JaDed Hydra - best choice for water efficient wort chilling?

[vance]

I've done three batches so far, and my method so far has been to let my wort cool overnight, in the covered kettle, for about 24 hours until it's down to a reasonable temperature. It works OK, my beer is definitely drinkable, but I worry about infection and since I like to brew hoppy styles, I think a wort chiller is in my future.

The problem is, I really can't justify using 40 gallons of water to cool my wort with a cheap or DIY chiller. I've thought about using some sort of aquarium pump system to pump icewater through a chiller and back into the ice bucket, but that uses a ton of ice apparently. The Hydra is expensive, but IMO using significantly less water is worth it.

Are there any options I'm overlooking?

 

[jabba11]

If you do a search in the forums for Hydra you'll see plenty of reviews. If there were a great "other" option Id probably be using it casue yes the hydra is expensive. That said it works so well I didn't mind the expense once I started using it. As an IC I would hands down recommend it every time.

 

[Morrey]

I've done three batches so far, and my method so far has been to let my wort cool overnight, in the covered kettle, for about 24 hours until it's down to a reasonable temperature. It works OK, my beer is definitely drinkable, but I worry about infection and since I like to brew hoppy styles, I think a wort chiller is in my future.

The problem is, I really can't justify using 40 gallons of water to cool my wort with a cheap or DIY chiller. I've thought about using some sort of aquarium pump system to pump icewater through a chiller and back into the ice bucket, but that uses a ton of ice apparently. The Hydra is expensive, but IMO using significantly less water is worth it.

Are there any options I'm overlooking?

You'll love the Hydra if you get one. I definitely don't recommend you letting your wort sit long periods as you are simply waiting for an infection to happen sooner or later. This is your vulnerable period.

My source water is in the 80'sF now but my Hydra gets the wort close to source temps in a big hurry. I then fill a cooler with water and old bottles of Gatorade frozen with water, a submersible fountain pump and some tubing/fittings to make a closed loop ice water system. The cold water in the Hydra gets me to lager pitching temps pretty quickly. Ale temps a bit quicker and within 15 minutes I am pitching yeast in a 10G kettle with a 5.5G batch.

Note: My wife collects the hot exhaust water to wash our brewing gear, then the other cooler water she waters plants, etc. Once we go closed loop, no water is wasted there either.

 

[vance]

If you do a search in the forums for Hydra you'll see plenty of reviews. If there were a great "other" option Id probably be using it casue yes the hydra is expensive. That said it works so well I didn't mind the expense once I started using it. As an IC I would hands down recommend it every time.

I mean it's expensive, but not terribly so. I'm planning to drop a few times that much on a kegerator in a few weeks anyways, so on a homebrewing scale $150 for it isn't bad.

You'll love the Hydra if you get one. I definitely don't recommend you letting your wort sit long periods as you are simply waiting for an infection to happen sooner or later. This is your vulnerable period.

My source water is in the 80'sF now but my Hydra gets the wort close to source temps in a big hurry. I then fill a cooler with water and old bottles of Gatorade frozen with water, a submersible fountain pump and some tubing/fittings to make a closed loop ice water system. The cold water in the Hydra gets me to lager pitching temps pretty quickly. Ale temps a bit quicker and within 15 minutes I am pitching yeast in a 10G kettle with a 5.5G batch.

Note: My wife collects the hot exhaust water to wash our brewing gear, then the other cooler water she waters plants, etc. Once we go closed loop, no water is wasted there either.

Yeah, I know I'm sort of rolling the dice with my current method... It makes drinkable beer for sure but I have to adjust all my hop additions (first batch turned out very bitter) and I get really, really hazy beer - although part of that is I have no way to cold crash so I don't use gelatin.

Even in summer my hose water feels pretty cool to the touch so I'm sure it'll get it down to good temps easy enough. I can use 10-15 gallons to wash gear and mix with PBW/sanitizer easy enough, but the 40-50 gallons that it sounds like cheap chillers use is just ridiculous.

 

[Murphys_Law]

Buy it and don't look back. I also got the whirlybird and added a cheap pump to recirc the wort while cooling.

Works well and I don't regret the $$ at all.

 

[vance]

Buy it and don't look back. I also got the whirlybird and added a cheap pump to recirc the wort while cooling.

Works well and I don't regret the $$ at all.

What is that? I've seen various mentions of recirculating your mash or wort but I've never been able to find a good simple explanation of what/how/why.

 

[radwizard]

What is that? I've seen various mentions of recirculating your mash or wort but I've never been able to find a good simple explanation of what/how/why.

It's basically just a copper tube that you can use for a whirlpool feed. Jaded will attach it to your chiller so it comes in one piece. This should help speed up chilling as the wort is moving. Also it is a great way to get cleaner wort into your fermenter. Your kettle needs a spigot and you'll need to get a wort pump to get it going.
It is really a great idea if you want to get more hop flavors in your beer during the whirlpooling precess.

 

[vance]

It's basically just a copper tube that you can use for a whirlpool feed. Jaded will attach it to your chiller so it comes in one piece. This should help speed up chilling as the wort is moving. Also it is a great way to get cleaner wort into your fermenter. Your kettle needs a spigot and you'll need to get a wort pump to get it going.
It is really a great idea if you want to get more hop flavors in your beer during the whirlpooling precess.

No less confused, honestly. Do you have a picture or something? What do you mean whirlpool feed? And how does it get cleaner wort? I've heard of whirlpooling but all I've been able to figure out is that in involves swirling your wort around and creating a pile of trub in the center.

I don't have a spigot on my kettle anyways so I don't think it matters

 

[bruhaha]

You're right in that a whirlpool is a spinning vortex that helps to bring your break material (trub) into the center of your kettle in a cone so the spigot can draw clean wort from the side. A bit advanced especially since you don't have a spigot.

I have a spigot on my kettle and I'll stir my cooled wort in a circle to form a whirlpool vortex. I let the wort settle a bit and then open the spigot valve to fill the fermenter leaving much of trub behind.

Stirring the wort with the Hydra in place facilitates the cooling time. Moving the wort around chills in a much shorter time. This is actually what they are talking about in relation to the Hydra. Our way is just manual way of stirring to cool more rapidly.

Additionally, this will work to strain your wort after cooling: After you cool with your Hydra if you decide on one, I often line my fermenter pail with a 5 gallon paint strainer bag from Home Depot or Lowes. It has a stretch band at the top which is really nice to hold the bag in place while you pour your wort in the pail. Remove the bag and much of the trub comes out with it. Wash and reuse many times.

The Hydra is the best Immersion Chiller I have seen on the market today, I love mine!!!

 

[vance]

You're right in that a whirlpool is a spinning vortex that helps to bring your break material (trub) into the center of your kettle in a cone so the spigot can draw clean wort from the side. A bit advanced especially since you don't have a spigot.

I have a spigot on my kettle and I'll stir my cooled wort in a circle to form a whirlpool vortex. I let the wort settle a bit and then open the spigot valve to fill the fermenter leaving much of trub behind.

Stirring the wort with the Hydra in place facilitates the cooling time. Moving the wort around chills in a much shorter time. This is actually what they are talking about in relation to the Hydra. Our way is just manual way of stirring to cool more rapidly.

Additionally, this will work to strain your wort after cooling: After you cool with your Hydra if you decide on one, I often line my fermenter pail with a 5 gallon paint strainer bag from Home Depot or Lowes. It has a stretch band at the top which is really nice to hold the bag in place while you pour your wort in the pail. Remove the bag and much of the trub comes out with it. Wash and reuse many times.

The Hydra is the best Immersion Chiller I have seen on the market today, I love mine!!!

I like that idea, I've alternated between siphoning the wort and dumping it but I feel like siphoning takes a while and doesn't give any good oxygen to the wort. I think I'm going to order a hydra today...

 

[bruhaha]

I like that idea, I've alternated between siphoning the wort and dumping it but I feel like siphoning takes a while and doesn't give any good oxygen to the wort. I think I'm going to order a hydra today...

Yeah, the splashing of the wort into your fermenter by pouring is beneficial. Pouring into the fermenter lined with a strainer bag is a really good way since O2 exposure is needed at this stage of the game.

Good luck with the Hydra!!!

 

[fatherdan]

Hydra for the win.

Brewed last weekend and got to within 4 degrees of ground water temp 14 minutes

Water was 74

 

[55x11]

I think best solution for quick and relatively water-conserving cooling:
Hydra or similarly long (50 ft or so) copper tubing, with recirculating arm, with a pump setup to drain wort from the kettle and return close to coils using the arm.

Plus, especially if your ground water is fairly warm - switching half-way through the cooling to recirculating ice-cold water from a bucket that you cooled overnight to close to freezing, and then add ice cubes as the water warms up.

So basically you want to setup two recirculating circles - one for wort, one for chilling water.

Another similar solution is to use two immersion chillers - one will serve as "pre-chiller" in ice bucket, and once ice-cold, the water goes to your actual immersion chiller in a kettle.

I would also look into something like this:
https://www.morebeer.com/products/superchiller-immersion-wort-chiller-50-12-brass-fittings.html

 

[vance]

Just ordered mine! Can't wait to get my hands on it and make my IPAs even better.

 

[ajdelange]

For an immersion chiller the relevant parameters are the coolant flow rate and the length of the tube. This assumes that thermal resistance between coolant and wort is not something you can control which isn't true. 20 pieces of tubing of 0.1" diameter carrying 0.05 gpm cooling each (total 1 gpm) are better than 1 piece of tubing of 0.44 in diameter (same bore area) carrying 1 gpm because they present 20*pi*0.1/2 = 3.13 square inches surface to the wort per inch of length whereas the larger pipe presents 1*pi*0.44/2 = 0.69 square inches per inch of length. Note that the multiple tubes would not work any better than the single were they bundled - they must be separate to the point where each has equal access to the wort.

The underlying principles are
1)Heat transfer per unit time depends on the difference in temperature between the wort and the coolant.
2)Heat transfer per unit mass pf coolant depends the difference in temperature between the wort and the coolant at the exit point

Thus if you want fast cooling you want the coolant to be as cold as possible throughout the length of the tubing and arrange for this by running as much coolant as you can. You cool fast but you use a lot of water.

Conversely, if you want to use the minimum amount of coolant you slow down the flow until the temperature of the water exiting is close to the temperature of the wort. This uses much less water but takes longer.

As the maximum heat transfer per unit mass is effected when the coolant leaves at the wort temperature another strategy is to increase the length of the tubing as this means each unit mass of water is in effective contact with the wort for longer at a given flow rate. A longer tube also increases the effective area of contact between wort and coolant. Thus a longer tube both increases cooling rate and decreases the coolant required for a given drop.

There is no 'optimum' design. For better performance increase tubing length and thermal contact (surface area). The more tubing you add the better the performance will be but there is definitely a diminishing returns effect here. The last 10' added don't give the same performance boost as the first 10' added.

 

[Addiktion]

Not sure if I'm too late to this discussion (most likely) I tied to skip down so I can get a reply in here so I didn't read all the answers. However I use a cooler with one large bag of ice, a pond pump and a wort chiller. I pump ice water into the wort, then into an empty secondary cooler. As I'm pumping I'm stiring the wort to get lots of circulation. I save all the collected hot water, basically until the cooler gets full of hot water and I use for cleaning. I'll top off he ice cooler with water to keep it somewhat full and the. Move into a recirculating chiller. So basically I take the hose and put it in my source tank and let what ever ice and water are left do the cooling. As long as you stir you'll get 5 gallon batch down to about 75-78 in about 15 mins.

 

[Addiktion]

This is my set up. Ice cooler on left. Hot water cooler on right.