Low water use immersion Chiller

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DWes

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Just getting back into brewing after about a 10 year Hiatus and a move to the West Coast. Back East I used to pump 50 F water out of my well to chill with and never worried about how much I was using. Now that I am on municipal water with a drought going on I decided to see if I could make an immersion chiller that would not waste so much water. I just fired it up for the first time today and it worked great, so I thought I would share. The one drawback is that it uses a lot of ice (two five gallon buckets), which is fine for me since I have access to an ice machine.

Materials:
3/8"x25' copper coil $25.68
Rio Plus 600 (200 GPH) aquarium pump $16.56
6' 3/8" id vinyl hose ~$3
2 hose clamps ~$1.50
1 5 gallon plastic bucket. ~$3

Total cost ~$50

I brought ~4 gallons of water to a boil in my kettle (I am going to do 3 gallon batches so I can use a 3 gallon soda keg in my regular fridge.)

The aquarium pump sticks to the bottom of one five gallon bucket with suction cups. I added just enough water to cover the pump and then filled the bucket the rest of the way with ice. The immersion chiller coil went into the kettle and the output went back into the ice bucket. As the ice melted, I added a second five gallon bucket of ice to the bucket with the pump. With stirring, after 10 minutes, the water in my kettle was down to 20C (68F) At the end of the process the five gallon bucket was full of an ice water mix. About the top 8" was unmelted ice. I think there was enough left to have chilled another gallon of boiling water to pitching temp if I was doing a five gallon batch. Cheers!

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I brewed a batch about 5 weeks ago and I used my immersion chiller for the first time. I was stoked about how quickly it cooled my boil, but living in San Diego -- where we're currently under mandatory water rationing because of the drought -- I was concerned about the amount of water I was wasting (not to mention the hit to the water bill this'll create if I brew often). Fortunately, our spa was a little low, so I routed the output line into it to fill it back up (still, I figure I used well over 100 gallons in the process... A big waste!)

After seeing this, and before starting my batch yesterday, I made a trip to Home Depot. $19 later, I had a submersible fountain pump -- that came with a 3/8" adapter -- perfect for all of the vinyl hose line I already have around the house!

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Beckett-80-GPH-Submersible-Fountain-Pump-M60HD/100046313

Using one 20# bag of ice, and a second 7# bag, an old bottling bucket and that hose I mentioned... It worked like a charm! Had roughly 3.5 - 4.0 gallons in my boil, and it cooled it from 212 to 72 degrees in 22 minutes.

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I took it a 1/2 step further... After sanitizing my carboy, I used the water in it as the primer water for the pump (and used the rest for clean-up afterwards). Also just to be a bit "extra green", I left the cold water bucket out overnight, and watered the plants in the backyard this AM (careful with this tho... if the water's too cold it could hurt your plants). :D

Thanks again for this great idea!
 
This is really cool finding a discussion so recent about an issue that I'm going through as well. I live in New Jersey. While I am not dealing with issues of droughts, the excess use charges on my water bill did not make my wife happy. My quarterly water bill was $60 above normal, and I had brewed 3 batches during that period. So I have to blame my immersion wort chiller, and the 30 minutes that it takes to lower the beer to pitching temperature. My first thought was to try a more efficient plate chiller and pump system, but that would run $300 to $400, and I don't have a ball valve yet on my kettle so that is another issue.

So this post comes at the perfect time, at the perfect price, and truly eliminates waste. Also, I can simply clean my 10 gallon cooler mash tun and use it for ice water. One thought I had though - not to sound cheap, but buying enough ice to cool down the wort might get expensive. Has anyone tried using the above method with ice packs instead of real ice? Walmart sells a 5lb Arctic Ice ice pack for $25. It may be a higher starting cost, but if reused, it might cost less in the long run. I'm just wondering how effective and durable they might be.
 
This is really cool finding a discussion so recent about an issue that I'm going through as well. I live in New Jersey. While I am not dealing with issues of droughts, the excess use charges on my water bill did not make my wife happy. My quarterly water bill was $60 above normal, and I had brewed 3 batches during that period. So I have to blame my immersion wort chiller, and the 30 minutes that it takes to lower the beer to pitching temperature. My first thought was to try a more efficient plate chiller and pump system, but that would run $300 to $400, and I don't have a ball valve yet on my kettle so that is another issue.

So this post comes at the perfect time, at the perfect price, and truly eliminates waste. Also, I can simply clean my 10 gallon cooler mash tun and use it for ice water. One thought I had though - not to sound cheap, but buying enough ice to cool down the wort might get expensive. Has anyone tried using the above method with ice packs instead of real ice? Walmart sells a 5lb Arctic Ice ice pack for $25. It may be a higher starting cost, but if reused, it might cost less in the long run. I'm just wondering how effective and durable they might be.

I use frozen water bottles. My ferm camber is a full size refrigerator and I normally only brew a batch at a time so the last couple of days when I cold crash my beer that is ready to bottle I put about 50 water bottles in the freezer part and they freeze as the beer crashes.

they are not as efficient as ice due to much less surface area and the plastic barrier so you end up recircing longer but they do get the job done. I think the arctic ice pack would be even less efficient due to even less surface area then a few dozen bottles.

During the winter I set the tub of water out the night before and it freezes part way. If I need more I can add snow.
 
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