Convoluted Counterflow Stainless Steel 99$

[UofMontanaAlum]

I had a plate chiller and recently sold it. I was tired of worrying about plugging it up. I was surprised to see this chiller on sale at Midwest the day I sold the plate chiller so I immediately pulled the trigger and ordered it. Before it delivered I came across this thread and read the discouraging "reviews" of stainless counterflow chillers, I was concerned about my purchase. I brewed Sunday with the new chiller and, in my opinion, it works fantastic. It was able to cool from boil to 70 degrees in 5 minutes. That's not bad in my book. Certainly not as fast as the plate chiller but I also don't have to worry about plugging it up. I'm happy.

 

[Spellman]

I'm glad you were able to get yours to work, could you tell us any details on how you got it to work so well? Did you recirculate back into the kettle? What was your batch size? I want to be able to do a one pass into the fermenter, but my test was showing that not to be an option.

 

[Eugenio]

Just got mine and it's built like a tank, will def replace my home made one. Now to get a pump so i can recirculate.

Also, with my order came "brew like a monk". Good purchase!


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[Spellman]

I had a plate chiller and recently sold it. I was tired of worrying about plugging it up. I was surprised to see this chiller on sale at Midwest the day I sold the plate chiller so I immediately pulled the trigger and ordered it. Before it delivered I came across this thread and read the discouraging "reviews" of stainless counterflow chillers, I was concerned about my purchase. I brewed Sunday with the new chiller and, in my opinion, it works fantastic. It was able to cool from boil to 70 degrees in 5 minutes. That's not bad in my book. Certainly not as fast as the plate chiller but I also don't have to worry about plugging it up. I'm happy.

You didn't happen to have a shirron that was on craigslist did you? And if so, how well did it work?

 

[fearwig]

Ended up having a little extra time today and just ran a water test... not really impressed. My tap water just read 40*, should make for a pretty easy chill you would think. First I tried running boiling water through with the pump. Coming out was 130*+, slowing it down to just a trickle I could get it down to 70. Just using gravity wide open it was about 90, and closing the valve halfway brought it down to the 70's. Not very impressive given the ground water temp. I'm now convinced this is indeed not convoluted inside as advertised. My homemade garden hose cfc beats the pants off this, and I'm not really that happy with it either. It works well in the winter, but the summer months my water gets to about 65 and it has trouble with that. I'm also getting tired of the burnt rubber smell that fills my brewery from the hose while recirculating. I would really like the option of saving the waste water to the hlt for another batch, but prefer my beer without that first wort tire addition.

I'm sure someone will chime in and tell me I need to get a big plate chiller like a therminator or comparable, but I don't really want the hassle of keeping them clean (I've got more important things to do than flush, back-flush, bake in oven, flush, back-flush, repeat when you keep finding crud coming out).

Anyone have experience with the copper ones that can attest to their experiences? Anyone else try their SS ones yet and have different results? I'm thinking I'm going to be calling Midwest tomorrow.

Wow dude, that is not food safe, especially at heat, unless it's one of the expensive ones advertised as such. Lead and everything else awful goes into garden hoses.

 

[poptarts]

Wow dude, that is not food safe, especially at heat, unless it's one of the expensive ones advertised as such. Lead and everything else awful goes into garden hoses.

im sure its a copper tube inside a garden hose, the wort never touches anything but copper. Look up DIY counterflow chillers to get a picture.

 

[fearwig]

My mistake, I read "rubber smell" and figured he'd gone DIY insane.

 

[Spellman]

The smell was from the copper pipe inside having boiling wort recirculating through it heating up the hose around it. No part of the wort touches the hose, but on the flip side no part of the cooling water may be used for brewing. It is a high temp garden hose, but they are only rated for 150* I think. Either way no it is not nsf at any temp. My debate is do I see about returning the ss cfc, maybe exchange for a plate, or keep what I have with the diy garden hose one. I'm guessing I'll have to eat some shipping either way. I am stuck right where I never wanted to be with having a few things that kind of work, but nothing that is an end all solution. Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you. All I wanted was a low maintenance highly efficient chiller that doesn't break the bank (don't we all!). I've already made some considerable upgrades to my system and I'm getting low in my brew budget. I had hoped this ss chiller would be the deal I had been waiting for.

 

[augiedoggy]

The smell was from the copper pipe inside having boiling wort recirculating through it heating up the hose around it. No part of the wort touches the hose, but on the flip side no part of the cooling water may be used for brewing. It is a high temp garden hose, but they are only rated for 150* I think. Either way no it is not nsf at any temp. My debate is do I see about returning the ss cfc, maybe exchange for a plate, or keep what I have with the diy garden hose one. I'm guessing I'll have to eat some shipping either way. I am stuck right where I never wanted to be with having a few things that kind of work, but nothing that is an end all solution. Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you. All I wanted was a low maintenance highly efficient chiller that doesn't break the bank (don't we all!). I've already made some considerable upgrades to my system and I'm getting low in my brew budget. I had hoped this ss chiller would be the deal I had been waiting for.

You can make this a simple choice if you look at it logically,
Everybodys system is different... is your wort clear and trub free? if so I would recommend a plate chiller as they simply work better in this case (longer ones work better than shorter ones with more plates ) If you dont filter your wort well somhow before it enters the chiller than I would stick with the CFC as they work better than MOST IC setups and are much easier to keep clear of trub than plate chillers... There are exceptions to every rule and then there's pride and exaggeration to add to that which really has a tendency to cloud up the facts.

my B23-20 duda plate chiller was only like $110 and worth every penny... twice as much cooling capability as the 10 plate $100 shirron at my LHBS.

 

[BadWolfBrewing]

Ended up having a little extra time today and just ran a water test... not really impressed. My tap water just read 40*, should make for a pretty easy chill you would think. First I tried running boiling water through with the pump. Coming out was 130*+, slowing it down to just a trickle I could get it down to 70. Just using gravity wide open it was about 90, and closing the valve halfway brought it down to the 70's. Not very impressive given the ground water temp. I'm now convinced this is indeed not convoluted inside as advertised. My homemade garden hose cfc beats the pants off this, and I'm not really that happy with it either. It works well in the winter, but the summer months my water gets to about 65 and it has trouble with that. I'm also getting tired of the burnt rubber smell that fills my brewery from the hose while recirculating. I would really like the option of saving the waste water to the hlt for another batch, but prefer my beer without that first wort tire addition.

I'm sure someone will chime in and tell me I need to get a big plate chiller like a therminator or comparable, but I don't really want the hassle of keeping them clean (I've got more important things to do than flush, back-flush, bake in oven, flush, back-flush, repeat when you keep finding crud coming out).

Anyone have experience with the copper ones that can attest to their experiences? Anyone else try their SS ones yet and have different results? I'm thinking I'm going to be calling Midwest tomorrow.

This is a week old, but I wanted to reiterate what JaDeD said. A short, fat tube CFC is best utilized by recirculating it through (and I believe that the convoluted is 5/8" tubing). Sounds like you have a pump, so that should be an option for you. Just a single run through is either moving too fast, or at just a trickle isn't touching most of the side walls. Pumping through and recirculating at full bore should get you chilled in short order.

A DIY CFC probably has 3/8 tubing on the inside, and so you are able to run slower while still getting good contact. The smaller tubing means you can't flow as fast as with a larger tube, which makes the DIY not as well suited for recirculating.

Also, not to imply that you made this mistake, but running the xchanger in parallel vs counterflow makes a huge difference.

Also, recirculating makes for a nice compact pile of trub, hop crud, and cold break in the kettle. Plus, you get to use whirlpool hops, which is a neat handle to have.

 

[ImNoExpert]

Anyone successfully connected fittings to the wort in/out on this chiller yet?

I'm looking at it and 5/8" compression seems too big...

 

[pickles]

I tried a 1/2" swaglok compression and it is too small. I'm going to drill out two 1.5" tri-clamp cap and solder them on.

 

[dbowdit16]

I've heard that the 5/8" compression fittings will work if you replace the stainless ferrule with 3 corny post O-rings.

 

[ImNoExpert]

I got a 5/8" brass compression fitting to see if it works (before I pull the trigger on the nice stainless). No go. Slips right off. I'm not sure if the o rings are going to supply enough friction to prevent it from being pulled off. From what I under stood about the o-rings used on the copper CCFWC is that they were mainly to make sure they seal liquid tight. It's such a weird size tube. I can't find anything like it on the internet.it's somewhere in between 1/2" and 5/8". I can't find any fittings that would work right.


I'm kinda at a loss. Maybe that's why they were on clearance.

 

[poptarts]

Stretch some 1/2" silicone hose over the damn thing and get a 1$ hose clamp.

 

[Spellman]

So I never did sell this but shelved it. I ended up silver soldering some 1/2 npt fittings on the wort ports today. Boiled 11 g of water and ran a test. Took me 15min of recirculating back into the kettle to reach 78* coming from the chiller, from there I slowed the ouput of the chiller to where it would read around 72* and drained all of the water in the bk. From start to finish took just a hair under 25 min. Does this seem kind of long to other people? I haven't really timed my old garden hose cfc doing the same thing, but I believe it is pretty close. I usually recirculate it in the summer for about 10min then drain to fv, winter I can do one pass. Does anyone else have any more real world experience on how long this should take with the stainless cfc? I still find this unit a bit underwhelming.

 

[pickles]

I have one and it definitely takes longer than my plate chiller. I like it better though cause my plate chiller constantly plugged with hop debris even with filtration. I've opted to use my plate chiller as a water pre-cooler utilizing an ice bath.

 

[ImNoExpert]

So I never did sell this but shelved it. I ended up silver soldering some 1/2 npt fittings on the wort ports today. Boiled 11 g of water and ran a test. Took me 15min of recirculating back into the kettle to reach 78* coming from the chiller, from there I slowed the ouput of the chiller to where it would read around 72* and drained all of the water in the bk. From start to finish took just a hair under 25 min. Does this seem kind of long to other people? I haven't really timed my old garden hose cfc doing the same thing, but I believe it is pretty close. I usually recirculate it in the summer for about 10min then drain to fv, winter I can do one pass. Does anyone else have any more real world experience on how long this should take with the stainless cfc? I still find this unit a bit underwhelming.

Whit kind of fittings did you use? I've been looking for stainless but having trouble finding them. I was going to go copper, but would rather keep the nice stainless look.

 

[pickles]

The tubing isn't a standard size so I ended up drilling tri-clamp blank caps and brazing them on.