Chilling wort inside immersion chiller?

[owmatooth]

Saw a mention in another thread, and I can't find anything in the forums that cover it- so i thought i'd throw it out there and get some answers.

Can I run a recirculating pump to take my wort through an immersion chiller placed in a bucket of ice water and back into the kettle (or directly into the fermenter if temps allow)? It seems like a poor mans plate chiller to me, but just a larger internal diameter. a quick blast of co2 would push the remaining wort through, so as not to lose a drop. I'm just trying to play devil's advocate and figure out why this wouldn't work. Another 40 min of running my garden hose seems wasteful for each brew.

thanks for your thoughts-

 

[brandonnys]

Yes.

 

[Murphys_Law]

FWIW: I run my garden hose and fill 2 buckets with hot water which I use for cleaning, disconnect the garden hose and hook my IC up through a recirc system using a cooler filled with ice water and a ~900gph pump. Pretty much same thing but don't have to worry about sanitizing the inside of the IC.

 

[IslandLizard]

Sure, as long as you can keep the inside sanitized.
Definitely run boiling wort through it for 10 minutes before you add water/ice to your bucket. The heat will kill whatever is in there. That's what everyone does with plate chillers.

Using 2 buckets full of cold tap water will take your wort down to around 120F quickly. Then switch to ice to get it down the last 50 degrees. When you use ice to chill boiling wort you'd be wasting a lot of ice where it's not needed.

After use, I'd run water through it, (you've got 2 buckets of it now) then circulate hot PBW for a few minutes, followed by more water to rinse out the PBW. Blow all the liquid out before storing.

You could use a short starsan run, but you'll have to rinse it out with water before storing or the Starsan will keep attacking the copper, slowly dissolving it.

 

[owmatooth]

i was figuring i'd use stainless rather than copper, and something with a fairly larger I.D., maybe like 3/8. won't have as much heat exchange with that kind of higher volume, but will be less likely to get clogged with a hop leaf.

I'd be worried about running the boiling wort through, i think i'd lose the boil pretty quick, especially since i'm going to be running an electric kettle system. wouldn't the star san be enough prior to chilling the wort.

any guess on the volume that 50ft of 3/8 in stainless tubing would hold. wondering if i'd have to be concerned with the amount of water in it prior to use (after sanitizing) or wort in it after chilling.

thanks for the replies