Chilling Wort With Texas Groundwater

[Gustatorian]

Apologize if this is long-winded...


Can't seem to get my boiling wort down pitching temps (easily, at least).

Current set up:

Pumping my wort from BK through a Blichmann therminator (plate chiller).
Texas groundwater (est temp = 110 F) runs through copper coils sitting in a bucked of ice water (est temp - 45 F), then through the plate chiller.

This process gets my wort from boiling to approximately 105 F when it goes into the Fermentor (conical)

My Question:

Instead of running straight into my fermentor, can I run the 105 F "chilled" wort back into the my boil kettle for another run through the Therminator until I get to a pitcheable temp? Will this effect the wort from going to 105 F back to a BK filled with over 200 F wort?

THANKS!

 

[helterscelter]

You could do that. Lots of folks recirculate directly back into the kettle until the output temp on the chiller is as cold as they need. Personally I drop the temp, while recirculating as far as I can get it with plain ground water, then I switch to a utility pump in a bucket of Ice water.

Running a pre chiller helps, but for me circulating ice water through the chiller is quicker.

Edit: missed one of your questions. Recirculating back into the kettle will take longer to bring the whole batch down to temp. On top of the whole volume of wort, you're also having to cool there kettle too. As I mentioned, dropping the temp while recirculating until your out put temp from the chiller is good, is the only way to go. Chilling all the way down while recirculating will take forever.

 

[BrunDog]

In live in FL and tried to pre-chill my ground water using the coil in ice water method noted above. It does not work, as the volume of flush water is too much to be appreciably cooled.

Doing what you mentioned is essentially recirculating to get temps down, which will work but you will never get the wort temp below your groundwater temp. Therefore you would need to switch your groundwater for ice water to get the temp further down as noted by helterscelter.

What I do is have two inline counterflow chillers. The first cools wort down to nearly groundwater temp, then that is passed through another which has recirculating water from a bucket of ice (pumped using small fountain pump). This is more expensive of course but allows for cooling in one pass very quickly. I can get down to 60 degrees fairly easily straight from the kettle.

-BD

 

[Natdavis777]

I recirculate the entire 10gal batch through my plate chiller until the output* wort temp reaches 70F or below (season-dependent)

I have a thermometer on the output side of the plate chiller, so I can monitor the exiting wort going back through my whirlpool arm. This allows me to save water by not cooling the entire batch down to pitching temp per say, just what is exiting the chiller.

Honesty, it sounds like a fountain pump in an ice bath recirculating through the therminator is the way to go for better chilling. I know a lot of people utilize this method with great success. I am even having my buddy that I got homebrewing switch to this method for his system, as it is fairly cheap and very effective.

 

[brewing_wookie]

Living in Southwest AZ I have the same issues with hot ground water. I do what BrunDog says above. I run tap water thru my wort chiller and bring it down to about 120 or so (really down to waterever my tap water is at. Then I start with the ice bath. I bring 3 gal of hot wort (200+) down to 75 in 15 min

 

[GQT]

I can get down to 60 degrees fairly easily straight from the kettle.

That sounds good. Do you mind sharing the specs of your chillers? I mean things like total length and number of turns of each one, inner/outer diameter of the pipe and of the hose, flow rate of both water and wort, whatever else.
I'm in a similar situation and am desperately looking for a solution.

One thing that comes to my mind is that water cooling is so UN-efficient when compared to ice cooling. Indeed, due to phase change specific heat of ice is times higher than that of water (more detail ).
In simple words, 1 kg of ice in a sanitized plastic bag will chill 10 kg of water by more than 8 degrees C. Dumping 10 kg of ice in well sanitized wrappings into 20 L (a bit more than 5 gals) of hot wort will cool it down from 100 to less than 60 degrees (Centigrade it is).

On another hand, it's better to use ice when wort is pre-cooled to at least half boiling temperature when cooling with groundwater starts slowing down. But the point is, ice must be IN the wort to give us full benefits of its efficiency.

What I'm thinking is maybe one counterflow chiller to pre-cool the wort, and one extra pot filled with ice frozen in soda bottles and wrapped in sterile ziplocks right before being introduced to wort.

Might be not as fast as two inline counterflows, but should be somewhat cheaper.

Has anyone thought about it?

 

[tennesseean_87]

I'd let the groundwater cool as far as it will, then maybe recirculate the ice water as mentioned above.

One easy thing I often do is shoot for coming up a quart or half-gallon short of desired volume and have some sterile water (distilled, etc.) in the fridge or freezer. When I get about as close as I can I just top off with the cool water or ice and let that bring me the rest of the way down to pitching temps.

 

[BrunDog]

Lots of ways to skin this cat. It comes down to whether you want to use only one chiller. If you do then cooling down to near groundwater temp first, then switching to ice is the best way. You don't want to cool from boiling using ice, because despite the inefficiency of flush water, you will burn a lot of ice.

My cflow chillers are a custom design that I built. They are coiled copper tubes inside a PVC pipe. I will post pics later, but they function just like any other cflow chiller.

-BD