guy who doesn't brew anymore.

I'm wondering if I can use both chillers, one as a pre-chiller, which I'd immerse in ice water.

I haven't been at this that long, but wondering if that might speed things up.

I purchased a second hand IC from a local brewer a few years ago and he had attached a fairly long length of input tubing. For a few brews I put the excess tubing in a bowl of ice water to chill the water before it went through the chiller. It seemed to work fairly well.

The thing I've most played with is rate of water flow. I will adjust the rate of flow at the faucet until the IC output temp is warm or hot. I feel if it is still coming out cold/cool, or even slightly warm, it's wasting the potential for thermal transfer - plus more water down the drain. Maybe everyone adjusts the water flow this way, I don't know.

 

[mongoose33]

I purchased a second hand IC from a local brewer a few years ago and he had attached a fairly long length of input tubing. For a few brews I put the excess tubing in a bowl of ice water to chill the water before it went through the chiller. It seemed to work fairly well.

The thing I've most played with is rate of water flow. I will adjust the rate of flow at the faucet until the IC output temp is warm or hot. I feel if it is still coming out cold/cool, or even slightly warm, it's wasting the potential for thermal transfer - plus more water down the drain. Maybe everyone adjusts the water flow this way, I don't know.

The Jaded people, who make the Hydra and other excellent immersion chillers, say to run the water as fast as possible.

That makes sense to me--the cooler you can keep the copper tubing, the greater the temperature difference between the wort and the tubing, and the faster it will cool. If what's coming out is hot, toward the end of the run of tubing it won't be cooling much.

Their Hydra chiller is a combination of surface area--three different loops run parallel--and volume of water.

 

[McDicker]

The Jaded people, who make the Hydra and other excellent immersion chillers, say to run the water as fast as possible.

That makes sense to me--the cooler you can keep the copper tubing, the greater the temperature difference between the wort and the tubing, and the faster it will cool. If what's coming out is hot, toward the end of the run of tubing it won't be cooling much.

Their Hydra chiller is a combination of surface area--three different loops run parallel--and volume of water.

That would be an interesting experiment. I think I confused myself. I don't want the ouput too hot, but not close to regular temp either. I think my chiller is only 25'. If I run the faucet wide open, the output can be fairly cool still. I figure the greater the temp gradient between the wort and output water, that is less heat that could have been transferred from the hot wort.
I just seem to have better luck that way.

I also freeze a few 2 L bottles of water, hose them with Starsan and drop them in there as well.