Chilling wort ... advice no new purchase

[Jtvann]

I live literally in Death Valley. I brew beer year round. My ground water temps in the summer are easily in the 90 degree range.

Currently I use a copper immersion chiller recirculating Ice water from a large cooler while whirlpooling the wort in the brew kettle. I can cool wort from boiling to 60ish degrees in about 15 minutes. I’ve been happy with my results, but am always looking for that next piece of equipment.

I’m considering changing to a stainless immersion chiller for ease of cleaning. I use it as a heat exchanger for both mash out and wort cooling, so I would like to continue that process or evolve it to something that makes more sense.

Wanted to ask here, is it worth going to a stainless coil chiller, or should I consider a plate chiller. What are the pros and cons or reasons why for advise given?

 

[day_trippr]

That's laudable cooling performance given the conditions. Not sure you'll find much better.
The worth of switching your IC is how you measure it.
If you want to eliminate copper from your brew path, the "worth" just went up - a lot.
Otoh, if it's just ease of cleaning/not worrying about verdigris...not so much.
Maybe not even enough to take the hit on time - CU will be much quicker to cool than the same size SS.

IC vs PC: ease of cleaning and inspection vs difficult cleaning and zero inspection ability.
Either can win the "time to pitching temperature", depending on comparative cooling capacity (ie: big IC vs small PC, IC wins. And vice versa) but there's no doubt maintenance favors the IC.

I have both a 50'L 1/2"D ss IC and a Dudadiesel B3-23A 30 plate chiller. I've been leaning more toward the IC of late...

Cheers!

 

[Jtvann]

The copper chiller is about 2 years old now. Still works great. Copper is soft though and over time, I’ve been rough with it. There’s one good crease in the coil where it almost bent. Not enough to affect anything, but it will bend easily there if I’m not careful.

I figure stainless will be more sturdy. I figured it would also be much easier to clean ... vigorous scrubbing and all. Eliminating copper ... I’ve not read enough on it to have a strong opinion.

 

[JimRausch]

You could always use one of them as a prechiller- have that one sitting in a icewater bucket, and have it connected in series with the other. My original IC is a 25' Silver serpent, but last year I got a good deal on a 50' copper IC. I use the SS as the prechiller.

 

[jekeane]

I’m in Florida just swapped back to my immersion chiller from a morebeer counterflow. The counterflow worked well but not well enough that it made up for the ease of use with a immersion chiller

 

[ESBrewer]

15 mins is decent performance. You could submerge the kettle in ice/water to cool the surface as well (more practical for small kettles and batches, though). Performance wise stainless will probably not chance much but it can be long lived. The submerged surface area of the coil is important and will correlate with efficiency given that there is enough flow to keep the coil cold. You could benefit from cooling further down (more effective cold break), but then you need to wait while the wort warms up to the pitching temp. Letting the wort stand in a cold place for a while will allow sufficient time for more particles to drop to the bottom.