counter flow vs plate chiller

just looking for some opinions on which people like better, doing 10 gal batches

 

I love my plate chiller, only thing is you have to make sure to keep it clean(just like the rest of your equipment). Get good hoses to hook up to it and I can cool my 5gal batch down and transfer in about 5-6 minutes. Run pump at slower speed to make sure it stays about 70 degrees. Both good choices though.

 

For me, it'd be between an immersion chiller or plate chiller. Plate has the capability of being more efficient. My 12" 30 plate chiller has many square feet of contact area (around 7 sqft if I remember right?) so it can cool very quickly and thus uses little water. But, it's more expensive and more work to maintain than an IC.

IC is cheaper, takes a little longer due to less contact area, and thus uses more water. However, they are very easy to use. Just drop it in the boil with a little time left, then turn the water on at flame out. Boom, done.

I never understood the cfc idea. It's like a mix between the two without the benefits of either.

 

Ok, technically a plate chiller is a CFC too, but we're talking about IC, plate chiller, and a CFC that has a separate tube/pipe for wort, and another for cooling water.

Upsides to CFC: Less likely to clog with debris, *much* easier to clean, and for the DIY'er, cheaper.

 

I have a friend that has a decent sized blichman plate chiller, and i made a 50ft CFC. My CFC BLOWS the doors off his plate chiller, but there are advantages to both.

CFC - easy and fairly cheap to make (less than 100 for a 50ft) you could go smaller but i could only find the copper in 20 ft sections (not quite long enough from what i have been reading) or 50 ft. took a couple hours, but this thing is a TANK and works perfect. My ground water where i am gets a little warm in the summer months so i do use a prechiller submerged in ice. My wort goes from boil to 65 degrees just as fast as gravity will push it through (if i had a pump i am confident it would work even faster). also as mentioned, its a LOT less prone to clogging. ONLY downside is portability. If i am brewing somewhere else, i need to bring the CFC, prechiller (in summer), extra hoses. Really its only a problem if you are brewing somewhere else but honestly, its not really that bad.

Plate chiller - biggest problems from what my friend has experienced, and what i have seen is clogging, his wort still comes out a little warm (80+), and they are EXPENSIVE. Portability is awesome, and i think if you could submerge the plate chiller itself in a bucket of ice, you would chill to a very nice level.

I know my buddy is planning on selling his plate chiller and making the same CFC i did. I love it and it works GREAT!

 

I'm selling my plate chiller and building a CFC. 4 brews of cleaning the damn plate chiller and I'm done with it. It doesn't matter how filtered your wort is, its going to get dirty. I spend over half the time on cleanup trying to get it to flush clean but I always manage to get stuff out even after working on it for a while (pbw, reversing the flow, etc). Plate chillers are great in size, but that's about it.

 

I'd have to thoroughly disagree on the CFC. I use a 10' CFC from more beer and love it. Much more efficient than a IC in time and water and MUCH easier to clean than plate chiller. In my opinion it's the best of both worlds.


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I have a question: I was thinking about getting a plate chiller. Has anyone put the plate chiller into a bucket of ice water, to make the cooling even better?

 

I brew a lot of hoppy beers. I hated my plate chiller. Got rid of it after 1 batch. Got my convoluted cfc from Morebeer and couldn't be happier.


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How do you clean the inside? How do you know that it's clean inside?

 

You never really know 100% with either of them. Since you can't look inside.

I guess I just don't like all the small channels in a plate chiller. Very difficult to get all the water out. All the water comes out of my cfc really easily. All I have to do is stand it up. Gravity does most the work.

As for cleaning I just fill my sink up with really hot water and pbw. Back flush it a couple times and let it soak. Flush bit with water after everything then I call it good.


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+1 for CFC

 

I currently have and use a plate chiller, I have been happy with it until today very slow to chill took over an hour to chill a ten gallon batch. :-(


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I use a convoluted tube-in-tube CFC. I recirculate so I wanted maximum flow with less worry about clogging with hops and hot break.

If you're worried about cleanliness, you can inspect them with a cheap borescope if you want to.

 

I have a plate CFC (Blichmann). If I could get a decent price for mine, I'd move to a convoluted coaxial CFC like the one at Morebeer.

The plate chiller works great, and is very compact, but the internal cleanliness is questionable, and flow slows down significantly after 2 or 3 back-to-back batches.

 

I have a duds diesel 30 plate long chiller. It looks nice... I have not been satisfied and it really hasn't improved chilling time over my old IC. I heard all of the "Will chill 10 gallons in 5 seconds" and bought in... it does not do this.

 

My plate chiller does indeed allow me to pump to my carboys almost immediately. I recirc at full flow back to the kettle for a few minutes, then slow the flow down and send it to the first carboy. I do 10 gallon batches and chill with pool water.

5 years ago I used an IC. My plate chiller was a HUGE improvement on that.

 

What are your water temps those who are having good success with their chiller? I had an issue with my 30 plate yesterday but my chill water was 78.8 degrees F looking on ways to improve for my next batch, this is the first time I have struggled to get this chiller to work well.


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I use a tube CFC and before every brew when I am getting everything together I will boil a few gallons of water and recirc it through my chiller, pump, whirlpool arm, etc.

When I'm brewing I usually fill a bucket full of star san (why? because it's easy) and when I'm done, after I clean my BK, i put the star san in the kettle, and recirc it while I'm putting the fermenter to bed and cleaning up. Never had a problem.

 

When I chill my wort I use the water from my swimming pool. In the summer it can be in the 80's. So obviously I can't get the temp below the water temp, but its free cooling. So if the water is about 82 I will stop cooling when the wort temp is about 85 which takes about 10 min or so(10 gallon batch). Then I will use tap water which in the summer is around 60-65 which I can go straight to the fermenter at about 65-68. In the winter when the cooling water temp is in the 40's or 30's i'm at one pass throttling the cooling water to maintain the right temps.(Nice for lagers).

So as good as a chiller is, it can only be as good as the cooling water is.

I have never used a counterflow chiller but have used IC and PC. I like the PC better than the IC. I would not hesitate using a CFC but with my set up a PC works best for me.

 

I get it as cool as I can, then put the carboys into the ferm chamber. Within a few hours it's OK to pitch yeast. The delay is not a problem for me.

 

Don't mind the delay either had water lines freeze this past winter and couldn't chill my wort so I just left it outside (sealed and covered a few times over) and pitched the next day.
My only problem with that was I didn't plan for it so I was up at 4:00 am transferring wort and pitching yeast so I could make it to work on time.

 

Yeah, I need to go the prechiller route

 

So do most of you run your cooled wort back into BK until it is down to temp the run directly into fermenters?


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I've tried both an it seemed to chill better just trickling out from the chiller. YMMV

 

My IC w/ a pump and whirlpool cooled just as fast as my CFC. I made the switch because the CFC had a smaller foot print on my brewstand, I didn't like the IC sitting on the heating elements in my kettle and it would get tangled up with the hop spider bag.

I'm not disappointed in my switch, but it didn't make my beer better or my brew day faster. Currently, I'm recirculating the wort back into the kettle. I'm waiting for the ground water to cool down, before I try going directly into the fermenter.