Small Upright Freezer for a Pre-Chiller?

[Bassman2003]

Hello,

I am looking to move to an immersion chiller from a different setup and was looking at ways to super charge the chilling power. I have a "post chiller" made of 50' 3/8" copper in an 8 gallon bucket which works great but am wanting to leave all of the break material behind and move to stainless. Here in Texas the ground water is warm a lot of the year so chilling needs a strategy.

So I had an idea - What if I purchased a Craig's List small freezer, dropped the copper coil bucket in there full of water and chilled it to 32f. Drill two holes and run lines in and out for the garden hose and the immersion chiller hookups and chill with the cooled water?

I could plug the freezer in the night before I brew and could maybe roll it over by my garage setup for chilling. Just leave the water in there and top it up every once and a while.

What do you think? How cold do you think the 85f hose water would be once it exited the freezer? I am hoping I could hit lager temps with the wort.

The other options are to directly pump the chilled water from the freezer into the chiller or to keep using it as a post chiller by running the wort through it after the whirlpool/break setting period.

Happy to hear your thoughts.

 

[day_trippr]

The problem with this idea is the freezer simply cannot remove heat from the bucket fast enough to keep up with the heat input. Like, not even close to fast enough. Hence the reservoir will quickly warm up and any cooling will cease.

The practical, most-often employed solution, involves ice...

Cheers!

 

[Bassman2003]

Thanks for your reply. To be clear, the water in the freezer would be at 32f already, not on the fly... I use a mix of pre-chilled water and ice now. I pre-chill the water in my serving fridge but am not crazy about making it work that hard. In my view, the pre chilling of the water is what makes the most difference as the ice will quickly fade.

My hope was that if the water is cold enough, the chilling would be quick and maybe win the race before the water warmed up. Run the immersion chiller straight from the hose until 100f then switch to the cold stuff. I know people do this with ice baths a lot.

Sounds like running a reservoir of chilled water directly into the chiller would be better than running the hose water through? Then there is no water to warm up the cold liquid, just cold straight into the chiller until you run out.

 

[day_trippr]

I understood the initial conditions. Consider your batch volume * temperature vs the bucket volume * temperature, and assume the bucket will have pretty much zero additional cooling. Starting from a near boil the math doesn't work, but assuming a five gallon batch and a five gallon bucket of almost-frozen water, starting from ~100°F might get you in the ballpark depending on your end goal.

As to transfer method, a coil at both ends gives you the option of tossing some ice in the bucket if needed. Otoh, dumping the chilled volume through the IC at the other end has no fall-back...

Cheers!

 

[Bassman2003]

Thinking about this some more, I can see the benefit of having a lager fridge for the times I brew lagers. So the cost would be for a dual use, making it more of a justifiable purchase.

I think the best way is to get a larger body of water in the freezer (larger bucket, trash can etc...) and a pond pump connected to the immersion chiller. This would tilt the scale over to the cold side. In effect giving you enough 32f water to finish the job. I could run the chiller output into buckets and put the water back into the freezer storage for next time.

Sound better than my initial plan?

 

[Jag75]

I just pump ice water through the ic . Just keep adding ice the the ice chest . Cut my chilling time in half just about. That's when I did extract kits . Mostly AG now so I use the cfc that came with my Gf. My water here is warm and it takes some time cooling wort down to pitching temp .

 

[etk29321]

You need many times your wort volume of prechilled water for this to work in my experience. I can’t do this effectively with a glycol chiller and a 10 gal reservoir at 38f. I might can get to 68 for an ale if I’m lucky, but not 50 for a lager. A glycol chiller will have a much faster rebound time than a bucket in a fridge.

 

[Bassman2003]

Thanks for sharing. This makes me think immersion chillers are not very efficient if a Glycol chiller at 38f with 10 gallons can't get the job done. I am moving to an immersion chiller because I want to leave more stuff in the kettle. My current setup is very efficient at cooling but is copper and puts all of the break into the fermenter. Currently I use a Shirron plate chiller that then goes to an 8 gallon bucket with 50' of 3/8" copper coiled inside. This post chiller is filled with some ice and 8 gallons of pre chilled water probably at ~45F. I can turn off the boil, open the valve and have wort in the 40's going straight into the fermenter.

I was hoping to supercharge the immersion chiller but it seems like that is kind of difficult. Days are busy so I am wanting to avoid an extended chilling time and doing an ice dance on brew days. I will keep on thinking about it.