How to quickly chill wort down to lager pitching temps?

[SpeedYellow]

For us folks who brew lagers, we need our wort to get down near 50F before pitching yeast, but our tap water typically won't cut it. Getting to 80F is easy, but waiting for the fermentation chamber to get down to 50F takes a while.

So how to do this quickly with an immersion chiller? Seems like options would be:

1) Using a pre-chiller; i.e. tap water flows into an immersion chiller in an ice bath, then into a second immersion chiller in the wort. Requires purchase/DIY of another chiller.

2) Using a bilge pump in a bucket of icewater to recirculate the icewater through the chiller to get that last 20 degree drop. Just need a $20 bilge pump.

Any advice on the most effective method?

 

[douglasbarbin]

Either one will work, but you are going to need a **** ton of ice.

 

[blizz81]

Have always had good success with #2, just need the pump (like you said) and ice. Some people run tap water to a certain point, I run with the ice water from the get-go.

 

[Bellybuster]

what's wrong with allowing the ferm chamber to cool it?

 

[SpeedYellow]

So if using the bilge pump, how much ice is needed to drop 5 gallons from 80F to 50F? Like a couple small bags (10 lbs each)?

what's wrong with allowing the ferm chamber to cool it?

That works fine, but I'm tired of waiting 3 hrs to pitch yeast.

 

[Bellybuster]

fair enough

 

[douglasbarbin]

So if using the bilge pump, how much ice is needed to drop 5 gallons from 80F to 50F? Like a couple small bags (10 lbs each)?

You will have to experiment to find out. My guess is that you will need more, but that's just conjecture.

 

[robbyice]

I very recently started using a recirculating immersion chiller setup and its a slam dunk to cut chilling time in half and get lower temps. just dispose of the initial hot discharge and then start recirculating with icewater from an icechest with a pond pump attached. boom

 

[blizz81]

So if using the bilge pump, how much ice is needed to drop 5 gallons from 80F to 50F? Like a couple small bags (10 lbs each)?

That works fine, but I'm tired of waiting 3 hrs to pitch yeast.

I would think a 20lb bag would get you there pretty quickly. In the dead of summer we generally use two 20lb bags to go from flameout down to 60-65* in 5-10 minutes, and it's usually a little bit of overkill even. 50' 1/2" IC.