Cold Ice Refrigerant Gel for wort chilling

Hey all, I've searched and haven't seen this discussed yet: we all know those "Cold Ice" gel packs we get when we order liquid yeast, right? I save them in the fridge cause they work great for small ice chests and what not. But here in the central valley CA my water comes out of the tap at 80 degrees in the summer, and my copper immersion chiller can only get the temp down so far. So last time I chilled my wort I (sanitized first and) tossed in a few of those ice packs. I figure next time I'll have more ready and I'll put them in a grain bag... sanitize the whole thing and drop it in the wort at about 85 degrees. Then can just pull out the bag and whall-la'!

Anybody see anything wrong with that??

 

I think I'd be too worried about a hole I didn't see in one of the packs.

 

You could try and setup a pre-chiller and use them to chill the tap water..

 

^^^^Definitely this. I also save and reuse the gel packs. I've had a few rupture over time. Also, I not sure if the heat tolerance of the outer package plus what would the hot wort do to the ink on the pack?
A pre-chiller is a much more efficient, reliable, and safe way to make your IC more effective.


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Good points... didn't consider the reaction to the heat.

I like the pre-chill idea... would that be with a second set of coils... or is there a better idea being used?

Thanks!

 

Yeah, a second set of coils. I just recently built and added one to my set up. Lowes had (and maybe still has) 60 ft of copper 3/8" tubing on sale for like $45 I think. A new 5 gallon bucket, and a 20 lb bag of ice for each brew has helped in chilling tremendously.

 

I've seen those rupture often, as well. You don't need those ice packs, if you want to sanitize something to dump in your wort. If your kettle is large enough, you could just sanitize a frozen milk jug, filled with water. Or buy those ice cubes and freeze / sanitize them (like these: www.amazon.com/Reusable-Plastic-Cubes-Colors-Vary/dp/B007JX59FC/)

If I was gonna put something like that in my wort, I'd probably want to wait til the last 20-30 degrees (under 100F) til I put them in.

 

I'd recommend adding a small pond pump to your bucket with ice and water. It will help circulate the cold water and make your chilling even more effective by preventing thermal zones.
You can get one at any of the big box DIY stores for $10-12.


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Totally worth it, that's what I did.
Now I fill up a cooler with tap water using a hose adapter I just leave it running, hook the pump up to my chiller and have the outlet go into the sink. When the temp gets to around 95F I let the cooler fill up a bit and then stop transferring my warm ass tap water into it. Dump in 2 bags of ice and it cools it from 95 to 65 in about 5 minutes.

 

Don't forget to save the initial hot water output for clean up!


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In my past experience, the pre chiller temp gfadient wasn't great enough and was too slow when it was effective.
I now run ground water, with whirlpool, to knock temp as low , as quickly, as possible. Maybe only a couple minutes till I switch over to recirc iced saline through chiller and pond pump.
It was over 90 last brew day, and i was down to Lager pitch temp in less then 15 minutes.
Now, I am thinking about, either recircing through anti-freeze, or recirc with anti-freeze. Thoughts?

 

On Friday I attempted to brew a Cream Ale, and my chiller couldn't get it down below 80. I had to put it in the fridge for a few hours before it would chill down properly.

I attempted to find the parts to easily switch between hose water and a corny full of icewater, but gave up after finding it too much of a pain to get all the right fittings.

So instead, I just bought this on ebay for $7.95 including shipping:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/160-GPH-Sub...249?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a7a7c85d9

I'll just fill up a bucket with hosewater, start running the pump thru the chiller, and once it gets down to 80-90, i'll switch it over to a bucket with icewater. Seems silly to build/buy another chiller when I can just chill the water directly!

 

i got all the fittings I needed from the garden dept. and plumbing dept. at Lowe's. Probably cost me more than 8 bucks though.
Plastic Y with two ****offs two sets of Qd's for garden hoses, and two adapters for Gaden hose to NPT.