New Wort Chiller?

[agentbud]

Ok, it's time to blow a little hard-earned cash on some type of brewing gear and I'm thinking an upgraded wort chiller. Not a big fan of immersion nor plate chillers. Counterflow chillers just seem easier. I currently brew on a Brewzilla Gen 4 35L and use the built in pump to send the wort through a Grainfather counterflow chiller that I picked on these forums. It does the job but is slow to pitch temps. My biggest problem is that I live in the south and water temps in the summer can be tough to chill with. So, before I splurged on a fancy new CF chiller, I wanted to ask all you smart folks out there who have experience with them, are the pricey CF chiller (think exchillerator maxx) worth the money and do they do that much better of a job than the standard Grainfather CF chiller? Or would my money be spent better with some other type of chiller. And yes, I have used ice baths to help the warm water but I'm always looking for an easier way...

 

[DuncB]

Ok, it's time to blow a little hard-earned cash on some type of brewing gear and I'm thinking an upgraded wort chiller. Not a big fan of immersion nor plate chillers. Counterflow chillers just seem easier. I currently brew on a Brewzilla Gen 4 35L and use the built in pump to send the wort through a Grainfather counterflow chiller that I picked on these forums. It does the job but is slow to pitch temps. My biggest problem is that I live in the south and water temps in the summer can be tough to chill with. So, before I splurged on a fancy new CF chiller, I wanted to ask all you smart folks out there who have experience with them, are the pricey CF chiller (think exchillerator maxx) worth the money and do they do that much better of a job than the standard Grainfather CF chiller? Or would my money be spent better with some other type of chiller. And yes, I have used ice baths to help the warm water but I'm always looking for an easier way...

Get another CFC and join them together.
I have a coolossus and a collossus 2 in series with separate inflows and outflows of cooling water.
I've heard good things about the Exchilerator and you might find this thread interesting.
https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/...teel-counterflow-chiller.107095/#post-1325992


You can see my double chiller in post 16 of the above thread.

 

[Deadalus]

Give us some input about how fast your current CFC is. I'm not thinking you will save much time at all since CFC's are fairly quick as is. I have the fat style, tight loop, copper, wort loop is 1/2" copper. I have a Hopstopper limitation of 1 gallon per minute. That's about 6 minutes. I often use whirlpool hops, so that requires an initial cooling. I also have my "perpetual chiller", which is basically a barrel with stored room temperature water. So I don't really have precise times recorded. A gallon per minute is real slow vs pumped, it's fairly close to just using gravity even. I'm not sure I would tell you to buy an expensive $200+ one to save a couple minutes. Something used might be a different story. My CFC was slightly slower than my Therminator PC, but only about 1-3 minutes on a 6 gallon batch. I prefer the CFC due to a few different considerations for my own system and process.

 

[lumpher]

Easier than an immersion chiller? I have an IC. I hose mine off when done, then again when ready to use. I put it into the boiling wort 15 minutes before the end of boil. Tough schedule...

 

[DuncB]

Yes and any time saved with a plate chiller will be lost cleaning it, unblocking it and worrying about is it clean.
The longer the CFC the better.
I sanitise my CFC on the way down to whirlpool and then whirlpool for 20, stand to let the trub settle and then chill and transfer.
More time is lost with these steps than the cool to transfer.
A means of chilling your cooling water might be useful in many ways in the brewery, wheras a bigger CFC only has one use.

 

[cfrazier77]

It depends on what you are doing. If you are going from the kettle hot to the cfc and then the fermentor a better cfc would help, but you will never get lower than your water temp. If you are returning the work flow to your kettle, whirlpool, you have another option for hot ground water. I use to have 80 plus degree ground water. I would cool, returning flow to the kettle and I had immersion chiller in line between the water spicket and the chiller. I put 20 pounds of ice in a cooler. I started chilling with the immersion chiller out of the cooler. When the wort started to slow cooling, 90s, then I put the immersion chiller in the ice and the wort dropped the rest of the way quickly.

 

[agentbud]

It depends on what you are doing. If you are going from the kettle hot to the cfc and then the fermentor a better cfc would help, but you will never get lower than your water temp. If you are returning the work flow to your kettle, whirlpool, you have another option for hot ground water. I use to have 80 plus degree ground water. I would cool, returning flow to the kettle and I had immersion chiller in line between the water spicket and the chiller. I put 20 pounds of ice in a cooler. I started chilling with the immersion chiller out of the cooler. When the wort started to slow cooling, 90s, then I put the immersion chiller in the ice and the wort dropped the rest of the way quickly.

I have tried a similar approach as well and seemed to work better than any other solution (given my setup) so will probably just go back to that. Instead of an IC in line, I had an aquarium pump in line and would drop it into a bucket of ice water and switch to that once the wort got down to around 100. Just wasn;t sure if a better CFC might also help

 

[DuncB]

Keep your eyes peeled for a secondhand one and grab that to add to your system and keep chillin!!

 

[Jag75]

Ok, it's time to blow a little hard-earned cash on some type of brewing gear and I'm thinking an upgraded wort chiller. Not a big fan of immersion nor plate chillers. Counterflow chillers just seem easier. I currently brew on a Brewzilla Gen 4 35L and use the built in pump to send the wort through a Grainfather counterflow chiller that I picked on these forums. It does the job but is slow to pitch temps. My biggest problem is that I live in the south and water temps in the summer can be tough to chill with. So, before I splurged on a fancy new CF chiller, I wanted to ask all you smart folks out there who have experience with them, are the pricey CF chiller (think exchillerator maxx) worth the money and do they do that much better of a job than the standard Grainfather CF chiller? Or would my money be spent better with some other type of chiller. And yes, I have used ice baths to help the warm water but I'm always looking for an easier way...

A glycol chiller is where id lean.

 

[agentbud]

A glycol chiller is where id lean.

I had considered glycol but not sure that I'm ready to drop that much cash considering I'd only use it for cooling wort 10 or so times per year

 

[Jag75]

I had considered glycol but not sure that I'm ready to drop that much cash considering I'd only use it for cooling wort 10 or so times per year

Thats the boat I was in . So I did the DIY chiller. Thing is still going strong.

 

[agentbud]

Thats the boat I was in . So I did the DIY chiller. Thing is still going strong.

I'm sure there are several on these forums but was there a specific set of instructions on here that you followed to build yours?

 

[Jag75]

I'm sure there are several on these forums but was there a specific set of instructions on here that you followed to build yours?

This is the one I followed
https://backdeckbrewing.wordpress.com/2017/09/05/glycol-chiller-build/

 

[agentbud]

for chilling wort, do you pump the glycol through a counterflow chiller or through an immersion chiller?

 

[Jag75]

for chilling wort, do you pump the glycol through a counterflow chiller or through an immersion chiller?

I use a CFC , transfer to my FV then hook my FV to my chiller . The chiller finishes on getting the wort to the desired temp for pitching and fermenting and keeps it there. As far as Im concerned, fermentation temp is just as important as cleanliness.

 

[agentbud]

I use a CFC , transfer to my FV then hook my FV to my chiller . The chiller finishes on getting the wort to the desired temp for pitching and fermenting and keeps it there. As far as Im concerned, fermentation temp is just as important as cleanliness.

ok, last question(s). 1) do you know how cold the glycol gets coming out of your diy chiller, and 2) how long does the unit need to run before getting down to that temp?

 

[Jag75]

ok, last question(s). 1) do you know how cold the glycol gets coming out of your diy chiller, and 2) how long does the unit need to run before getting down to that temp?

Ive got my solution down to 28/29f . However i dont keep it at that temp on a daily basis. I keep it set at 50f. So the room i keep it in gets to 75/77f in the summer. The fan will kick on when the solution gets up to 53f . Think theres a few degree buffer.

When i hook it up to my FV , it will drop 75-78f wort to 68f in approx. 5 min i guess. Its not long. Ive never timed it . So as the wort temp drops the glycol solution temp goes up, the fan kicks on starts the chill. Cycle repeats .