how to chill faster?

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MR. Zak

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So I all grain once a week and have done so for three months now. I really need to get a chiller that can chill faster than the five gal. 25ft. submirsion chiller that I have now but I just cant justify the money. So what I'm wondering is does anyone have any ideas to chill faster with the chiller I have now? Any ideas or suggestions would be very helpfull.
 
Try using a small submersible pond fountain pump connected to your chiller. Put it in a cooler with ice, and put the return hose back into the cooler. You can probablly pick one up for under $20.
 
Stir a lot, a whirlpool is best. You can also swish the chiller itself around in the wort. If you don't want to buy anything you could siphon ice-water through your chiller, though I'd think it'd be tricky.
 
A better chiller is justified. You will have a hard time cooling 10 to 12 gallons without a proper chiller. I use 50 feet of 1/2 inch copper.
 
I second the whirlpool and swirling the cooler around. Otherwise only the wort directly contacting the chiller gets chilled. You can in fact feel the water exiting the chiller get warmer as you stir.
 
As mentioned, if you don't already whirlpool while chilling, try it. It will likely have a huge impact on your chilling time.

If that doesn't help enough, you could always dismantle your IC (assuming it is 3/8" copper) and convert it to a counter-flow chiller. All it would cost you is a garden hose and some fittings.
 
how long does cooling take you? where in CO are you? my tap water is about 40F right now, and as long as i'm stirring, i can drop about a degree every couple seconds. it takes me no longer than 15 minutes to get to 60F.
 
As above - you need to either move the wort around the chiller or move the chiller. I rock mine back and forth and get 6g from boiling to 70F in about 20min. Getting to 60F takes another 10 minutes. My tap water is about 55F year round. Some day I'll build Jamil's whirlpool chiller when I can justify a pump.

GT
 
MR. Zak said:
So I all grain once a week and have done so for three months now. I really need to get a chiller that can chill faster than the five gal. 25ft. submirsion chiller that I have now but I just cant justify the money. So what I'm wondering is does anyone have any ideas to chill faster with the chiller I have now? Any ideas or suggestions would be very helpfull.
For what it's worth, I use a soup chiller. A long, squared, clear plastic container filled w/ water & frozen. The local health inspector suggested it. Before that I used (if your looking for cost effective) a frozen 2 liter, or gal. milk container w/ a string tied to the neck or handle. I do have to put down this disclaimer... My wife says I'm kind of a hillbilly sometimes. Anybody else tried /heard of this?
 
I just recently tried something with my chiller and it seemed to help a little bit. I do what everyone says stirring and so forth, but I also have a way to split the water being used to chill and I use the some of the cold water out of the garden hose to go down the outside of my pot.

So I am not only chilling use my homemade IC, but I am also cooling the outside walls of the pot at the same time. I have two 1/4" ID hose that I just loop through the handles of the pot and let cascade down the side.

All my water goes in the yard so other than making a swamp I am not that worried.
 
Ya I do like to stir and I can get about all 11 gal. chilled in fifteen minutes but then my hot break is really bad and i like the idea of trying to keep all trub out of primary as possible so I guess I need to get a plate chiller and that would solve a lot of problems
Thanks to all who helped with ideas And K rock I think your wife is right but I like the creative thinking!
Zak
 
MR. Zak said:
Ya I do like to stir and I can get about all 11 gal. chilled in fifteen minutes but then my hot break is really bad and i like the idea of trying to keep all trub out of primary as possible so I guess I need to get a plate chiller and that would solve a lot of problems
Thanks to all who helped with ideas And K rock I think your wife is right but I like the creative thinking!
Zak

Are you referring to Cold Break. As far as keeping it out of the fermenter whirlpooling and draining from the side or filtering with a paint strainer bag (if you bucket ferment) are way to deal with that.

I have the Shirron tho' and brew 10 gallons. It rocks. Full blast water hose and a fully open kettle valve get me to pitch temp in as long as it takes to drain the kettle with my pump..
 
I not only use my IC, but also hosing down the outside of the boiler after it's off the flame. Then I put it in an ice/coldwater bath, still using the IC.

Yes, I'm impatient sometimes.
 
Gentlemen,

I take my brew kettle off the fire
and place it in the sink full of tap water.
I worry about doing anything else, tubing, whirpooling?
I change the water often,
till there is no steam, then cover.
Keep changing the water till the brew pot is not hot to the touch
and then consider it ready.
I pour store bought water in the primary first,
then the wort.

I plug in the freezer when brewing season comes around.
And I have the option of putting the wort in the freezer.
Or cooling the store bought water out there too.
The less my wort touches the less chance of it getting
surface born spoilage organisms in it.


J. Knife
 
Your concern about the spoilage is unfounded because immersion chillers get dropped into the while the wort is still boiling. In any case though, the OP doesn't have the luxury of adding cold top up water because he's doing full boils (all grain requires it). Cooling in an ice bath would take him 3 hours.

Stirring the wort while the chiller is running is my advice. If that doesn't cool fast enough, fill your bottling bucket with icewater and gravity drain it through the IC.
 
I've tried all the above and finally got tired of the wait so I just purchased a Chillzilla counter flow. Hope it works better.
 
MR. Zak said:
Ya I do like to stir and I can get about all 11 gal. chilled in fifteen minutes but then my hot break is really bad and i like the idea of trying to keep all trub out of primary as possible so I guess I need to get a plate chiller and that would solve a lot of problems
The proteins in question are going to be in your wort whether they coagulate in the brew kettle or in a plate chiller, or if they don't coagulate at all (as would be the case if you were chilling too slowly). There are ways for you to keep the cold break out of your fermenter, but switching from an IC to a plate chiller isn't going to change anything in that regard. You definitely don't want to REDUCE cold break formation, because the proteins are going to do your beer more harm (chill haze, etc) if they're left in solution than if they're coagulated, regardless of whether you remove them from the wort after the cold break forms.

For what it's worth, I read an article a while back by some guy who tested the theories about whether cold break material in the fermenter was detrimental. He did a whole lot of beers and a bunch of blind taste tests with other homebrewers and IIRC, the ones in which all the cold break made it into the fermenter were considered not only good, but in some cases better than those in which the cold break was filtered out. I'm not sure I subscribe to the idea fully enough that I consider the removal of cold break detrimental, but it was certainly enough to convince me not to make any effort to remove it, since doing so is a headache in many cases. I have no screen on my keggle pickup tube, and I use hops in a hop bag, so I can just open the valve right up and drain every last drop from the keggle after chilling. Tons of cold break goes into the fermenter, but by the end of fermentation I've just got a regular, normal pile of trub at the bottom of the carboy, and the beer is plenty clear.

Edit: found the link:
http://www.bodensatz.com/homebrew/columns/jirvine/trub.html
 
yep, the plate chiller will cool wort fast, but won't help with the cold break. once my wort is cooled to pitching temp i pull the IC out of the kettle and then get a whirlpool going with my spoon. i have a bazooka tube attached on the inside of my kettle, so i can't get a major whirlpool going, but it's good enough that most of the break and hops make it to the center. the other cool thing is that the break and hops form a bit of a filter bed around the bazooka screen and after the first quart my wort come out of the valve crystal clear. don't forget that conventional wisdom is that a little cold break is good for yeast health. sometimes when i use pellet hops (i use almost all leaf hops) the hops get through and i let all the gunk settle out in the fermenter for an hour or so while i clean up, and then i rack the cleared wort to a second fermenter so i can aerate and pitch.
 
I tried a little experiment yesterday chilling my Helles down. I usually run the hose at about 1g/min and use about 20g of water total to get to about 60-65F taking about 20 minutes. I ran it faster at about 1.5g/min and had it down to about 65F in 12 minutes using 18g of water and swirling the IC in the wort. I'm sure there is some thermodynamic equation that would determine your sweet spot for cooling efficiency vs water volume and time.

The remaining cooling I did O/N in my fermenting fridge at 44F. Crystal and I mean crystal clear wort racked into the fermentor today and pitched after oxygenating.

GT
 
my ghetto solution is to suspend the immersion chiller in the top half of the kettle. if it rests on the bottom, the cold liquid goes no where. but if you're cooling from the top down, the cold liquid drops to the bottom, and pushes the hot up, to get cooled faster.

that's my warped understanding of the science behind it. don't know how much time i save.

i think having break materiel in the ferementor is good, as it gives the yeasties some added nutrients. plus it gives a good show when it all starts swirling. :drunk:
 
k rock said:
For what it's worth, I use a soup chiller. A long, squared, clear plastic container filled w/ water & frozen. The local health inspector suggested it. Before that I used (if your looking for cost effective) a frozen 2 liter, or gal. milk container w/ a string tied to the neck or handle. I do have to put down this disclaimer... My wife says I'm kind of a hillbilly sometimes. Anybody else tried /heard of this?


you bet! I was actually looking for one. I call them "Ice sticks" and I used to use them in a restaurant to cool down chicken stock. They work like a charm! It's pretty funny how much of my kitchen sanitation knowledge is useful when brewing beer.
 
Ya I do think that some break will be ok but as to cold break that will only come when the beer is brought to a temp under freezing and then in the filter it will be large enough to get filtered out but what i dont want is the verry bitter tannons that are left after boil to get into my fermentor so i dont want to let it sit on my beer for that long.
I'm just getting a chiller and pump
thanks all for the advice
 
GeauxBrew said:
Try using a small submersible pond fountain pump connected to your chiller. Put it in a cooler with ice, and put the return hose back into the cooler. You can probablly pick one up for under $20.


Does that help a substantial amount? if so i might try it.
 
Originally Posted by GeauxBrew
Try using a small submersible pond fountain pump connected to your chiller. Put it in a cooler with ice, and put the return hose back into the cooler. You can probablly pick one up for under $20.

Just wondering if you could set the pot in a sink full of ice water and use the pump to circulate through the chiller? Maybe the ice would melt to quick.
 
I have used that method and the ice does melt rather fast but if you keep it well stocked it works well I also have an idea to take apart a home AC unit and take the coolent (sp?) part of that and putting that in a tub o' H2O and keeping the set point on the AC unit at the coldast set point and reusing the same water and i do have some engineering background and think that the idea could work as long as you have everything on a closed circut and i think if the salinity in the water is right you could use only five to ten gal. and it could work OK.
I'M rambeling drunk before i have to work and this is a pipe dream that i've hade for a while and would like to know if any one has thought of or used this same idea
have a beer and get back at me
Zak:mug:
 
15 min isn't too bad of a chilling time, but if you want to speed it up, a pre-chiller couldn't hurt. An old transmission cooler or heater core from the junkyard would probably work just fine, just add it in-line between the hose and the chiller and sit it in a bucket of ice water.
 
Lucky Dog Brewing said:
Does that help a substantial amount? if so i might try it.

This works well and is a good solution for those with warm water coming from their tap. Use the tap water first to cool it down as there is plenty of temperature differential when the wort starts off at 212+. Once you get your wort down to say 100F switch over to the pump in an ice bath to get it down to pitching temp. Using the ice water earlier is just a waste and you will need alot more of it.

GT
 
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