Flow through immersion chiller

[Atticmonkey]

Ive built a 20' coiled copper immerision chiller for cooling down my wort. How much flow do you send through? Ive read somewhere that said only a trickle should be used. Any reason for that other than saving water? Just curious how you guys run yours? Thanks alot.Jason

 

[david_42]

I only have about 25 psi of water pressure here, so I just hook up & open wide. The water runs out onto the lawn. With any chiller of this type the larger the temperature difference between the wort and the cooling water the faster it cools. The average temperature in a chiller is (inlet +outlet)/2, wort temperature varies as it cools. The only thing you can change (without a pre-chiller) is flow rate. More is better.

I've checked the total volume required and it's rarely over 10-15 gallons. I'll catch the first five gallons in a pail and use it from cleaning. The rest is too cool to matter.

 

[anthrobe]

The more cooling water you can flow through the better.

 

[rewster451]

This forum is the best I have found for answering questions as thoroughly as they can be.

 

[SwAMi75]

Ive built a 20' coiled copper immerision chiller for cooling down my wort. How much flow do you send through? Ive read somewhere that said only a trickle should be used. Any reason for that other than saving water? Just curious how you guys run yours? Thanks alot.Jason

You're probably thinking of a counterflow chiller. In one of those, you generally want to run the beer through fairly slowly to increase it's contact time with the chiller.

As was stated, you'll want to run your water through your chiller as fast as you can (unless you've got it hooked to a fire hydrant or something)....same with a counterflow.

 

[El Pistolero]

This forum is the best I have found for answering questions as thoroughly as they can be.

Or for beating dead horses...whichever comes first.

 

[Brewsmith]

I run mine slow until all of the air bubbles from the garden hose come out, then I crank it up. My first time using it, the air bubbles blew the tubing off the barb and blew water all over the kitchen.