Check out my wort chiller

[67coupe390]

I don't know if anyones done this before but I am making a wort chiller and recirculating the cold water from a 5 gal bucket full of ice water.

check out my gallery for bigger pics too

1 free 5 gal bucket
1 free pool pump
1 wort chiller
$16.00 in fittings
I hope this thing works! That would be cool!!!! Let me know what you think!!!

 

[Blender]

I do the same thing but only after the initial cooling with ground water. Once the wort hits 110 or so I can get it the rest of the way with ice water.

 

[capcrnch]

I do the same thing, but I use a bilge pump (as you would see in a boat)..
It's nice because I save on the water bill, and the recirc. water pushes real nice.

 

[jtvinny]

I was thinking about circulating it through a cold plate in a beer jockey, maybe a four line run in series so that it goes through all of them. Then again maybe only through two of four so that it does not warm the mass of aluminum up too much.

 

[Jared311]

Have you thought about building a counter-flow wort chiller? They are much more efficient with water. I use about 5 gallons and chill my 215F wort down to 65F in about 10 minutes. The best part is the water comes out boiling hot so you can throw cleaner in there and start soaking equipment already. I am going to post detailed instructions eventually, but in the meantime you can take a look at the basic design:

http://www.hoppyhomebrewers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=13

 

[67coupe390]

Have you thought about building a counter-flow wort chiller? They are much more efficient with water. I use about 5 gallons and chill my 215F wort down to 65F in about 10 minutes. The best part is the water comes out boiling hot so you can throw cleaner in there and start soaking equipment already. I am going to post detailed instructions eventually, but in the meantime you can take a look at the basic design:

http://www.hoppyhomebrewers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=13

Not a bad idea. But what I need to do is chill 50 gals. of beer so I'm going to try this set up with an ice bath. I have the ball valves to regulate the flow and if need be I can add ice during the cool down too. Right now with the fittings 3/8" it flows 1 gpm and goes into the 1/2" copper wort chiller. I think this should pick up heat well and like I said before I can regulate flow if the outlet water is to cold and bump up its effectivness.

 

[Joe Camel]

Others with a stronger physics background can correct me if I'm wrong but if you want to chill 50 gallons of wort with this you're quite undersized.

50 gal (190 L) from 100C to 20C requires the transfer of 15200 kcal of energy to the second medium. (1 kcal/kg/degreeC * 80C * 190kg)


Ice has half the heat capacity of water so if your ice starts in a freezer at -20C then each 1 kg will absorb another 10kcal as it warms to 0C. It will then absorb another 80 kcal transitioning to water amd 10 more warming to 10C. So each kg of ice will absorb 100kcal between -20C and 10C.

15200 / 100 = 152 litres of ice

 

[mavol]

Others with a stronger physics background can correct me if I'm wrong but if you want to chill 50 gallons of wort with this you're quite undersized.

50 gal (190 L) from 100C to 20C requires the transfer of 15200 kcal of energy to the second medium. (1 kcal/kg/degreeC * 80C * 190kg)


Ice has half the heat capacity of water so if your ice starts in a freezer at -20C then each 1 kg will absorb another 10kcal as it warms to 0C. It will then absorb another 80 kcal transitioning to water amd 10 more warming to 10C. So each kg of ice will absorb 100kcal between -20C and 10C.

15200 / 100 = 152 litres of ice

You've got to include the water in there too. He's using +/- 5 gal of water in his recirculation bucket. Plus, now correct me if I'm wrong, doesn't that also mean he's keeping the ice in that transitional stage where it is most effective? "It will then absorb another 80 kcal transitioning to water" I don't know. I don't do physics. But, It just seemed like you had left out the water. Ice is not the medium of heat transfer, the water is. What do you think, am I crazy?

 

[Joe Camel]

I assumed 10L of water and 10L of ice at a time, once the ice melts and the system warms to 10C, half the water would need to be removed and replaced with 10L more ice.

I kinda forgot to put my calcs in, so here goes:

Heat capacity of ice is about 0.5 kcal/kg/degreeC
Heat capacity of water is 1 kcal/kg/degreeC
Enthalpy of fusion (heat required to melt ice) is 80 kcal/kg (this is why an ice cube can cool your drink without rapidly melting, it absorbs much more energy transitioning to water than is in the surrounding liquid)


The 10L of water in the system is negligible to the calculation as it fluctuates between 10C and 0C effectively until all the ice is gone (152 L of ice). So assuming the water in the bucket only gets to 10C at the end, the 10L of water you start with really only absorbs 100kcal of energy by the end. As you say, the water is the transfer medium but the work is done by the ice.

So factoring in the water you still need 151 L of ice

 

[mavol]

Wow, I really didn't mean to make you spend more time doing all those calculations for such a small change in results. I'm glad I'm only cooling 5 gal. at a time...good luck to ya 67coupe390!

 

[67coupe390]

You are right it did not work for a 50 gal batch. It melted the ice so fast. It took 20 mins to cool from 200 F to 180 F Way to go on the math. What size vessel would I need to cool 50 gals. I was thinking one of my 15.5 gal keggles

 

[conpewter]

I have always read that once you get up to the batch size you are talking about that a counterflow chiller is going to be the way to go, it will in the end cost you less since it won't use as much water as a standard immersian chiller setup, and you won't be using electricity to freeze water to use to chill with either (or buy ice)

I just built a counterflow chiller like one posted a little earlier in the thread, going to try it out soon!

 

[Bobby_M]

All chillers require the coolant water to be a certain amount colder than the desired wort output temp. Ice is a necessity in the summer for me and I do have a CFC.

I'd recommend a CFC or plate chiller for large batches anyway.

 

[67coupe390]

I had to use the set up without the recirc. so it was just a hose and 40' of 1/2" copper tubing. It worked pretty well it chilled 45 gals. in about 20 min. but at the cost of many extra gals of wasted water.

 

[RegionalChaos]

A counterflow or plate chiller limits the volume of hot wort being cooled at any given time, so I would think that it would be much more efficient for a large batch like 50 gals. It would just take a while to run it all through it

 

[67coupe390]

Summer will be better for using the IC chiller. I plan on collecting the water that I use to water the plants in the garden and my hops too. But a therminator and a pump is what I'm saving for next. Right after a solo seat for my Gixxer. Plus I want to pump the wort right to the ferminators in the basement. Right now we are filling buckets and hauling them down 5 gals at a time. That sucks!!! Plus by the end of the boil we all had a few HB's so going down the stairs several time with 40 lbs of wort will end up in a mess sooner or later I bet.

 

[Joe Camel]

150L of ice you'd need for chilling 50 gallons is approximately 40 gallons of ice volume, that's a lot of freezer space, about half a 10 cu ft freezer.

I think where your chiller might have application is to prechill the city water in the summer time to increase the temperature gradient and help drive the wort to pitching temp at the end of the chill, say from 100F to 70F.

 

[67coupe390]

150L of ice you'd need for chilling 50 gallons is approximately 40 gallons of ice volume, that's a lot of freezer space, about half a 10 cu ft freezer.

I think where your chiller might have application is to prechill the city water in the summer time to increase the temperature gradient and help drive the wort to pitching temp at the end of the chill, say from 100F to 70F.

Cool man, Thanks for doing the math!!!