Counter Flow Chiller - Holy Cow!!!

[stratslinger]

I made my second attempt at using my counter flow chiller yesterday, and I'm very impressed and very pleased at this particular addition to my brewery.

First off, this is the beast of which I speak. SWMBO gave me this bad boy for my birthday back in December. No, this is not only the second time I've brewed since then; it's just the second time I've brewed on my own rig. I've brewed a couple other times on friends' gear where they're better equiped for New England cold weather brewing. But Saturday was an absolutely gorgeous day to spend out in the backyard making beer!

To provide a little backgroung, on my first attempt I had thought I would be able to gravity feed this chiller. Sadly, I wasn't able to figure out an adequate height delta to make the gravity feed work well, and I fought with a very slow flow of wort going throw. As a result, I actually overshot (undershot?) my desired temperature, despite my best efforts to throttle the chilled water going through the chiller - taking much longer than I would have liked and chilling the wort down to the low 50's...

This time I came better prepared: I borrowed a pump from a friend for the day. I found that with the pump wide open and the garden hose still somewhat throttled back, I was able to chill the wort down to an ideal 68F! Now, I expect I'll have to tweak these settings a little in the heat of summer, but I'm definitely pleased with these results.

Long story short: For anyone considering the purchase of a counter flow chiller: I'd strongly recommend using a pump to push the wort through the chiller, and they definitely do a great job of chilling your wort FAST!

 

[evandena]

Cool.
What type of barb did you use to connect your pump line to your CFC input?

 

[stratslinger]

Barb? Barb you say?

Actually, I just invested in a bunch of camlocks. And I went with street elbows and the camlocks with 1/2" NPT threaded fittings, so the chiller itself became the most restrictive part of the system, in terms of inner diameter.

So this _was_ one more change from last time, when I still had 1/2" barbs on everything, and clamps everywhere trying to hold everything together. The camlocks were a little more pricey than hose barbs and using clamps out of my wood shop, they were a heckuva lot more convenient to use, and looked way cooler to boot!

 

[evandena]

Can you show me what it looks like? I just ordered all my camlocks, but I'm still not sure how I want to go from 1/2 tube to 3/8 OD copper.

 

[stratslinger]

Ahh - that transition...

I'll try to snap a picture tonight, but basically all I did was go to Home Depot and pick up a couple compression fittings. It was a simple step up: compression 3/8 on one end to 1/2" NPT female on the other. Once you have that in place, it's a very simple matter to thread the camlocks and valves and such right on where you want them. And if you're more confident sweating copper than I am, you can do the same thing with a soldered fitting for a few bucks less.