How do you use your plate chiller?

[storytyme]

Again, not speaking from experience here, but I’ll share my thoughts anyway.

I think adjusting flow rates is a fine tune once you’re in the ballpark.
The coarse adjust knobs are water temp and chiller surface area.

@November chiller has about twice the surface area as yours. He’s reporting ~1 gallon of wort per minute, single pass.
That is excellent.
I’d be curious to know his water temp and flowrate.

I need about 5 minutes to chill my wort down to ~100*F with an immersion chiller with ~85*F water temp.
Then I switch to ice water with an $8 pump to get down to pitching temps.

@FunkedOut can you explain a little more how you use this pump to recirculate the ice water. Hoses? I've never used one. Thanks.

 

[mongoose33]

I have to extend my comments on the CF chiller. I had a terrible brew day today using that chiller. My fault, of course. I figure every time I make a mistake I learn something. I also figure I must be getting pretty smart.

Anyway, today was my 4th brew day on the new equipment. I have a good target for strike temp, and I'm going to recirc until I get the temp to stabilize there. So it stabilizes at 162/3, which given the grain and cooler and temps and such should get me about 152 mash temp.

I get the water pumped into the mash tun, underletting, and it takes maybe 15 minutes. I climb up a stepstool to stir it and take an initial temp, and it's.....about 135 degrees! OMIGOD!

I figured that because I dialed down the pumping rate, AND apparently the water wasn't completely off in the CF chiller, i.e., coming through at a trickle, I was chilling what went into the mash tun.

I almost aborted the batch at that point, but thought I'd try to fix it. Poured in a gallon of boiling water, added another 2.25 pounds of crushed grain, stir, and let it sit for an hour after that. I lauter off and it's tasty and sweet. Preboil gravity is 1.048, which is where I'd expect. I decided to brew it, and I think it's turned out ok.

So lesson learned--I have that new setup so I can monitor the temp of the wort as it comes out of the chiller. Do you think I looked at that thermometer dial even one time while all this was going on? I did not.

Next time, I'm going to handle the water differently, and pay closer attention. I hope it doesn't take a lot longer to dial in this new system.

 

[FunkedOut]

@FunkedOut can you explain a little more how you use this pump to recirculate the ice water. Hoses? I've never used one. Thanks.

here's the pump attached to a garden hose:

i just submerge it in a cooler with ice water:

this is the garden hose from the hose bib, going to the chiller for the 1st 5 minutes or so, where i make 10 gallons of hot water to clean later:

then i disconnect the garden hose from the hose bib, and connect the garden hose from the small pump for the last leg. i'll make a 5 gallon bucket like this, then recirculate the ice water, like in this last pic:

 

[storytyme]

Awesome. Thank you for spending the time posting the photos. Much appreciated.

 

[linda1998]

I got it.

 

[augiedoggy]

What cloggs it? Hop material or break material?
Do you use a sock or spyder for your hops?
If yes, what size mesh?

Sorry for the mini-hijack, storytyme.
It’s still relevant.

Back to original topic...
@mongoose33 i can’t imagine that the chilling performance suffers much from returning the wort to the kettle.
Not speaking from experience here.
Seems like you have to get the heat out of the full volume no matter where it’s directed.

The only savings I can see in my mind’s eye is that if not returning the wort to the kettle, you won’t need to pull the heat out of the kettle itself.


With my immersion chiller, I have to make 15 gallons of hot water to get the wort to pitching temps.
The 1st 10 gallons start out at about 85*F.
The last 5 gallons start out at about 40*F.

With a plate chiller recirculating cold break back through the plate chiller is a very bad idea. Ideally it should be used in one pass or with some sort of effective prefiltering or like others have said its a clogginator.. especially the short chillers with more plates.. add on blichmans speacial twisted pathway design and it clogs more easily than any homebrewing chiller on the market.

 

[augiedoggy]

keep in mind with the small plastic pump your only pumping water through at like 2-3 gpm with is really slow coolant flow compared to a faucet directly. depending on your ground water temps this could do more harm than good. obviously its working good for Funkedout.

 

[Dland]

My current method is to whirlpool after boil is over, let the trub settle, then I wash out my mash tun and put post boil hops(usually loose leaf) into it, gravity feed hot wort into MT vessel, let hops steep 10 or 15 mins. Then I pump the wort, which is usually about 180F by that time, though plate cooler and down to fermentor in cellar. My well water is in high 50'sF and in summer I can usually get wort down to mid 70's or cooler in 10-15 minutes. I throttle back on valve on pump 1/2 to 2/3s to slow the wort though the cooler, or it would end up in cellar too hot. Things cool a little quicker and colder in cooler weather and I can get wort down to lager pitching temps then.

I recently had some batches go off, probably a lactic acid bacteria of some sort. The plate cooler and overall post boil sanitation became suspect. If the plate cooler is not clear of debris, pumping sanitizer will not necessarily kill all the bad critters in it. Hence the need to try to keep trub and hop debris down to a minimum.

One good thing about gravity feeding into post boil hop vessel is almost all BK trub is left behind. A pump tends to pull some though to plate cooler even with a screen. It is important to clean valves and sight glass on this kettle though, because it is no longer strictly "hot side".

 

[storytyme]

My current method is to whirlpool after boil is over, let the trub settle, then I wash out my mash tun and put post boil hops(usually loose leaf) into it, gravity feed hot wort into MT vessel, let hops steep 10 or 15 mins. Then I pump the wort, which is usually about 180F by that time, though plate cooler and down to fermentor in cellar. My well water is in high 50'sF and in summer I can usually get wort down to mid 70's or cooler in 10-15 minutes. I throttle back on valve on pump 1/2 to 2/3s to slow the wort though the cooler, or it would end up in cellar too hot. Things cool a little quicker and colder in cooler weather and I can get wort down to lager pitching temps then.

I recently had some batches go off, probably a lactic acid bacteria of some sort. The plate cooler and overall post boil sanitation became suspect. If the plate cooler is not clear of debris, pumping sanitizer will not necessarily kill all the bad critters in it. Hence the need to try to keep trub and hop debris down to a minimum.

One good thing about gravity feeding into post boil hop vessel is almost all BK trub is left behind. A pump tends to pull some though to plate cooler even with a screen. It is important to clean valves and sight glass on this kettle though, because it is no longer strictly "hot side".

Very interesting. So basically you are using a secondary vessel prior to fermentor. I assume your mash tun is not a cooler because I know in mine there are tons of scratches in it which is for sure a bacteria haven. I love the idea, but would have to get a different vessel to perform it.

 

[Dland]

Right, mash tun is stainless keg kettle, middle vessel in avatar pic. I guess it might technically be a hop back in that function.