Not impressed with my immersion chiller...

[black_belt]

Thank you--I've read the whole thread up to this point waiting to see if anyone talked about phase change, and you did!

You can see this intuitively--when you fill a glass with really cold ice cubes (say, 0F), and pour a little water in, that water will likely freeze--because the ice is well below freezing temp.

But after a while, as the entire glass warms, as you add water it doesn't freeze--the ice just bobs around. The ICE is at 32F but it's the phase change as it melts that keeps cooling the water to 32F.

It's why ice in a cooler lasts so long--takes a lot of heat to melt that ice, which keeps things cool.

You can add salt to it to lower the freezing temperature of the water. Need a fair amount to get a saturated solution, but it will drop the freezing temp by 10 degrees or so

 

[kristiismean]

From what I've read, if you use a pump and recirculate the water, you go through ice way before you get to pitching temp. I think the people that do it efficiently cool to about 100 with ground/tap water first and then use their pump and recirculate ice water.

That was more hassle than I was willing to deal with when I was looking for a solution to my hot, Lower Alabama water from my hose, so I went with the pre-chiller method. Once I hook up my hoses, I don't have to change anything until I'm done.

It all depends on how much ice and what size bucket you are using. I use a 5 gallon bucket, submersible pump, and ice. only 1 gallon of water goes in the bucket and we fill the rest of it up with ice. 5 gallons at 212 - 30 seconds set up, cools down in around 17 minutes to 72 this way, with an air temp of 70 ish (indoors). with 3/8 copper @ 25 '

of course, we move the water quickly, as it's a 3/4 horse pump (re purposed)

If doing a larger batch, I would just add another bucket and coil to the chain, and fill that with just ice.

(or do a counter flow chiller)