How long should my PRECHILLER be?

[Sacrilicious]

Hi all,

I am assembling a wort chiller for my very first homebrew this weekend. I am starting out with extracts of course, and I wont be exceeding 5 gal batches any time soon.

My local HD/Lowes sell 10' and 20' sections of both 1/2" and 3/8" OD copper tubing. I already bought 20' of the 1/2" OD for the wort immersion chiller. Do you think I could get by with 10' of 1/2" OD for the prechiller, which will be ran through a bucket of ice water? Or would 20' be better?

I was hoping to find 25' sections, but they aren't carried locally. They do have 50' sections of both 3/8" and 1/2" OD section, which I could cut down to 35/15 or 30/20 sections. I need to economize though, so if I could get by with 20/10 that would be ideal. I'm in South Florida, with warm tap water. I'm not looking to do any recirculating or anything else with a pump yet.

Thanks!

 

[weirdboy]

Don't make a prechiller.

Invest that money in a small submersible pump (look for fountain/pond pumps at HD, or online) and a couple of fittings/tubing to connect it to your wort chiller. Get a 5 gallon bucket if you need an extra, and then fill that bucket with cold water and ice, and stir it up so you get a nice, cold 32F solution.

When you chill your wort, start out by using regular ol' tap water until you get the temp down to under 100F or so, then switch to the pump submerged in the ice water. Be sure to gently stir your wort while you are chilling it so that it cools down faster.


You don't need to do any recirulating, etc. but this will cool your wort WAY more effectively than any prechiller, and cost less to boot.


Now, if you are talking about counterflow chillers, then if you hook up two of those in series, with the first having tap water and the second ice water, you can chill your wort down to lagering temps in a single pass right out of the BK. But that's a different story.

 

[Sacrilicious]

I see they do have a cheapo $15 pump that will do 60 gph, which would actually be cheaper than going with the 10' coil, and maybe even work better (assuming 60 gph is sufficient). But I don't necessarily want to put my faith into a cheapo chinese pump. At least with the prechiller, there are no moving parts or electrical components to break.

Here's another thought along the pump idea, but with manual lift instead: I could use a gravity feed of the ice water directly through the IC, collecting it in a separate bucket at the end and then dumping it back into the higher ice bucket. Obviously this would involve quite a bit of manual labor, but it should be just as effective as using a pump.

 

[Sacrilicious]

Alright, well with more reading I see that you're right about going with the recirculating, and it seems that 60 gph will probably not be powerful enough. I'll head over to my local HF and see what they have.

Thanks!