Gravity Fed Immersion Chiller

[Wakadaka]

Sorry if this has been discussed before. I have seen some people tossing around the idea, but nobody with experience doing it.

Could I build an immersion chiller, but instead of having water coming from a faucet or hose, have it coming from my bottling bucket? Would it have enough pressure to push it all the way through a 25 or 50 foot copper hose and out the other end?

Anybody ever done this? or have any ideas about it? Seems like I could get it much cooler faster without the use of a prechiller. My tap water is about 70 or so, but I could just fill up the bottling bucket with ice, pour a bunch of salt on it, and have <32 degree water running through it

 

[Kaz]

Seeing as flow rate is one of the factors that affect how quickly your immersion chiller will cool down the wort, I'm not sure you would benefit that much from the colder water. You would have to have the bottling bucket up pretty high to get much flow rate out of it. I have a 75 gallon rain barrel that sits about 3 feet off the ground and it still barely pushes water through a 4' hose.

 

[Wakadaka]

I was thinking up on my refrigerator, the pot on my stove, and the out tube going to a bucket on the ground? Do you think that would be enough or not?

 

[JetSmooth]

Try putting it on the roof of a three-story building with the "cold water" (which will warm up pretty dang fast, ice and salt or no) on the first floor deck, and your fermenter in the basement. Then you might have enough of a drop.

Plus, are you REALLY going to lift a boiling pot of wort over your head on top of a fridge?

Just asking for trouble, if you ask me.

 

[Wakadaka]

Try putting it on the roof of a three-story building with the "cold water" (which will warm up pretty dang fast, ice and salt or no) on the first floor deck, and your fermenter in the basement. Then you might have enough of a drop.

Plus, are you REALLY going to lift a boiling pot of wort over your head on top of a fridge?

Just asking for trouble, if you ask me.

Sounds good I'll try that.

I wouldn't be lifting the pot on top. The pot would stay right on the stove where it was boiling. The bucket of water/ice would be on top of the fridge. with hosing going down through the chiller out into a bucket on the ground.

Is it really that unrealistic to think that this would work? You guys are making it sound like it takes a rediculous amount of pressure to pump through an IC, but garden hoses and sinks aren't super high pressure. I imagine I could get close to the same flow from gravity.

 

[Bobby_M]

I have drained icewater into a chiller from a bottling bucket sitting up on a ladder but only as the final cooling pass when tap water was over 85F. I don't think I'd try doing it from boiling because it's just too much ice.

 

[Kaz]

There are a couple of other options here...

a) Use 2 chillers, 1 in the hot wort and a pre-chiller that is submerged in the bucket of ice water. You could wait until you bottom out on the tap water and then drop the pre-chiller in the ice.

b) Use a recirculating pump hook a small submersible pump up to the inlet of your chiller, drop it in your bucket and run the outflow of your chiller back into the bucket. You would still be better off using tap water until you get below 80F and then switching to ice water in the bucket.

Otherwise, I agree with Jetsmooth, you would have to get pretty high up to get a flow rate that would carry away the heat of 5 gallons of boiling wort. Pick up a copy of the latest Brew Your Own magazine, there's a good article on immersion chiller thermodynamics that would let you figure some of this out.

 

[Wakadaka]

I'm less curious about the thermodynamic aspects right now as much as whether or not it will get enough flow to run through the chiller. I was considering also using a pump, but would rather not spend the money on one.

Basically I am stuck brewing indoors, and I don't want to have to bother setting it up to my sink.

Bobby, if you have drained ice water from a bucket to get the last few degrees, then that seems to mean that it would get enough flow to work? I would start with tap water of course, til its under 100 and then add ice to finish off the job, same as I do for my ice bath method.

 

[944play]

If the recirculating pump ($20 at Harbor Freight...) is impossible, just fill the fermenter once the wort is near tap water temp and put it in your fermentation fridge/swamp cooler/cold room until it's at pitching temp. Oxygenate and pitch after the wort has cooled properly; if your process is clean, there should be no problem leaving the unpitched wort a few hours to cool the rest of the way slowly.

I would not put salt water through my chiller.

 

[Wakadaka]

any other opinions on whether gravity will be able to push the water through the chiller or not? If nobody has done it, I will probably try it out, and post back about whether or not it works.

 

[JetSmooth]

Sounds good I'll try that.

I wouldn't be lifting the pot on top. The pot would stay right on the stove where it was boiling. The bucket of water/ice would be on top of the fridge. with hosing going down through the chiller out into a bucket on the ground.

Is it really that unrealistic to think that this would work? You guys are making it sound like it takes a rediculous amount of pressure to pump through an IC, but garden hoses and sinks aren't super high pressure. I imagine I could get close to the same flow from gravity.

I got it. Somehow, I imagined you were running the wort through the chiller stuck in the cold water. That just didn't add up to me.

I still think you're better off where you can control the flow rate. Plus, you'll likely need several bottling bucket refills to push enough water through to draw enough heat out. Best bet is the recirculating pump.

 

[Wakadaka]

I could partially control the flow rate based on height differences, and the valve on the bottling bucket. I wouldn't mind refilling the bucket several times.

I will look into a recirculating pump though.

 

[Kaz]

Ya, a higher flow rate is your friend here. The faster the cold water moves through the chiller, the less time it has to be warmed by the hot wort and thus the more chilling power it has throughout the entire chiller. I've thought about looking into a pump myself, I was fine in the winter here, but now that it is warmer out, it takes me almost 30 minutes to get down to 75F.

 

[CrazedArmadillo]

Yes, water will go through the chiller with gravity alone. but my guess is that it'll take forever...plus the inconvenience of setting everything up and refilling the bucket a few times would be terrible in my opinion.

I picked this pump up last month at Harbor Freight for $9.99. It's not on sale anymore, but maybe you could find a similar pump on sale (or this one might go on sale again if you wait long enough). Even at full price though, it shouldn't break the bank and it'd save you a lot of hassle. http://www.harborfreight.com/258-gph-submersible-fountain-pump-47117.html

My plan is to place the pump in the sink and keep the sink full of tap water as I pump through the chiller...then once the wort is cooled enough, I can dump some ice into the sink to get it the rest of the way to pitching temps.

 

[Wakadaka]

I'll give it a shot once I get some cash, and if it isn't working as good as I want then I will probably get a pump for it too.

I'm planning on coupling it with an ice bath as well to try to cool as quickly as possible.

 

[JasonG]

It seems like I'm the only person that has done this before

I have done this exact thing quite a bit, especially when I lived in a warmer climate and when brewing in the summer. I have done what a previous poster has mentioned - I hook my imersion chiller to the hose and cool down most of the way with tap water. When I start my brew day, I fill up my bottling bucket with ice and water and make a slush and let it sit a bit to get really cold. Personally I've never used salt, but I can see why it would work. Then, once the wort is cooled down a fair amount, I switch over to the bottling bucket. I then put the hose in the bottling bucket so that I don't deplete the water volume too much. The flow rate is by no means amazing, but you get a fair amount of flow through it, and since the water flowing is ice cold, it definitely cools the wort. I usually have just placed the bottling bucket a foot or two above the brew kettle when I do this.

Although this isn't amazing cooling, it gets the job done, and a lot faster IMO than just using tap water. You should definitely try this and see how it works.

JG

 

[Palefire]

You might want to check out the no-chill threads. Seems like that'd just be easier.

 

[brewingmeister]

The water will flow through the chiller just not very fast. You can siphon liquid from two vessels sitting next to each other until the levels match up, it just doesn't go very fast because of newton and his damn laws. The flow is never going to match your house's water pressure of an average 60 or so. Plus filling the bucket multiple times sounds like a mess. You mention wanting to stay in your kitchen and not go outside. In a previous house I installed another valve under the kitchen sink with a short coupling hose (like one for your toilet or faucet) and ran a chiller off that line. No messing with faucet adapters, leave it connected then just attach the chiller and turn on the valve when you want to use it.
I'll look for it tomorrow, it's just taking up space in my toolbox.

-cheers

___

 

[Bobby_M]

Just to be clear, I wouldn't try gravity draining for the entire cooling cycle 212F to 70F but it is marginally viable for that last 20 or so degrees. It doesn't have to flow quickly when the coolant is 32F. The output of the chiller has to have a hose attached and that hose has to go down and lay flat on the ground to pull a good siphon. I drained about 5 gallons of icewater through a 3/8" x 40' IC in about 10 minutes doing this. You have to make sure you're mixing the wort or otherwise moving the IC around.

I only did this 3 times before I decided it was a pain in the ass. Now I'll just put my 80F wort into the fermenting fridge and let it take care of the last 14 degrees or so BEFORE pitching.

 

[outside92129]

I've done the ice-gravity thing for the last 3 batches, it worked well. But i only did it for the final cooling pass, no sense in wasting ice when regular water works great on freshly boiled wort. The hot wort was a ground level, and i've had the ice water reservoir at +3ft and also +6 on a ladder. The coil was 25ft of 3/8" copper.

 

[outside92129]

Oh yeah, and like Bobby_M, after using this method three times i'm done with it. Total PITA.

 

[Wakadaka]

hmm nice to hear some input from some experience. I guess I will be sticking with an ice bath method for a while longer. I have also been doing the "partial chill" method, of getting it down to about 85-90, then just dumping it in the fermenter, and waiting to pitch.

 

[JuanMoore]

My first chiller was gravity fed and worked great, but it was a slightly different design. I coiled up ~20' of 3/8 OD copper and installed it in a 5 gal bucket. I would fill the bucket with ice and a little water and then gravity drain from the kettle through the coil and into the fermenter while stirring the ice water. Using 2 bags of ice I was able to chill a 5 gal batch from boiling to <70F in less than 20 min. It required a lot of ice, but it was fast and easy to use.