HERMS coil used as immersion chiller

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tinoespinosa69

@v.ale.master @oinobrewing
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Just another crazy idea... My cooling process is as follows. I pump the hot wort to the Counterflow Coil with tap water. But the "pre-cooled" wort is returning to the BK. After having a lower temp around 100F, then I start the whirlpool. Form this point, I switch the water lines to ice-cold water from a cooler, pump the wort through the Counterflow chiller again, and discharge the wort to the Fermenter.
The pump is a Mark-II, so no so high-pressure discharge or flow ( 19 l/min or 5 gpm).
This process is consuming quite some time and is recirculating the wort several times to the BK until reaching the required temp before the second cooling step.
To improve the process, I was thinking to use an immersion chiller or maybe adding a HERMS type Coil inside the BK to use it as the first cooling step in my process.
I am assembling a water manifold, so it will only require to switch hoses connections point. And the hot water that actually is drained almost totally to the sewer, can be collected in the HLT for cleaning.
Does someone have a similar setup or experience with this?
Any idea is appreciated
 
If you get a big enough chiller, you should be able to skip complexities. FWIW, I found a HERMS coil in the boil kettle to be annoying for cleaning, but it works well in the HLT. You can run chillers in series, with cold tap water entering each of them.

Also, 100F coming out of the chiller is high. What is the temp of the water coming out your tap? By increasing flow of tap water and decreasing flow of wort, you should be able to get the output temp way down. My tap water temp is 55-60F, so if yours is way warmer, YMMV.
 
Just another crazy idea... My cooling process is as follows. I pump the hot wort to the Counterflow Coil with tap water. But the "pre-cooled" wort is returning to the BK. After having a lower temp around 100F, then I start the whirlpool. Form this point, I switch the water lines to ice-cold water from a cooler, pump the wort through the Counterflow chiller again, and discharge the wort to the Fermenter.
The pump is a Mark-II, so no so high-pressure discharge or flow ( 19 l/min or 5 gpm).
This process is consuming quite some time and is recirculating the wort several times to the BK until reaching the required temp before the second cooling step.
To improve the process, I was thinking to use an immersion chiller or maybe adding a HERMS type Coil inside the BK to use it as the first cooling step in my process.
I am assembling a water manifold, so it will only require to switch hoses connections point. And the hot water that actually is drained almost totally to the sewer, can be collected in the HLT for cleaning.
Does someone have a similar setup or experience with this?
Any idea is appreciated

I don't think you'd need a HERMS coil if your immersion chiller is rock solid. I have the anvil foundry 10.5g and I have a CuS.S. tri-coil immersion chiller. Its the chiller with 3 25ft coils all in one chiller. So since my anvil is nice and narrow I get good contact with the wort and chiller. I also have a spin cycle whirlpool arm to move the wort around the chiller. So here is what I do for summer months when my tap water is in mid-high 80s: run tap water through the chiller until wort gets to about 100 degrees which takes me about ~6 minutes, then I have a submersible pump which I have in the bottom of a 5g bucket that is ice water. I have two buckets ready to go. Pump the ice water through the chiller and when it runs out, I switch to second bucket and refill the first bucket. I basically go through 4 buckets of ice water to get my wort down to 68-69 degrees. In the winter when my tap is in the 50s, I don't need to use the buckets and the tap is great. So how good is your immersion chiller? Also not sure how much wort you are chilling. Im usually chilling about 6.5g or wort.
 
@NoCornOrRice and @Noob_Brewer Thank you both for the comments and ideas.
My CFCC is an SS Chiller from Northern Brewer and I normally run 6 gallons per batch
I ran the tap water and it was at 80F because of sunny and hot summer in TX that week, but also I found the water flow was restricted and the wort valve was totally open, the contrary of what was suggested by @NoCornOrRice, so the heat transfer capacity of the low water flow was the cause of having high wort temp leaving the first run through the CFCC.

Indeed the idea to have a HERMS coil inside the BK makes no sense when considering the cleaning procedure, right now without it is a PITA with all the trub and solid from the Boiling, so an immersion chiller will be the way to go if needed.

I will make another run this weekend and will update.
 
I run my wort through my herms coil and fill the hlt with ice blocks. Works better than my cfcs ever did. The larger diameter keeps the whirlpool strong and at the end I fill my fermenter with the wort exiting the hlt and it is in the 60s.
 
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