Non Water based Wort Chillers?

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SFBrewer

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Heya gearheads and homebrewers...

Given that CA is experiencing a record drought I can't bring myself to use my plate chiller to cool wort.

This leaves me with a few ideas...

  1. A glycol chiller. An unlikely purchase given their cost.
  2. Rigging a glycol-style chiller my setting up a large reservoir (55+ gal in a drinking water barrel) of anti-freeze in a chest freezer or fridge and pumping that liquid through the plate chiller in place of water. Probably the cheapest solution to my problem, the issue is the refrigeration of enough coolant to make it effective in the 12g batches I tend to brew.
  3. Building an air moderated heat exchanger. I've found an all aluminum racing radiator with 1" tubing and a few 1400+ CFM fans. Not sure my March pump would have the necessary pressure to circulate that much wort through but I could also set it up for gravity flow with a collection tank to pump back to the kettle. This seems the most "green" and flexible in the long run.

Anyone have any suggestions or experience concerning non-water moderated wort chillers?
:mug:
sfbrewer
 
I hear ya. I do no chill now but have had issues ranging from infections to temp and pitching related off flavors. My time is limited and I'm annoyed enough that when I do get the chance to brew, I don't. :mad:

I'd rather find an inexpensive-ish and long term solution for wort cooling instead of playing dice with no-chill.

Another idea would be to use an immersion chiller and make a closed loop forced air heat sink...a little like a CPU cooler in a PC. Pump a moderator fluid through the closed loop.

Still spitballing.
:mug:
 
I would vote no on the aluminum radiator, unless you know all the particulars on it's construction and manufacture, especially if it's an epoxied radiator.

If it's all tig'd, find out the alloy, and determine if you can get a good oxide layer established on it.

If all is good on that, find out if it's a "serpentine pass" type, which would probably be your best bet.
 
For that price, you could get a NEW small chest freezer and submersible pump. Apply some epoxy to the seams to ensure water tight and then fill it with water and just enough glycol to keep from freezing at the warmest setting.

Pump that through your chiller of choice and collect the output in a barrel. It will be put back into the chest freezer after it cools to ambient.
 
Bobby_M said:
For that price, you could get a NEW small chest freezer and submersible pump. Apply some epoxy to the seams to ensure water tight and then fill it with water and just enough glycol to keep from freezing at the warmest setting.

Pump that through your chiller of choice and collect the output in a barrel. It will be put back into the chest freezer after it cools to ambient.
Click to expand...

^^ That is a great idea. If no chill has done nothing more than give you headaches, I'd vote this. For about $150 you can get a new chest freezer and actually use this regardless of draught restrictions. Definitely collecting the water to pour or pump back into the freezer would mean that you can use gallons of water over and over ... and over again.
 
My vote is for the glycol and freezer. I would use a glycol chart to determine what you need to be able to get your freezing point down to ~25*, then use a STC or Ranco to keep your bath at ~30*. You should have enough volume to chill your batch pretty quickly, and you could even use it to maintain temps on fermentors!

If you dont want to go that route, I would get a couple large buckets, fill them both up with ice. Put an immersion chiller in one as a pre-chiller, and pump out of the other and recirculate back into it. Dont add salt or anything to keep the temperature low, that way you can reuse the water in your washing machine.
 
An idea I have been playing with is getting a separate vessel and using my submersible pump. Buy a 1 gallon jug and freeze that to be used as a giant ice cube and recirculate the water through that separate vessel. I use a immersion chiller. Not sure if that giant ice cube would melt too fast but it certainly would lower the amount of water being used if it could be cooled while recirculating.
 
Bobby_M said:
For that price, you could get a NEW small chest freezer and submersible pump. Apply some epoxy to the seams to ensure water tight and then fill it with water and just enough glycol to keep from freezing at the warmest setting.

Pump that through your chiller of choice and collect the output in a barrel. It will be put back into the chest freezer after it cools to ambient.
Click to expand...

Like Bobby said, but circulate the glycol mix(pink stuff) back to a holding tank in the freezer.

I'd also run a washing machine load of tap water to bring down the first 20-30 degrees.

'da Kid
 
Lately I have been doing a no chill of sorts. Typically I leave the kettle lid off and let the wort chill to about 160 and add the last of my hop stand addition. This takes about an hour after flame out. Then I lid the kettle and and place a fan blowing next to, and on the kettle (aka Volkswagen cooling :). After another 3-6 hours I am usually down to around 100 degrees, at which point I take 2-3 frozen 2 or 3 liter soda bottles, dunk the frozen bottles in star san and then add them directly to the kettle. Another couple hours and I am at 60 - 65 and ready to pitch.

This sounds difficult, laborious, and time consuming, but it is not. Each step takes about 2 minutes and I do it when I can work it into my schedule, whether it be later that night, or first thing the following morning.

Even using my wort chiller, I am impatient. I prefer this modified no chill or passive chill. Not for everyone I'm sure, but seems to work for me. I find this easier and "faster" in terms of actual time spent "on duty" in the brewery than using my chiller.
 
Why not rig a shower head up to the end of the wort chiller and take a shower and shampoo with the hot water coming off the chiller. Then capture the shower water and use it to wash your car before you use it to flush your toilet or water your cactus garden. Wait. What if you used the hot water coming out of your chiller to make your next batch of beer? You could have an endless cycle of beer!

sonoma-forge-outdoor-shower-in-vineyard.jpg
 
I vote 'no chill' as I've considered it, and we have no water shortage in the midwest!

But how much glycol would a guy need for a 12 gal batch? I mean, with my wort chiller I go through gallons and gallons of water. I kinda envision him needing 50 gallons of this stuff.
 
You go through gallons because it's probably 70F out of the tap. A 30% glycol / 70% water mix can be aqueous at around 0F which provides a pretty amazing temp delta. In fact, you have to keep the wort moving or you'll freeze it to the coil. Napkin math says you'd need about 30 gallons of 0F glycol to chill 12 gallons of wort from 211F to 65F.

You know what though, I would be looking at using ice. If you have the freezer capacity, or buy a small used chest freezer, you can make 10 gallons worth of ice in small containers to use in an icewater pumped chiller. You collect that output water, let it cool, refill your ice containers and then wait for your next brew day. Freeze them again, repeat. No water lost and all you pay for is the energy to freeze it before each batch.
 
can one make a small chest freezer watertight? Or would you have to use some sort of liner? There are so many applications for a freezer full of chilled water/glycol mixture: Chilling wort, maintaining ale and lager fermentation temp, cooling a walk-in beer/wine aging room. Seems like a great idea if you can keep the genie in the bottle by making the freezer waterproof.
 
Wow, thanks to all for the comments and suggestions!
:mug:

Thoughts, wall of text inbound:

No chill isn't really working the way I'd like it to, so that's out. :p

I do really like the idea of having a coolant reservoir kept at sub-freezing temps. However I have been looking at the space I have to play with and I don't think it's going to work. There just isn't enough space to add yet another piece of large equipment (water tank + chest freezer) to my space restricted storage area. Short version: I live in an apartment. I brew in a workshop area then quickly clean and return all the stuff to my storage space to avoid upsetting the building owners. This is besides the fact that moving 50 gals of liquid to and fro is a major PITA even with a good pump.

For those that asked/mentioned using the glycol/antifreeze method...I was initially considering using a collapsible water tank (read big plastic bag) as a "tank liner" for a chest freezer to get a reservoir set up without spending too much labor on getting the freezer ready. You can get "emergency water tank" 90+ gal bathtub sized ones for like 25 bucks. higher quality ones with several thicker layers go for 80-100. I wouldn't leave it in there long term simply out of fear of degradation...I'd pump the glycol out into a cheapo water tank of some kind.

Long term I would consider a chest freezer as a coolant reservoir but it seems to be a waste of a general purpose appliance where there are better specific application appliances out there...were I to go that far I'd look into used glycol systems. Throw together a collection of useful end bits for it and multipurpose it for lagering, wort chilling, etc etc. That's not in the cards for now either.

My goal here is to find a method that is "fire and forget" to some extent and doesn't' require a ton of labor/time to prep in advance and/or set up then tear down each time. This is all given the constraints of where I can brew. It's ok if the solution costs a bit as long as it works and lasts.

I haven't tried pointing a high output fan at the kettle...that actually might be enough to turn my no-chill frown upside-down. I'll try that before I do anything else. Think I can use a paint drying fan that's a bit like a portable hurricane.

Back to the forced air radiator idea...been looking into aluminum and food safety and it seems that of all the aluminum alloys out there almost all of the ones used for radiators are also used in food applications. From baking molds to cookware, food handling to prep equipment and even beverage cans are all of the same 4 or 5 alloys used for radiators with one exception.

I figure neck down the 1" connections to 1/2" ports to use existing tubing I have now for the bulk of the runs. Run it "anti-gravity" so the pump pushes the wort up thru the radiator to circulate back into the kettle. Use a couple of 16" fans blasting on max and hope it can drop the temp to sub 70 in a couple of hours. Off the cuff math says it's run about 350 for the radiator and fans, another 100 or so for new fittings (most of my gear is TC)...plus another 5% or so in "oops, didn't think of that" overflow.

I don't see how it couldn't work...engines run much hotter than boiling wort! Anything has to be better than the 12-16 hours it takes now.

:mug:
 
You don't really need a high output fan blowing on the hot kettle, I have found even an inexpensive small table top fan on the lowest setting blowing on the kettle to have a size able impact on cooling times, perhaps even more effective with an aluminum kettle vs SS.
 
Also, engines that run much hotter,and they dump the "hotter" into the top of the radiator...........That lets the liquid seek it's "natural" place , with the coolest being the densest , therefore the heaviest, @ the bottom of the radiator, where it's drawn from back to the engine.
And best I remember, your 3 radiator types are : down flow, ( old school!), cross flow, and the serpentine pass I mentioned, which is basically a "double pass" cross flow .

Feed to the top, pump from the bottom.

And a decent sized radiator probably holds close to 3 gallons.
 
I have a small submersible pump that gets attached to my IC. The pump goes into my cooler mash tun full of frozen water bottles and ice water. I keep a bunch frozen and reuse them, and with that added to a load of ice from the freezer I can usually get down to temp fairly quickly on about 4-5 gal water usage.
 
I don't have an elegant solution to offer but my last batch (5 gal) I transferred half the wort to an aluminum kettle, set it in a wash tub and used the output from my IC in brew kettle to circulate around outside of aluminum kettle.

Saved some time and water by dividing the thermal mass in that way.
 
I've thought about buying a baseboard heater at the local big box store, the kind with a copper pipe and aluminum fins, and then circulating wort through it, perhaps with a fan or series of fans blowing on it to pull off heat. Basically an air cooled chiller, just with home improvement store type components rather than a fancy expensive radiator.
 
They meter the water you take...... but not the water you return through the sewer system. Eliminate the flush toilet, and recover 100% of your gray water......... Don't let ANY water off your property except through transpiration and evaporation. Chiller water needs to go to other uses....... Laundry, bathing, washing dishes, garden, etc. In California, water is life....... DON'T GIVE ANY OF IT BACK!! It's not so much how much you "use" as how much you WASTE.

I'm a HUGE advocate of the undersea Columbia River Pipeline...... though I live in Montana .......... remote from the situation. Untold billions of gallons of fresh water spew into the Pacific Ocean from the Columbia..... it belongs to nobody at that point. A 40' diameter floating pipeline submerged 200' below the surface avoids all rights of way, and water rights, as well as the massive excavations and pumping stations required for overland pipelines.

An absurd project? I think not. We put men on the moon. Will it cost billions of dollars.... Yes, but that means jobs and men pumping dollars BACK into the economy. AND those billions are absorbed by the 40 million residents over a period of time. What California contributes to the nation is incalculable using normal metrics..... of course Hollywood and the TV industry are a total negative value as far as I'm concerned. Let's keep Californians in California, producing the products California produces. I don't know where this reluctance to address a major crisis comes from........... It's a mystery to me. We as a nation mobilize to alleviate the suffering in floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, etc. We recognize them as the disasters they are, and pitch in............. How is this drought any different? A project like this could return lands to productivity that have been robbed of water in California, Nevada, Arizona, and Colorado by leaving water in the Colorado River as part of the deal. It could return water to agriculture in the Central Valley and Imperial Valley among other places. It's a project that NEEDS TO BE DONE......... Regardless of the up front cost. The payback is immense and ongoing.

" For want of enterprise and faith, men are what they are, buying and selling and living their lives as serfs" Thoreau.

Clearly our leaders lack these qualities not to mention courage, imagination, and true vision. They pursue idiotic military conflicts, while watching America's crown jewel wither away and standing idly by..... We are governed by IDIOTS..... and always have been!! I can't begin to express my utter contempt for those who hold the reins of power in America. Our pseudo democratic system has failed us again and again.


H.W.
 
Apologies for not replying sooner, Mom Day with the SWMBO + her fam, then a day just for her has taken my weekend away.

Wall o' text again, sorry!

I got a PM from an HBT member who pointed out that there are tranny coolers out there that have copper lines with aluminum fins...oil coolers too. Some of them have hose barbs or even 1/2" NPT fittings on them. They're also cheaper. The only concern would be the nature of any solder in the line...

for example: http://www.autoanything.com/drivetrain-differentials/flex-a-lite-translife-transmission-coolers

@Stealthcruiser: Ah, that makes perfect sense! Thanks for the info. :mug:

@CUrchin: What is in the baseboard heater piping? Are they simple heat pipes or do they have an oil medium?

Another huge incentive for me is that instead of sanitizing by chemistry, sterilization by heat is an option. Clean it well then toss it in the oven at 250-300 for 45-60 min. All of my fittings and lines (silibrade is worth every cent) get tossed into a pressure cooker for 30 min at 15psi now, so I'm a huge fan of sterilization.

I may actually do this thing. :cross:

@Orly055: Thanks for your comments! I hear you man, water use in our nation is ridiculous and never gets any attention unless there is a crisis. This is to say nothing of the rest of the world. My thoughts are we stand on the brink of many technologies that will bring cheap, clean energy and water to all, provided we can take profiteering out of it. Not likely without some drastic acts and shifts in priorities across economic/social/national lines. As for politics, it's not polite to bring that up on the first date. :p

Again, thanks to all for the thoughts!
:mug:
 
My heating system circulates hot water thru base board heaters which are nothing more than a copper pipe with aluminum fins. It's very common here in the northeast. If you ran wort thru them rather than water you would effectively has a chiller.

I would avoid anything automotive. You never know if there is lead solder in there.
 
I think I found the modules you mean....they look good but they are pretty awkward in dimension. Will research further.
 
I once did the calculations on chilling wort with a chiller that was supplied with freon instead of water........ Sounded like a great idea. An immersion chiller hooked up to a unit about like your window AC unit.......... Unfortunately the horsepower required to chill wort at a decent rate was quite high.

If you had a permanently set up brewing room, you could use glycol, chilled in a deep freeze. Optimally you would want to discharge into a second reservoir to avoid heating the reserve coolant, as well as carefully controlling the flow to get the max cooling from your reserve........ it would not be a simple matter to make it efficient.


H.W.
 
At this point I'm definitely going to point a high velocity fan at my kettle next brew day to see if I can drop the wort temp to room temp/below 70 in a 12 hour period. Hopefully less.

I also think my summer tinker-project will be to assemble a forced air heat sink using an all aluminum pathed oil or tranny cooler. I have found a few out there that use "food grade" alloys and are 100% TIG welded so the risk of metal toxicity is about the same as brass if not less. The welds on copper tube elbows and 90 degree bends in automotive application cannot be confirmed to be lead free as of yet in my research.

Thanks to all for the comments and suggestions thus far. If anyone cares I'll update this thread with pics and so on as I go...when I get to it. :)

:mug:
 
The10mmKid said:
We use these in room conditioning ductwork:
http://www.brazetek.com/water-to-air-heat-exchangers
(This is just one brand)

Some of ours have chilled water while another right after it will have hot water circulating through it.

I will add that you should try to 'draw' the air through it, not blow into it.

'da Kid
Click to expand...



veeery interesting...so these are 100% copper lines? the pathing thru these things looks pretty complex but I can't really tell from the photo and if it's mentioned in the text I must have missed it. do you now if it's single pass? double pass? kabilliony pass?

Regardless the 12x18 would be great to use with a couple high draw 8 or 9" automotive fans if this whole concept isn't bankrupt from the outset. :)

:mug:
 
All of ours are huge 3' x6' and a couple even larger. Probably tens of thousands of CFM. I'm just the maintenance guy who checks on their health and reports any issues to the Facility Mgr. who calls in the pro's.

Here is a nice seller on fleaBay:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/12x24-Water-to-Air-Heat-Exchanger-Hot-Water-Coil-Outdoor-Wood-Furnace-/191563998633

Looks like the same unit, just way smaller.

I can't stipulate that these are soldered or brazed. It is my understanding though that soldering is avoided due to the softness and durability of the joint.

'da Kid
 
Why not make a concentrated batch and top up with 2 gallons of ice? Worked for me pre chiller days. Chilled, oxygenated and rinsed everything plus it's pretty accurate since ice takes up more space than water.
 
Bobby_M said:
Only practical for extract batches
Click to expand...


Why? If he can do a BIAB with 70% efficiency brew house then top up to 5 gallons how is it not practical?

I'm glad you're being responsible in my home state and conserving water. I know more than the population isn't conserving anything so I applaud you for that. I reuse my water from cooking to clean my brewing equipment. I use 10 gallons then stop chilling. I use this to clean fermentors, spoons, gloves, brewing bags, bottles, kegs, and my keggle. The first 5 gallons stays hot for a very long time.
 
Bobby_M said:
Only practical for extract batches
Click to expand...


Why? If he can do a BIAB with 70% efficiency brew house then top up to 5 gallons how is it not practical?

I'm glad you're being responsible in my home state and conserving water. I know more than the population isn't conserving anything so I applaud you for that. I reuse my water from cooking to clean my brewing equipment. I use 10 gallons then stop chilling. I use this to clean fermentors, spoons, gloves, brewing bags, bottles, kegs, and my keggle. The first 5 gallons stays hot for a very long time.
 
DurtyChemist said:
Why? If he can do a BIAB with 70% efficiency brew house then top up to 5 gallons how is it not practical?

I'm glad you're being responsible in my home state and conserving water. I know more than the population isn't conserving anything so I applaud you for that. I reuse my water from cooking to clean my brewing equipment. I use 10 gallons then stop chilling. I use this to clean fermentors, spoons, gloves, brewing bags, bottles, kegs, and my keggle. The first 5 gallons stays hot for a very long time.
Click to expand...

It's simply very inefficient. Of course you CAN do it. If you only boil 2.5 gallons and top up with another 2.5 gallons of ice, your 70% brew house efficiency goes down to 35%.
 
Our groundwater here in SF is a pretty solid 50-60F so it doesn't waste that much water if you use a high efficient (double coiled) IC and don't start chilling until after whirl pooling down to 160-170ish. I end up using the hot water to rinse the vomit, piss and **** off the sidewalk here in the lovely mission district.

Next easiest is as noted above. The night before you brew freeze a few 2l soda bottles and use them to chill your cooling water reservoir and pump to your IC. or ssanitize the bottles and dunk directly in kettle. But save the ice until it gets down to 100 or so. Then save the water for next time or put to good use.

If you're absolutely set on minimizing water usage then go liquid cooled. Air cooled just doesn't cut it- cuz air is an insulator, not a conductor.

A small set up for SF apartment situations is a 6-8k btu a/c unit ($50 on Craigslist, $100 new), with evap coil sitting in a small cooler of glycol mix. (You'll need to cut and extend the line to the coil a bit so it can sit in glycol bath). Then use your pump to circ the glycol thru your chiller.

The a/c unit is one piece, not heavy, not that large. Use a smallish 3-4 cu ft cooler and it's also small and easy to carry. Start up the glycol bath while you are brewing, when it's time to chill you're good to go. Easy peasy.

If you really wanna get badass I know a place in east bay to pick up smallish 120V recirculating chiller units. Just add glycol bath and you're in business. Not super expensive either.
 
I don't know if it was covered here yet, but there is a guy here in Tucson that seam sealed a chest freezer and filled it with water to use for chilling water. Just plug it in before your brew day and you have 100-200 gallons of water nice and cold and ready to chill. You don't really use the water up since it goes right back into the tank. Big water investment but not much to keep using it. FWIW, 7.48 gallons in 1 ft3.
 

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