IDEA: Ice water chilling with no pump.

[Bobby_M]

BTW, I successfully gravity drained icewater out of my bottling bucket into the CFC on two 5 gallonbatches and it was quite successful. It ran slow but it doesn't take much coolant when it's 30-40F.

 

[jcb317]

The system would work, but i think you would potentially burn through a lot of ice if you aren't re-claiming the cold water coming out the other end, unless of course you are moving it through verrrrrrrrrry slowly(but that of course would lower the chiller efficiency). I switch to ice once i drop my temp to around 100-110 with the hose water. I noticed that even when pumping ice water through my IC with my $5 dinky pond pump i got at harbor freight the return water is still much colder than the hose water.

 

[Bobby_M]

It depends highly on how fast you run the coolant. In a counterflow situation, the coolant initially encounters the coolest wort on the way out and reaches wort at boiling temp before it's exhausted. This usually means that it's well over 100F for the entire cycle if you're running the coolant such that you get a decent chill without too much water use. If your coolant temp is very close to your ideal wort temp, you have to run the water full speed. If you're using icewater, you can practically trickle it through to reach mid 60's.

 

[conpewter]

In actually tried this a while back with a cornie keg, just clamped the hose onto the threads (leaving the dip tube in place) and ran the city water in the "Gas in". I filled it with ice and I think it would have worked well, but I melted all my ice before I was done chilling with the CFC (I was doing gravity through the CFC - 10' drop) I probably didn't have my flow rates well enough matched.

Bobby, how much ice water did it take to cool a 5 gallon batch running it out of your bottling bucket?

 

[Bobby_M]

It would be really hard to pull data from this but I recirculated the wort back to the kettle using 75F tap water until the whole 5 gallon batch was down to 120F. Then I switched over to the hose coming from the bottling bucket and started running the wort into the fermenter. I tried matching the flows because I figured once 5 gallons were in the fermenter, the ice water would be gone. I ended up having to top off the icewater with about 2 gallons, but there was still ice to cool it. I had my bucket up on top of a 8ft ladder to get it to flow well though.

Frankly, it's more trouble than it's worth and a $30 pond pump is infinitely easier.

 

[conpewter]

Thanks!

I'm debating between using a pond pump vs just getting it as low as I can using my water (probably can always get down to 75 or 80) and then put the carboy in the freezer/fermenting chamber and set it to my desired temp, come back in a couple hours and pitch. Since I tape the probe to the carboy it should drop the temp fairly quickly.

 

[Bobby_M]

With good sanitation, I see no problem with your plan B. You might even save energy if you just leave the fermenter outside for a couple hours in this northern winter.

 

[bmbrewery]

I was thinking about getting a cheap heater core for a car ($30) and draining from the kettle through the core which will be immersed in icewater, then into my fermenter. Any thoughts?

 

[conpewter]

I'd be afraid of lead or other things leaching into the beer from the heater core.

 

[ClutchDude]

I was thinking about getting a cheap heater core for a car ($30) and draining from the kettle through the core which will be immersed in icewater, then into my fermenter. Any thoughts?

EDIT: Conpewter beat me to it...so here's my other thought

Heh, I think this was one of my FIRST thoughts of using when I posted almost a year ago. WEIRD: I did post about this exactly one year ago. Weird man...

You could use a heater core as a prechiller like Bobby talks about in the beginning of the thread. The problem is that I think it'll be cheaper using the other 25' of copper you could buy online after using 25' for a primary chiller.