Bit the bullet...

[ArcticBear]

And finally bought a Therminator. After doing several batches with a 30 ft immersion chiller I just couldn't take it anymore. Flooding the yard with water for an hour plus with the hose vs. only a few minutes. Bought all the parts to make the back flush assembly at home cheapo and prepared all my lines last night, just waiting to use it either tonight or this weekend, I'm stupid excited... Oh and added a thrumometer with it, brewed with someone once who had it and it makes things extremely easy.


Now just to build the dip tube for my keggle to prevent the hop build up from passing through

 

[ArcticBear]

Used it for the first time tonight. Had to quick modify a hose to get the water inlet to work ( had to hack my immersion chiller up to get a female to female garden hose connection). Happy with it but i definitely need to get used to using it, I was so frantic trying to make sure I was doing things right. Any helpful tips from anyone who uses one regularly would be appreciated

 

[lewdog50]

Construct a hop spider, and use a S's scrubie under your dip tube. Other than that your good. its amazing how fast those cool your wort. Why did I ever use an imerssion?

 

[Feckett]

I know the feeling. Felt the exact same way when mine showed up. It even showed up at the beginning of a brew day amazingly, so was able to play with it right away. Makes life so much easier.

 

[passedpawn]

I built mine into a toolbox.

Added quick disconnects to both the wort and water connections.

Added a thermometer on the output. This is really important, because you do not have to wait for the entire boil pot to get down to temp. as soon as the output thermometer gets down (for me, less than 1 minute) you can start running off into carboys.

I use pool water for cooling, and return to pool. Submersible pump.

For cleaning, I have never baked mine in an oven. I haven't used anything more than a couple of quick squirts with my hose in 25 batches or more (the first 25 I used oxyclean soak, but no more). Never a problem.

Those are just some ideas.

Here's a quick video of the chiller in action.

 

[stevehaun]

I have a therminator and have been very impressed. I can cool 35 gallons to 60 F in 30 min. My well water is 55 F. After using it, I back flush and forward flush with hot PBW. I then flush with a phosphoric acid solution (to prevent beer stone build up) followed by a water flush. I do this while I am cleaning up the rest of the brewery.

 

[ArcticBear]

im thinking about rigging up my immersion chiller in a bucket of ice water prior to the water inlet... just to see if i can cool the whole 5-10 gallons with the ball valve open at full bore...

i backflushed mine and soaked in pbw and rinses thoroughly and cleaned with star san and emptied it to drip dry over the next few days... it will get a pbw blast, full rinse and star san bath prior to my next brew day...


after messing with the thicker hoses and spinning larger pieces, i am seriously thinking about using quick disconnects just to make life 100 times easier... are there any that you guys use that are relatively cheap on the pricing? i might not cheap on the wort sides due to quality, but the garden hose side doesnt need to be crazy expensive.

 

[passedpawn]

im thinking about rigging up my immersion chiller in a bucket of ice water prior to the water inlet... just to see if i can cool the whole 5-10 gallons with the ball valve open at full bore...

i backflushed mine and soaked in pbw and rinses thoroughly and cleaned with star san and emptied it to drip dry over the next few days... it will get a pbw blast, full rinse and star san bath prior to my next brew day...


after messing with the thicker hoses and spinning larger pieces, i am seriously thinking about using quick disconnects just to make life 100 times easier... are there any that you guys use that are relatively cheap on the pricing? i might not cheap on the wort sides due to quality, but the garden hose side doesnt need to be crazy expensive.

Garden side you can get a lowes, cheap. That's what I did.

I've done IC in a bucket of ice as a prechiller thing. Yea, it worked OK, but I'm not keen on using ice at all.