Jamil's recirculating chiller

[EdWort]

I cannot believe I have didn't do this sooner. I picked up the recirculating chiller piece of copper tubing at Austin Homebrew last week. It's an $11 piece of copper that I could have bought and made myself, but it was pre-bent and one end was flanged to help keep the hose from slipping off, so I bought it.

I used it to chill 16.5 gallons of wort yesterday after running some boiling wort through it to sanitize it.

The system brought 16.5 gallons from 212 degrees to 139 in under 5 minutes using tap water. Time to 80 degrees was 25 minutes with only tap water and ambient temp was 92.

Next time, I'll hook up my recirculating ice water pump to the chiller.

The main thing is that I no longer have to stir the kettle to speed up chilling. Now I can stand there and watch the thermometer as it drops.

I have had a pump for a year now and am now kicking myself for not using it.

 

[chefmike]

Can you post pictures of it out of the pot?

I do not have a pump yet, but I am always collecting ideas.

 

[weirdboy]

He's talking about this design if you want to see pics and a longer discussion about how it works. The basic idea is that in addition to circulating the chill water through the chiller, you are simultaneously pumping wort from the bottom of the pot (via the spigot in EdWort's picture) back up to the top of the kettle to flow against the chiller coils and create a whirlpool effect.

 

[arturo7]

Ed, thanks for posting that. It opens a world of possibilities.

What about a screen on the wort return side to filter out the cold break and hops? Maybe overkill?

 

[HomebrewJeff]

Ed, thanks for posting that. It opens a world of possibilities.

What about a screen on the wort return side to filter out the cold break and hops? Maybe overkill?

It would have to be a pretty big screen, depending on the amount of trub that is present it's likely to get clogged pretty easily.

 

[adx]

I do not have a pump yet, but I am always collecting ideas.

Same here. Threads like this want me to run out and buy a pump and a larger kettle, and a bigger tun, and a .....