Immersion Chiller efficiency

[Kaz]

I have a copper coil immersion chiller. I don't know much about it, bought it at the LHBS about a year ago. I'm not sure of the diameter of the tubing, I would guess 3/8", and I don't know how long it is but I think it can't be more than 25'. Since buying it, I've upgraded to a 10 gallon aluminum kettle, a propane burner and started doing all grain 5 gallon BIAB batches. At the end of the boil I usually have about 6 gallons of wort. Now that it is summer, my hose water temperature is about 75-77F. The problem I'm having is that it seems to take me about 45 minutes to chill a batch down to below 80F. That seems like a long time. In the winter it is much better with the colder tap water temps. I'm looking at my options for decreasing chilling time and getting to a lower temperature. I'm wondering what options would be best for chilling faster and in the end using less water.

1. Purchase/make a 50' IC chiller and sell the existing chiller or give it away. This would still only get me down to 75F in the summer, but maybe faster.

2. Purchase/make a 50' IC chiller and use the existing chiller as a pre-chiller in a bucket of ice water

3. Use the existing chiller to get down below 100F and then a recirculate with a pump in ice water to get lower.

I'm starting to question if the 25' chiller I have is enough for 6 gallon batches, I don't ever plan to make larger batches. I have an idea which direction I think I should go in but wanted some opinions. TIA.

 

[MalFet]

25' has always worked fine for me with 6gal batches. Are you whirlpooling? An IC sitting still in still water takes a looooong time to work.

As far ground-water options go, I've never been much for prechillers. Using a $30 pond pump to recirculate a sink full of ice water seems cheaper, better, easier, and less space-taking than a prechiller.

 

[Kaz]

Ya, I do stir it up quite often. I just see people on here saying they get to pitching temps in like 10 minutes and I'm still at 78F at 40 minutes. I have a bunch of old aquarium pumps, I'll have to experiment and see what I can come up with.

 

[JoeDaddio]

If your ground water temp isn't much below 80 then I am not sure that any length worth chiller is going to help much in getting the temp too far below 80.

Had this problem last weekend (full boil). The temp dropped to about 80 degrees pretty quickly, but stalled there. We had to give it a small ice bath to get it to pitching temp (70-75).

A bath tub and 7# bag of ice knocked off the last 10 degrees pretty quickly. Thinking of getting a 20 gallon tub from Big Lots to make it even easier (less water than a bath tub and we can get the water higher up the sides of the kettle).


joe

 

[Kaz]

At this point, I know that if my incoming water temp is 78F, I'm not going to get below that. I'm questioning the 35-45 minutes it takes me to get to 80F.

 

[MalFet]

Ya, I do stir it up quite often. I just see people on here saying they get to pitching temps in like 10 minutes and I'm still at 78F at 40 minutes. I have a bunch of old aquarium pumps, I'll have to experiment and see what I can come up with.

Well, thars the rub. With my whirlpool setup, I get to 10ºF above my ground water in about 8 minutes or so. If I had 40ºF water coming out of my sink (like I did when I lived in the midwest), I too could say that I drop to pitching temps in 10 minutes.

Lately, use the chiller to bring things down to about 80ºF in about 10 minutes or so, and then either: (a) chuck it into my fermentation chamber and wait a few hours to pitch my yeast, or (b) use the pond-pump with ice water approach to finish it off. Both work fine...it just depends on the relative costs-benifits of having to wait vs. having to go buy ice.

 

[JoeDaddio]

At this point, I know that if my incoming water temp is 78F, I'm not going to get below that. I'm questioning the 35-45 minutes it takes me to get to 80F.

Ah. Well, I'm new to all this, but starting with a 6 gallon boil (cooling around 5 gallons) it took us about 20 min to get to 80 degrees at which point we ice bathed it. Maybe 35 min total to get around 70. The ice bath took off the last few degrees pretty quickly since it was already relatively cool.

We were just excited to have it done in under an hour because last time (our first time) it took us for.ev.er. to cool. So I'm not sure if this is a long time or not. It was a pretty hot day out here in So. Cal. last weekend, and we were outside.

I'm sure another gallon would increase that a little bit. We were able to get a pretty good flow going on ours: we tightened up the pipe clamps and were able to push water through a bit faster, so maybe this helped save a couple minutes. Either way, it sounds pretty close as my times are estimates.


joe

 

[TopherM]

You probably get to about 100-120 pretty quickly, but it takes about 30 minutes to go from there to 80.

If you get your incoming water about 15 degrees cooler, you are going to cut 15-20 minutes off your cooling time.

What I currently do is freeze 5-6 tupperware containers of water the night before brew day, throw those in a cooler of about 4-5 gallons of water, then pump water out of there with a sump pump through the IC, slowly adding more water and sometimes more ice as I go. The warm runoff water goes into the pool.

Cools from 212 to 75-80 in about 13-15 minutes.

 

[Zixxer10R]

Let's put it this way: I have a 50ft wort chiller that went in my brew pot. That chiller was attached to another pre-chiller which was in an ice bucket. I live in TX, you can imagine the heat at which my ground water is coming out.

I cooled my 5 gallons in 45 minutes with a pre chiller.

Get one.

 

[JLW]

I have 20 ft. homemade immercion chiller and I can get to 80 in 10-15 min. I whirlpool with the IC the entire time. For summer months I whirlpool, then pitch the yeast and then stick the fermentor in a swamp cooler to bring it down in the mid 60's

 

[dancness]

I use the IC to get the temp down as low as possible (mid 70's) which usually takes about 15 mins, and from that point on I let the kettle chill in an ice bath for another 1/2 hour using frozen water bottles.

 

[MalFet]

I have 20 ft. homemade immercion chiller and I can get to 80 in 10-15 min. I whirlpool with the IC the entire time. For summer months I whirlpool, then pitch the yeast and then stick the fermentor in a swamp cooler to bring it down in the mid 60's

Just a note: dropping temps 15 deg immediately after you pitch the yeast goes against pretty much all recommendations. You'd be much better off waiting to pitch until after you hit your target temps.

 

[Hobnob]

With my immersion chiller, I can cool my 6 gallons of wort down to 70 degrees in 20 minutes because I run ice water through the IC. I use a cooler that has a water hose fitting to connect to the IC and I fill the cooler full of water and a LOT of ice. The water is just gravity-fed to the IC and I run the exit water onto the lawn (after the exit water cools down a bit). I also swirl the IC in the wort periodically using the IC, very gently of course. I have also began placing my 60 qt aluminum brew kettle in an ice bath in addition to using the IC and that shaved off about 5 minutes from previous times.

 

[JLW]

I am pretty close to target temps when I pitch within say 5 degrees the 30 min rest post whirlpool brings it from 75 to around 70, the swamp cooler takes a few more degrees.

Thanks though for the heads up as I will need to keep an eye on this.

 

[EROK]

My suggestion is that 25' and 3/8" copper is not going to cut it for 10g batches.

I use 25' of 1/2" for my IC (5.5 gal batches) and can get to below 70 deg in 10 minutes, with manually stirring a vigorous whirlpool. You need 50' of 1/2" for sure.

It's very tiring at the rate I stir, but I set a 10 min timer on my microwave and try to get to <70 by the time it beeps !!

Good luck !