I've done a few brews now and my biggest complaint so far has been that the cooling rates have been far too long. Even keeping constant agitation, it take 30 minutes - 45 minutes to cool a 5 gallon brew.
With this in mind I've come up with a cunning plan. A refrigerated cooling system.
Essentially this would be a self contained unit that consists of 2 coils linked in series with a pump moving the coolant through them. There would be a reservoir of coolant in the system too. The coolant would be something food safe with a low freezing point, such as a water/monopropylene glycol blend. this would make the system safer if there was a small leak, but if there was a big like it would be getting binned regardless of what coolant was used.
To minimise manual mixing I'll fit a recirculation pump that will keep moving the hot wort over the cooling coils.
During Inital cooling (say boiling to 60°C) the secondry cooling coil is largely cooled by water. As the temperature drops further the water is repalced with iceand water. Then you add salt
This will cause the temperature in the bucket to drop well below freezing speeding up the rate of cooling dramatically I hope...
The other idea I had was that since I'm using an electruic boiler with an external element, the element is acting as a massive storage heater. By making a disk of copper tubing (imagine doubling the copper then rolling a disk like a measuring tape with it but with both bits of pipe on the same plain)
This would sit on the bottom of the boiler durign the boil with no water running through, it shouldn't, therefore, affect the boil time significantly. When it comes time to cool, cooling water is pumped through the disk providing a barrier between the heat of the element and the wort.
Massive post but I thought I'd see what the pros thought.
With this in mind I've come up with a cunning plan. A refrigerated cooling system.
Essentially this would be a self contained unit that consists of 2 coils linked in series with a pump moving the coolant through them. There would be a reservoir of coolant in the system too. The coolant would be something food safe with a low freezing point, such as a water/monopropylene glycol blend. this would make the system safer if there was a small leak, but if there was a big like it would be getting binned regardless of what coolant was used.
To minimise manual mixing I'll fit a recirculation pump that will keep moving the hot wort over the cooling coils.
During Inital cooling (say boiling to 60°C) the secondry cooling coil is largely cooled by water. As the temperature drops further the water is repalced with iceand water. Then you add salt
This will cause the temperature in the bucket to drop well below freezing speeding up the rate of cooling dramatically I hope...
The other idea I had was that since I'm using an electruic boiler with an external element, the element is acting as a massive storage heater. By making a disk of copper tubing (imagine doubling the copper then rolling a disk like a measuring tape with it but with both bits of pipe on the same plain)
This would sit on the bottom of the boiler durign the boil with no water running through, it shouldn't, therefore, affect the boil time significantly. When it comes time to cool, cooling water is pumped through the disk providing a barrier between the heat of the element and the wort.
Massive post but I thought I'd see what the pros thought.
