How to cool wort faster in Texas

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thisisbeer

thisisbeer

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Ok so I have been having trouble getting the temps of my wort down after the boil. Last weekend I added 25' of copper tubing as a prechiller. I put the prechiller in an icechest full of ice and water and put the immersion chiller in the BK. The problem is I can not get the temp below 80F, after about 45 mins like this the wort temp was 87F degrees. Here in Houston the tap water temp is around 88F on a normal summers day if not hotter. My question is what else can I do to chill it faster? I dont like the idea of adding ice or frozen sanatized bottles to the pot, but I need something.
 
I'm guessing these are full boils?

If not, freeze sanitized water and cool by topping off with ice. I did this on my first lager and actually overcooled it to like 46f. Granted I had cooled significantly with a chiller first.

If so, you're looking at a longer term ice bath. It's impossible to get cooler with a chiller unless you can cool your incoming water better.
 
Yes it's full boils. Does anybody have any tips on cooling the incoming water better? I was really surprised that the 25' of coiled copper in an ice bath didn't cool it enough. I guess the only thing would be to move up to 50' of tubing in the ice but as poor as the 25' did I'm not sure that would work.
 
thisisbeer said:
Ok so I have been having trouble getting the temps of my wort down after the boil. Last weekend I added 25' of copper tubing as a prechiller. I put the prechiller in an icechest full of ice and water and put the immersion chiller in the BK. The problem is I can not get the temp below 80F, after about 45 mins like this the wort temp was 87F degrees. Here in Houston the tap water temp is around 88F on a normal summers day if not hotter. My question is what else can I do to chill it faster? I dont like the idea of adding ice or frozen sanatized bottles to the pot, but I need something.
Click to expand...

I live in Dallas and I to have had problems getting my boil down below 90°. I was planning on hooking a pump that sits in an ice bath that pumps freezing water through my immersion chiller and dumps it back in the bucket for it to be reused. Would that work for you? I'm thinking that 20 -30 lbs if ice would work depending on the wort temp.
 
I live in Alabama and had the same problem. My water temp is about 80* and my hose runs across the lawn in the hot sun.

I use a 25' pre-chiller in a cooler full of ice. It takes me less than 15 minutes to get to 66*

The key is to keep your pre-chiller moving in the ice and the chiller moving in the wort.
 
I tried the pre-chiller with no luck but a waterfall pump in a bucket of ice and a bit of water pumping thru my chiller works good. First I bring it to 100 with tap water and then switch to ice water. I use about 20lbs of ice in the California summers.
 
I like the pump idea. I have stired. The ice and the wort but still will not cool off.
 
How long of a run do you have between you pre chiller and chiller? If it is too long, you will lose the benefit of pre-chilling.

I use one of those four foot hoses that they sell at home depot for the run from the hose rack to the faucet. My chiller is 50' 3/8 copper and my pre-chiller is 25' 3/8 copper. I use a 40 qt cooler full of ice ($3.50)

I like my set up because I don't have to stop and switch hoses around. I just turn on the hose and go. You have to be pretty aggressive in moving the chillers, especially for the last 5 degrees or so, but I am usually down to pitching temps in 12-15 minutes and use about 20 gallons of water.
 
I would say 3 1/2 feet from the chiller to the ice chest. I cut it to shorten the difference. I just had a thought, I wonder if my water pressure is pushing water faster than it can get cooled? I'm just not sure if I could get the 90 degree tap water cool enough to cool wort well below 90 degrees.
 
I turn faucet up all the way. I think the water volume is limited by the size 3/8" chiller and pre-chiller.

I can really feel the difference in the water temp as it comes into the chiller when I really get the pre chiller moving in the ice (which becomes ice water pretty quickly)

Every now and then when it is really hot out almost all of the ice in the cooler will melt. I make sure I have a few frozen bottles of water to toss into the cooler to finish the job.
 
Do you have a fridge, keezer, or fermentation chamber? If so just rack when it hits 85 or so and throw it in the a 36 degree fridge or whatever you have. Aerate or oxygenate and pitch in 2-3 hours after it drops the remaining 20 degrees or so.

My groundwater temps are a bit above 80 degrees. For a 5.5 gallon batch It takes me 1.5 hours with a standard immersion chiller to get it down to 85 or so. It takes me another 2-3 hours in the fridge to get to pitching temps.
 
CGVT said:
I turn faucet up all the way. I think the water volume is limited by the size 3/8" chiller and pre-chiller.

I can really feel the difference in the water temp as it comes into the chiller when I really get the pre chiller moving in the ice (which becomes ice water pretty quickly)

Every now and then when it is really hot out almost all of the ice in the cooler will melt. I make sure I have a few frozen bottles of water to toss into the cooler to finish the job.
Click to expand...

Probably the easiest and cheapest way to cool it quicker. I have my son move the pre chiller up and down while I move the IC up and down. This is done near continually until I hit my target temp. Have you measured the water temp coming out of the pre chiller?
 
I use a 25' CFC. I tried the pre-chiller route w/ good success using a small pond pump to circulate the ice water around the pre-chiller but I was wasting a lot of water.
I picked up a bigger submersible pump on sale at Harbor Freight and now recirculate the chilled water through the CFC. I get down to 60-62 in about 10 min & use about 20 lbs of ice.
 
Make certain you take the pot off the burner. I have noticed that even though it is off my wort stays hot longer when left on the warm metal burner.
This past brewday I placed the pot on top of a bag of ice and my temps dropped far far faster than just using my IC alone.
Stir the crap out of it and dial in the speed that you are pushing water through your chiller.
 
Ice alone doesn't transfer heat as fast as ice-cold water with ice.

After my wort gets close to my domestic water temps, I disconnect the water hoses and pour ice water through my plate chiller, which sits in a tub of ice water with ice and ice packs. I just recirculate. About 6 pounds of ice and a few ice packs gets 5 gallons down from 80° to 65° in about 20 minutes. I'll rig up a small circulation pump in the future.
 
jgroesbeck said:
Probably the easiest and cheapest way to cool it quicker. I have my son move the pre chiller up and down while I move the IC up and down. This is done near continually until I hit my target temp. Have you measured the water temp coming out of the pre chiller?
Click to expand...

I have never actually measured the temp coming out of the pre-chiller but the input side on the chiller is ice cold to the touch.

BTW, I also get my son to move the pre chiller (when he is around) while I move the chiller in the wort.

I am surprised that this method doesn't work for others. I had thought of getting a plate chiller or CFC, but this works so well for me that I decided to continue cooling this way.
 
Not sure how much the pumps you guys are talking about are, but a small aquarium power head will fit 3/8" hose and are submersible.. can move anywhere from 60-400gph.. the slower ones being cheaper, around $11 or so..

Could you hook one of those up to a prechiller and have the return dump back into a bucket of ice water? Like a makeshift recirculation pump?
 
I'm in Dallas and had the same problem. I solved it by using a submersible sump pump and 2 tubs. I fill the first one with water and put the pump in it with my IC in the brewpot. I monitor the water temp in the tub and when it gets close to the temp in the brewpot (usually around 100 degrees) I move the pump to the next tub. The tubs are large blue ones I bought at Walmart used for laundry.

In the second tub I have 4-5 gallon milk jugs of frozen water. I use a hammer to break up the ice in the jugs so I can get more surface are on the ice. Cut the jugs open and dump the ice in along with about 2 gallons of water.

Once I put the pump in the second tub the temp really drops.

Over all time from flame out to wort temps in the 70's is less that 15 minutes. Shortest time has been 8 minutes and longest is 15 with 12 about average. I do keep meticulous notes on every brew so I know this is correct.
 
So I got a fountain pump from home depot, the ones in the gardening section. Its not real strong but it works pretty good if I put the kettle on the ground level with the ice chest. So far it has been an awesome 20 bucks. As I said before I have never gotten my wort below 85 without putting it in the ferm chamber and lettinf it sit. Within about 15 mins I accidentally over shot and cooled it down to 62. That was a great feeling. Thanks for the help everyone.
 
Damn. Didn't even think about harbor freight had one right down the road. I may still go there and look. The fountain pump was good enough but I can see where it would be nice to have something with a little more power.
 
thisisbeer said:
I would think that would work great. Have you found a pump?
Click to expand...

Home Depot, pond pumps...

I live in Kempner and have the same issues..

Swirling the prechiller water has to be done, for the same reason you need to move the wort around the chiller...
There is a thermal barrier that is created around the copper tube very quickly that "insulates" the copper tube from the cold water in the ice bath (or hot wart)

Stirling both the wort in the boil pot with the chiller and the ice water in the prechiller cooler at the same time is a pain... but it does work.. and I can get my 4gal boils down to pitching temp in under 20 min.

For my last batch I used a pump... I do not recirculate the water from chiller back to ice water container till wort temps come down to the 100 deg or so. Just run the water hose into the ice water container at a equal rate as the pump moves water from the container so level stays constant.
Once wort temps come down, the chiller output hose goes into the prechiller ice water cooler and the water hose is turned off.

At that point I just have to gently stir the wort..till Im at pitching temp.

I do top off my 4 gal boils with ice cold filtered water to eh 5.25 gal point,, so that further cools my wort for pitching.
 
I appreciate everybody telling me to move around the pre chiller and the immersion chiller. I understand that and again thanks for the input. But even then it would not cool fast enough. Maybe I couldnt move the water enough I honestly have no idea. But I tested the water out of the pre chiller and it was around 74 degrees.
 
Glad you found a solution to your problem. Even though I am happy with my system, sometime when I have a few extra bucks I may buy a pump and give that method a shot.:mug:
 
Harbor freight pond pump for around 20 bucks will work wonders

Just use tap water to 110 or so and recirculate using pump and Home Depot bucket with ten to twenty pounds of ice and pre chiller

Best 20 i ever spent and waste much less water
 
Tinhorn said:
Harbor freight pond pump for around 20 bucks will work wonders

Just use tap water to 110 or so and recirculate using pump and Home Depot bucket with ten to twenty pounds of ice and pre chiller

Best 20 i ever spent and waste much less water
Click to expand...

And stirring wort with immersion chiller the whole time takes about 20 minutes to get to 65 in a 106 degree weather
 
Actually may not even need the pre chiller could save some one a couple buck copper is pricey

Will definitely work better than tap water and conserve water
 
Yeah, I'm not planning on using a pre-chiller. I'm going to put the pump in a bucket of ice water and pump straight in to my ic and recirculate back in to the pump bucket, adding more ice as needed, and whirlpool my wort during cooling like I normally would.
 
Mordhaus said:
Yeah, I'm not planning on using a pre-chiller. I'm going to put the pump in a bucket of ice water and pump straight in to my ic and recirculate back in to the pump bucket, adding more ice as needed, and whirlpool my wort during cooling like I normally would.
Click to expand...

As someone said earlier, run tap water through your immersion chiller until the temp gets down to around 100F. Then switch over to using your HF pump and recirculate ice water.

I added hose ends to make hooking up to the well as well as the HF pump go easy.
 
LibertyBrewer said:
As someone said earlier, run tap water through your immersion chiller until the temp gets down to around 100F. Then switch over to using your HF pump and recirculate ice water.

I added hose ends to make hooking up to the well as well as the HF pump go easy.
Click to expand...

That's the plan. When I made my ic I soldered m/f garden hose connections on each end to make life easier. I'll probably add a 5/8 hose nipple to the pump so I can run garden hose from it and easily connect to the ic.
 
I didn't recirculate the water back to the cooler. I started it off with ice water from the beginning. It took about 9 gallons of water and two bags of ice to go from 212 to 64 degrees. I didn't see where it would be helpful to recirculate and heat your ice water back up. The extra ice would cost me more than a few gallons of water from the water hose. I know it was 9 gallons because I ran the water off in a 5 gallon bucket.

Also I don't see the point in starting with the water hose. It takes my hose around 25 minutes to get my water to 100 degrees. With just ice water I went from 212 to 65 in about 15 mins. Just seems like you would use more water starting with a hose. I also want my wort chilled as fast as possible.

Am I missing something?
 

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