Immersion Chiller, New method for use

[goodgreener]

So I have an immersion chiller. I am not so impressed with it, the time it takes to cool the wort. The other day I put it in a bucket of ice water and boiled water on the stove. I melted my auto siphon siphoning from the pot to the chiller but the water coming out of the chiller was like ~60f. So I have a new set up and I am wondering if you guys have tried this or if you may have any helpful comments. I plan on getting a faucet installed on a steel pot but for now this is my idea. I have connected tubing to my priming bucket, from there to my chiller in another bucket and the output will go to a fermenter. My plan is to put like 2 gallons or so of cold water in the priming bucket and pour the wort in it after the boil. Then I will open the tap and flow the wort through the chiller and into the fermenter. Look at the pictures...

 

[Sheep_Dog]

Can we get a bigger picture to try to clear things up? :cross:

 

[Yooper]

I'm sorry, but I've been drinking a very nice IPA tonight and am having trouble grasping what you are asking. Could you re-phrase, as if you were talking to a (drunk) three year old?

You had an immersion chiller. But you didn't like it? So you tried to make it into a counter flow chiller and a pre-chiller?

 

[ChrisS68]

Umm... Either I'm not reading you right, or you're a bit confused.
When you use an immersion chiller, you don't run the hot wort through the chiller - that would be a counter-flow chiller and is a bit different.

The way to use an IC is to place it in your hot wort while in the kettle - preferably for about the last 15 minutes of the boil to sanitize. After flame-out, you run cold water through the chiller to cool the wort. Yes, initially the water coming out of the chiller will be quite hot: that's the point as it removes heat from the wort.

 

[bull8042]

Umm... Either I'm not reading you right, or you're a bit confused.
When you use an immersion chiller, you don't run the hot wort through the chiller - that would be a counter-flow chiller and is a bit different.

The way to use an IC is to place it in your hot wort while in the kettle - preferably for about the last 15 minutes of the boil to sanitize. After flame-out, you run cold water through the chiller to cool the wort. Yes, initially the water coming out of the chiller will be quite hot: that's the point as it removes heat from the wort.

Basically what he said... Chiller goes in wort, water flows from faucet to driveway, drain, whatever THROUGH chiller. You don't run wort through that type of chiller normally, at least not in that configuration.
Lorena, have another beer. We got this one.

 

[Moonshae]

Did you sanitize the inside of the chiller before running your wort through it?

 

[McKBrew]

Did you sanitize the inside of the chiller before running your wort through it?

Hopefully the hot wort running through the inside sanitized it well enough.

 

[ChshreCat]

Hopefully the hot wort running through the inside sanitized it well enough.

If the wort's coming out at 60F, then the hot wort is only going to be sanitizing the first couple feet or so before it's too cool to kill any bugs.

 

[HighPlainsDrifter]

This works really well:https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/recirculating-ice-water-chiller-38235/

You just need to buy a pump.

 

[blk94f150]

Did you try stirring the wort when you used the IC? I have no problems cooling with my 50 ft 3/8 copper IC if I stir while cooling.

Mike

 

[Revvy]

Uh...What? I can't understand what he's doing, nor can I tell by sliding the picture back and forth....I'm cornfused...

If you change the image size to 450 pixels wide by whatever it automatically sets the height to, we'd be better able to see it....

 

[Lil' Sparky]

I do this in my setup but it's in series after my chilled wort leaves my CFC. Our ground water here is very hot in the summer, so I have to use ice in addition to tap water in my CFC. I've also tried the method of pumping ice water through the CFC, but this works a lot better. I don't use as much ice, and I can still get the wort coming out of the 2nd coil in the ice bath as cool as I want it, depending on how fast I pump it and how much I agitate the coil.

There's no problem with the OP's concept. The coil just acts as a heat exchanger between the hot wort and the ice water. It'll probably chill faster than using it as an IC if you have hot/warm ground water. It will melt the ice, though, so have plenty on hand. I would also start with a full bucket of ice water. Agitating the chiller in the ice bath makes a dramatic difference in the heat transfer.

+1 on making sure the inside of the coil is sanitized. I pump boiling wort through mine for the last 10 mins of the boil, but you can use iodophor or starsan.

 

[Saccharomyces]

1) You'll need to replace those hoses with silicone ones. The PVC hoses your chiller came with won't take the heat.

2) There is nothing wrong with the concept as long as you sanitize well, pumping the hot wort through is the easiest way. The drawback vs a real CFC is the CFC has turbulent flow and your chiller does not. If you put a small pond pump in the bucket to recirc the icewater around the chiller coils it will transfer heat a lot better without you having to agitate the thing.

Personally I've considered lots of cooling methods and decided just to stick with the plain ol' IC because it's easy. I agitate my wort during chilling by moving around my hop bag, when the wort is down to around 100*F (about 10 min) I remove the hop bag, drop on the lid, and go about my business as the water runs slowly through the chiller. After I'm done cleaning up, the wort is ready to transfer to the fermenter.

In the summer months when the groundwater is over 70*F I switch from the hose to a sump pump submerged in a cooler of ice water which gets pumped through the IC to take me from 100*F to pitching temp. The temp seems to stabilize around 5* over the tap water temp after about 30 minutes.

 

[BierMuncher]

Uh...I think we have an ask and dash.

Save our answers for someone else.

 

[goodgreener]

Well, the last batch I made chilled out in about 25 min with just the immersion chiller--the reg way. I looked around and I think I will do the fish pump/icewater thing.