I was talking more about guys who use multipass because a single pass won't do it, which is the case in much of the south. Might as well use an IC in those cases.
Or use a prechiller. We have warm tap water in CA and the CFC's I have seen in use get it in one pass. But if you are running into the problem you describe and don't have a PC, then yes, you have to recirc. But that has yet to be a problem for the ones I have seen even in hot summers in CA.
Everything is fairly sanitary post boil in the chill path if recircing a CFC.
But in a single pass you aren't recircing, so you have to sanitize it...just like you would sanitize your transfer lines using an IC. No additional steps. device vs device...so far
Thats not fair. A CFC should take exactly twice as long for a 10G vs. 5G.
Fair? Fair has nothing to do with it...it's a reality. When I have used a 5 gallon IC on a 10 gallon batch, yes, IT DID TAKE TWICE AS LONG. Which is too long. And of course I agitated the wort using the IC. However, by having to stand over 10 gallons of recently boiling wort with my hand half way in the kettle stirring steaming wort for almost 30 minutes worrying the whole time that I might drop a bead of sweat or lint from my shirt or any myriad other contaminants into my wort, I am not sure I wasn't the one that was being agitated. So much for your simplicity trumping all theory.
So either I have to preform that lame task or have two IC's, one for each batch size, actually you still have to agitate with each size. Pure simplicity is sanitizing a CFC the same way you would you transfer lines and turn on a ball valve to transfer/chill your wort. Instead you are claiming that standing over your wort for even 15 minutes to agitate it (and yourself), not to mention greater risk contamination is somehow more simple? FUD
If your IC performance was so poor, your CFC shouldn't have been that great either using the same tap temp.
Sorry that just isn't correct. I have used my IC for years, many years, and my friend converted me to CFC's in one single demo. He let me borrow his CFC and in my brewing enviro it chilled in a single pass. I was able to transfer/chill my wort in under ten minutes. With my IC had to chill for 15 then transfer. (I know not a true apples to apples comparison but it was actually later in the summer so the CFC had a theoretical disadvantage but worked better)
But how do you know whether your CFC is actually clean. FUD!
Sigh. The point I was making was that it was fewer steps to insure sanitation in a CFC. I can counter with how do you know your transfer lines are actually clean? Comparing those two parts is equal. And if you are recircing your boiling wort thru your transfer lines to sanitize and still manually agitating your wort with your IC...I dont see it being any simpler, at all. Doing a sanitation flush on a CFC is easier than manually agitating wort with an IC for 15 minutes. For me at least.
Easiest to protect against infections is more than stretch. See FUD above.
Agree to disagree. You are chilling your wort by standing over it and agitating hoping nothing migrates into the wort during the agitation...then transferring through sanitized lines. I know, I did it for a decade and a half that way. A CFC meanwhile is just doing the transfer step. The line is routed thru the CFC and therefore is closed. Boiling wort transfered chilled into your fermenter.
Yes, but with an IC all you do is run with tap water 'til it plateaus, then switch to an ice bath recirc for the last bit until you hit your temp. It does require a pump of some kind, but nothing fancy.
With a CFC single pass, you have to pre-chill the input somehow, and maintain a fairly precise input temp, or your output temp will go all over the place unless you sit there adjusting throughput. It's not as simple thing to do.
FUD overload...how is using tap water then switching to a pumped ice bath easier than placing a pre-chiller inline with your coolant water and forgetting about it. On really hot days I am planning to place my old IC (which already has hose fittings) in a bucket of ice and running my coolant water from the hose thru the IC (in the ice bath) and then through the cold side of my CFC. How is that any harder than switching inputs mid cooldown and then pumping water into it. To do it the way you are describing (which I have done) requires a pump (a second pump if you are also recircing your wort) as well as the ice vessel. Again, your simplicity point is losing footing. Not to mention that if you are returning the water to the ice bath, that has absorbed thermal energy from a run though the IC, the ice bath with begin to warm up. You will be wasting that resource before some of it is even used.
Then again, if it works for you...cheers.