20 Plate Wort Chiller - output always perfect?

[a_gunslinger]

Kind of new to plate chillers. In all the videos I watch its pretty much the beer goes from kettle right into fermenter. No second passes, or return to bucket to go thru chiller again. Does that mean the hot wort leaving kettle is perfectly cooled when it hits fermenter? Or is it juts close, or coller - with some colling time still needed?

 

[SouthBounds]

It has to recirculate a few times to get down to 80F or so. I have a 30 plate and a 10 gallon batch takes about 7-8 minutes. Then its ready to transfer to the fermenter.

 

[jschein]

It will chill first pass as long as your water is cold enough. You will need to adjust the chilling water coming in and also your wort. There is a happy medium at some point. You do need a thermometer so you know how to adjust your wort flow. I have always recirculated for sanitation for 10 minutes first

 

[day_trippr]

My well water (low 50s°F year 'round) with my 30 plate 12" Dudadiesel allows single-pass chilling. I set the water flow to max then dial up the wort flow 'til the output holds around 65°F. It runs out at a pretty good clip.

That said, I haven't used the PC in some time because 80% of my brews the last few years have been loaded with kettle hops to the typical level of 13 ounces and it seems a third of that escapes my spider. Pretty much all SS IC cooling these days...

Cheers!

 

[Vale71]

First thing to keep in mind is, ANY chiller will only chill to a temperature a few degrees above your cooling fluid's current temperature. There is no trick in the world that will get your wort below that temperature.
Second thing to keep in mind, counterflow chillers are specifically designed to have the highest cooling efficiency when cooling in a single pass. Any form of recirculation is only going to reduce your chiller's efficiency possibly all the way down to that of a comparable immersion chiller. If your chiller is so small that you have to reduce the wort flow to a trickle to achieve the lowest possible temperature possible for a given cooling water's temp then so be it. Recirculating is only going to take longer and use up a lot more water then a single pass.

 

[Alex4mula]

It’s all mainly in water temperature and then on chiller design/size. Fall to spring in Michigan my 18”/20p will chill 5gal to my set temp of 65F in about 2.6 minutes. In summer it takes 5-7 min to get to 68F. It will cool to about 2F above whatever temp the inlet water is. Love that thing!

 

[Jtvann]

I can give a personal account of a really good counter flow chiller vs a really good immersion chiller.

I own both a jaded hydra and an exchillerator brutus ... the blue version that is double barrel.

I wanted to just do an apples to apples comparison just for the sake of it in recirculating back to the kettle until at yeast pitching temps.

Hands down for recirculating back to pot the immersion chiller beat the pants off the counter flow chiller.

At the time I didn’t have a valve and thermometer setup for my counter flow chiller.

The counter flow is absolutely optimized in going 1 pass. I plan now to only chill to whirlpool temps by recirculation, then from about 160-170 down into the fermenter on one pass.

Comparing times ... I didn’t get a stop watch out, but it was so long that I got bored. I’d estimate nearly double the amount of time. That’s not bragging on the immersion chiller. It’s just pointing out how not to use a counter flow chiller.