Damn Squirrels said:Not being a smartass, just seriously not knowing the answer...
What's the point of a prechiller? Why not just get a bigger or more functional chiller? Seems like it's just one more thing to deal with...
Yeast Infection said:A prechiller chills the water that is going to chill the hot wort. If the water coming out of your hose is 90F, then you wouldnt be able to chill the wort to under 90F and it would take a long time to chill .
In BierMunchers pictures....you would put ice/water into the cooler, run water through the copper piping, and that "prechilled" water would then go to your wort chiller to cool the wort, make sense?
Damn Squirrels said:Not being a smartass, just seriously not knowing the answer...
What's the point of a prechiller? Why not just get a bigger or more functional chiller? Seems like it's just one more thing to deal with...
thebull said:Today I bought a small submersion pump (130 gph) for $18 at HD. After the tap water has cooled the brew to its coolest limit with the IC, I intend to place the pump in ice water and pump that water continuously through the chiller. Based on what I have read, it will work great. Usually only takes minutes to get the final temps down from what the tap water is. I tested the cheap pump today and it flows very well through the IC so I expect it will work very well. With this method it dosen't take an addition IC and this system should work better.
I'm brewing a 10-gallon batch tomorrow. I'll stick my foot in there and let you know.jaybird said:I was just thinking of making a very large one of those for my swimming pool today. how well does it work?
JJ
I have been seriously thinking about it. in the summer here my swimming pool water will hit 95+ deg F and I live right down the street from an ice plant. Just not sure if it would chill enough water to make it worth the expence. if it would it could double as a heater in the winter. what do ya think?Bobby_M said:You're going to make a prechiller for your pool? That's a lot of ice.
BierMuncher said:I have some extra copper laying around from a previous project.
I have a spare hour.
I just compare my cool rate to what I had back in February. Seems to be taking a lot longer and I'm not getting as drastic a cold break.wop31 said:...Is your ground water that much warmer over in STL? I am in southern indiana and I usually don't have a problem with my CFC.
Cheers
whatcha brewing tomorrow??? I am going to brew tomorrow as well. I was hopeing to get it brewed today but UPS arrived lateBierMuncher said:I'm brewing tomorrow so I'll see how this works.
grrtt78 said:copper is rediculously expensive where i live and i was wondering since a prechiller doesnt need to transfer as much heat (it will stay the same temp once it reaches its lowest temp) would some cheaper metal work as well? or does copper transfer the cold to the water better?
That was really poorly worded.
jaybird said:I have been seriously thinking about it. in the summer here my swimming pool water will hit 95+ deg F and I live right down the street from an ice plant. Just not sure if it would chill enough water to make it worth the expence. if it would it could double as a heater in the winter. what do ya think?
JJ
Bobby_M said:I agree with John completely. If you want to make it seamless, you can connect the pump to the chiller right from the start. Just dangle your garden hose into the bucket and start pumping. Once your wort is 100ish, dump your ice into the bucket. This keeps you from switching your chiller connection from the garden hose to the pump. The alternative is to use cheap garden hose quick disconnects.
You win....the_bird said:BierMuncher, you don't KNOW ugly!
Look at this bad boy!
This weekend's project is to clean it up, actually. It works crazy-good (dual coils, lots of surface area), I get wort to pitching temps in like twelve minutes, but DAMN it's U-G-L-Y. It'll be nice, though, once I get it all cleaned up (I'll post "after" pics when I'm done).
johnsma22 said:I've tried both the pre-chiller method and the ice water recirculation method and hands down the ice water recirc method is the quickest and most efficient use of ice.
It's all about temperature differential. The delta T (differential) of tap water, even at 90˚F, and boiling wort is very large. Once the tap water has done it's job and brought the wort down to ~110˚F, then switch over to the ice water recirc (again creating another large delta T) to drive the wort down to pitching temp. This will require the purchase of a submersible pump.
With my 76˚F tap water it takes 15 minutes to bring the temp down from boiling to ~100˚F. Then switching the hoses and recirculating a five gallon bucket of ice water with a pump using two 5 lb bags of ice through the IC will bring my wort down to a lager pitching temp of 55˚F in about 5 minutes. That's pretty fast and efficient, IMHO.
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