Cleaning my counterflow wort chiller

[FredC]

I have made only one batch of beer thus far and it has been in the fermenter for only one week. However, I do have a question regarding equipment cleaning.

I built my own version of a counterflow wort chiller. It consists of 50 feet of 1/2 inch copper tubing coiled around a ridgid copper pipe frame. It then goes into a 30 gallon plastic barrel that will be filled with iced water. The bottom end is fitted through the wall of the barrel using a bulkhead fitting and the top is fited out with a removable funnel.

The question is, how does one clean the inside of the wort chiller?

I am really paranoid about cleanliness and sanitation. So, what I did after my first batch was safely in the primary with the yeast pitched, I went back out and slowly ran two gallons of near boiling professional brewers wash solution through it. Yes, I had drained the ice water off first so the water was still very hot when it came out. Then I rinsed three gallons of near boiling plain water through it.

Is that sufficient for cleaning the inside?

 

[DrawTap88]

I'd say you're good.

 

[goodwood]

Hey I'm working on an idea like that. Do you recirculate the ice water or use a hose as well?

 

[goodwood]

Also what was your cooling time? Any difficulties? How much ice?

 

[snevey]

Hey I'm working on an idea like that. Do you recirculate the ice water or use a hose as well?

I'm picturing this as an immersion chiller-looking device that sits in a bucket of ice water. The hot wort is then ran through the copper pipe which cools the wort.

Am I correct? If so, I never even thought of this!

 

[goodwood]

I'm picturing this as an immersion chiller-looking device that sits in a bucket of ice water. The hot wort is then ran through the copper pipe which cools the wort.

Am I correct? If so, I never even thought of this!

well, i was thinking of a countflow inside a bucket with cool water. a pump placed inside recirculates the water so there is always constant cold water touching.

the pump is like 20 bucks. the kind you put in a small fountain in your yard.

 

[FredC]

I will take some pictures and post them as soon as I can.

One of the things I did in my design was to try and get the coils around my frame evenly spaced so that the length of the tube ran through the entire column of water. Primarily because the colder water would be at the bottom even after the top water was heated by the boiling wort.

That being said, during its "first run", it was able to cool the wort from boiling to 70 degrees in the amount of time it takes to slowly drain out of the boil kettle. Being a newbie, I forgot to time it but I am sure it did not take over 15 minutes.

As far as the amount of ice needed, We used a tewnty pound bag of ice with several plastic bottles with water frozen the night before. I would suspect the amount of ice needed will vary with the temperature of the water going into the water bath. I did take that temperature prior to putting ice in and it was 80 degrees.

My thoughts are to use large chunks of ice rather than crushed ice when the water temperature is 70 degrees or above because our crushed ice quickly melted and only the large chunks remained.

However, because the ice "chunks" were in plastic bottles, I noticed it did tend to "insulate" and inhibit cooling. Therefore, I would suggest using bare blocks of ice.

Lastly, I think it may be necessary for lagers to use a salt/ice mixture to really get the temps down necessary to cool the wort down to lager yeast temperature.

Best Regards
Fred

 

[Dan]

Did you ever get an answer on the best way to clean the copper CFC?