My Fastest Chill Time

[vindee]

Several years ago I built a dual coil immersion chiller and it worked very well. This last batch I brewed on Christmas eve I immersed the chiller in an ice bath and pumped the wort through it.
The wort dropped to 80° in 12 minutes.
At the beginning of the chill I just used the cold water from the hose until the temp dropped to around 150° and then added the ice for the remainder of the chilling. I transferred to the fermentor at 70°
but ended up in the fermentor at 57°.
Next time I will either transfer at 85° or remove the chiller from the ice when transferring.
I'm pretty sure next time I will be able to get it from boil to fermetor in close to 12 minutes.
I noticed something interesting with this method. When using the immersion chiller in the wort the temp dropped fast at first and slowed as the the temp dropped off, which makes sense as the wort approaches the cooling water temp. Putting the chiller in the ice bath was fast all the way through.

 

[Tobor_8thMan]

Yes, doing "pre-chilling" similar to what I do. Let the hot wort move slowly while the chilled water quickly passes.

Able to get boiling wort, 212F, in the 60s with a single pass of the wort chiller.

 

[Tobor_8thMan]

IMO, the wort chillers are an amazing invention.

 

[vindee]

Yes, doing "pre-chilling" similar to what I do. Let the hot wort move slowly while the chilled water quickly passes.

Able to get boiling wort, 212F, in the 60s with a single pass of the wort chiller.
View attachment 711817

Nice counter flow setup.

 

[vindee]

Here is my chiller not buried under ice.
I didn't like the idea of the aluminum spreader bars in the hot wort. Disimilar metals sometimes don't play well together. I sometimes noticed a slight metalic taste on some brews. I think they always lost that taste after conditioning but I still didn't like it so thats why I am now running the wort through the chiller instead. It has also cut my chill time almost in half.

 

[Vale71]

Copper and aluminum are galvanically compatible. I still wouldn't want either of them in contact with hot wort but that's your choice.