Freeze the immersion chiller?

Bassman2003 · Dec 3, 2023

Yes, a two stage setup can help. What size or make is your old chiller?

Red over White · Dec 3, 2023

Here in the NC my tap water gets to 80°F in the summer. To combat this, I brew high gravity and dilute with 30% chilled distilled water into the fermenter. There are a lot of benefits for me with this approach.

Since I recirculate with 2 CFC'S in parallel back into the kettle via 2 separate WP ports (high and low) and allow break to settle before running off, I added a SS blichmann chilling coil to my kettle lid. This allows me to get to the low 80s with tap water very quickly and then I recirculate ice water only through the coil in the lid while it settles to drop it further. The chilled distilled water then gets me down to the mid 50s for pitching and I only use one tray of ice from the refrigerators ice maker. This method saves me from buying ice, but did cost more upfront to add the 2nd CFC and blichmann coil. Having said that, I wouldn't change a thing.

oakbarn · Dec 3, 2023

Bassman2003 said:
Chilling is a interesting topic for me since I live in Texas. The big things I have noticed are move and replace. Meaning you need to carry away the warmth as well as keep the wort moving so you do not develop pockets of warmth. Also, it is best to keep your chilling water at least 30F degrees cooler than your wort temperature for fast, effective chilling.

We are often forced to make solutions that are not optimal giving our location or budget constraints. In a perfect world, the best chilling approach would be to end the boil, gravity feed a long stainless counterflow chiller with 37 degree water flowing through it year round which would end up in a settling pot with a rotating racking arm to grab the clear wort for fermentation. Instant, no hassle ability to run to any temperature in a single pass. I have actually wondered about creating this setup with two water tanks and a large fridge. My current garage does not have the room, but keep 20 gallons of water in a fridge, pump it out through the chiller into a holding tank, then pump it from that tank back in to the fridge tank. The tank would weight 225 pounds, which might be an issue, but the chilling would be great and the setup would not be that expensive...

I can get to Pitch temp almost at the end of whirlpool or quicker. I have two plate chillers in series.

Plate Chiller 1 pre chills the chilling water for Pate Chiller 2.

Plate Chiller 1 has tap water on the Wort In and Wort Out goes to Plate Chiller 2 Water In
Plate Chiller 2 has iced water in a large trash can with a submersible pump able to flow chilled water to the Water In of the Plate Chiller and the Water out returns to the trash can.

Plate Chiller 2 has Chilled Water from Plate Chiller 1 to Water In and Water Out goes to my garden via a garden hose (so not to waste water as I water there anyway)
Plate Chiller 2 has Wort from the BK to the Wort In and the Wort Out has a hose that I can move to the Brew Kettle or the Fermentor.

We start by passing 185 degree water though Plate Chiller 2 during the Boil. We move this water from the HLT , through the Wort Side, and back to the HLT (via the moveable Wort Out Hose.) We start with about 45 minutes left in the boil.

At the end of Boil, we start the flow of Wort through Plate Chiller 2 and return it to the Brew Kettle. Once we have positive flow, we start tap water running though Plate Chiller one. . We watch the Wort Out Temp of Plate Chiller 2. If it is at about 120, we can start the submersible pump. We should be very near Pitch at this point on the process. We stop every thing and let it settle, once at Pitch. After a short while, we move the Plate Chiller 2 Wort Out hose to the Fermentor.

Using two plate chillers shorten the time from boiling to pitch significantly. Because we are using iced water to chill the Tap Water and then using the Chilled tap water to chill the Wort. Before we used chilled water from the trash can to chill the Wort from Boiling but that took a lot of Ice and we could not recycle the water as it was quite warm when we started. Since we are chilling the tap water only, the Iced bath does not normally need more than another Bag if that. We brew Big batches (sometimes 2 x 20 gallons), so we need quite a bit of chilling.

The setup was easy to implement and only needed another Plate Chiller, so it was an easy choice for us.

Airborneguy · Dec 3, 2023

Bassman2003 said:
Yes, a two stage setup can help. What size or make is your old chiller?

It’s a stainless model, not sure how long but I’d guess 50’.

Bassman2003 · Dec 3, 2023

Any chance you can use both in the wort? I got lucky because the chiller that came with the Anvil Foundry fit inside the coil of my 50' NY Homebrew 1/2" I.D. chiller. So I hooked them up together with some "T" connections a la Jayded style.

sibelman · Dec 3, 2023

day_trippr said:
a process that has a chance of sanitizing the inside of the IC.

On this side topic: there's more than one way to have good success sanitizing the inside of chiller tubing. Once that's done (chemicals or, better, the oven) then covering the tube ends should keep the chiller sanitized until use.

A salty slush with super-cooled ice sounds simpler than a two-coil method, but you could combine these ideas.

Happy brewing, @Airborneguy!