Therminator or equivalent

[Catt22]

I think what the guy was saying was if you weren't recirculating, you would have to slow down the wort to attempt to get it to pitching temp in one pass. Asking them to calculate chilling time with a recirculation for my volume to determine the right size chiller for (say) a 10 minute chill prompted sighs and irritation. Guess I'll just have to go with one and check it out.

Now that makes some sense. I would go with the largest plate chiller you can afford, within reason of course and provided that the cost is not too much to bear. More surface area must equate to faster cooling.

 

[Catt22]

IF you Recirculate then the speed at which your run the wort/water is really irrelevant.

I strongly disagree with that statement. The flow rate for both the wort and the cooling water will have a huge influence on the cooling rate when circulating back to the BK. How could it not? All you need to do is push that theory to the extreme and it should become obvious. A trickle of cooling water and/or wort is going to take forever to cool. Reversing that with a fast flow for both will result in much faster cooling.

 

[SankePankey]

What they were telling me is that the LONGER the chiller the faster and more efficient it is. They were trying to get me to go for the Medium 20 plate in stead of the Small 30 plate. They said the performance increase with more plates is not as wide as performance increase with length (this is starting to sound like an Extenze commercial). I want the shorter one cause it fits better in a certain spot on the rig and it comes in 1/2" MPT.

BUT, the shorter ones are better for higher flow rates according to them.

What does this all mean for recirculating. Enquiring minds want to know.

They couldn't give me an estimate for recirculating 15 gal volume unfortunately.

 

[Catt22]

I can see that you are part of the lucky few who get to use whole leaf hops. I have to rely on pellets too many times from my local shop. I suspected that.

Thanks for the pics.

Nope. Those are 100% pellet hops caked on the FB. Not a whole hop in the bunch.

 

[Catt22]

What they were telling me is that the LONGER the chiller the faster and more efficient it is. They were trying to get me to go for the Medium 20 plate in stead of the Small 30 plate. They said the performance increase with more plates is not as wide as performance increase with length (this is starting to sound like an Extenze commercial). I want the shorter one cause it fits better in a certain spot on the rig and it comes in 1/2" MPT.

BUT, the shorter ones are better for higher flow rates according to them.

What does this all mean for recirculating. Enquiring minds want to know.

They couldn't give me an estimate for recirculating 15 gal volume unfortunately.

I would think that the important specification would be the total plate surface area if comparing them for performance. They should be able to furnish that information for you or if you know the chiller dimensions you could calc it yourself.