pre chiller not chilling?

[birdley123]

I hooked up a 25' IC as a pre chiller last weekend to act as a pre chiller before running into my 25' IC; had it going through a bucket filled with ice and water, but the wort would not go below 80?
Did I do something wrong? I ran through 2, 22lb bags of ice and still it wouldn't drop below 80.Seems like I ran water for 45 min.! Even if my tap water was 80 it should still go below that, right?
I ask because I'm gonna brew again Friday and I want to be more prepared this time...

Thx, B

 

[bd2xu]

How long was the hose between the pre chiller and main chiller? I haven't tried this yet but have read it needs to be short. Also, don't run the water too fast. Finally, I've read it helps A LOT if you swirl the pre chiller around in the ice water (ice water not just ice) and of course swirl the main chiller around in the wort or better yet if you have a pump be recirculating and whirpooling best case. Immersion chillers work much better if the liquid around them is moving across the chiller. Also if you add salt to the ice water it will drop the temp and make the water going through the pre chiller colder but I'm not sure if that would be worth it.

 

[ChefRex]

You'd be better off using a small pump and recirculating ice water though theIC.
I got one off eBay for $10 shipped. Temp drops very quickly with it.

 

[birdley123]

hose between the two was long (10'), plus I ran the water kinda fast, so that could've been it...?

 

[birdley123]

You'd be better off using a small pump and recirculating ice water though theIC.
I got one off eBay for $10 shipped. Temp drops very quickly with it.

Sounds like the ticket. How exactly do you hook up that setup???

thx.

 

[bd2xu]

Sounds like the ticket. How exactly do you hook up that setup???

thx.

That works well too. Use your IC hooked to garden hose to knock it down to 100 or so, most important is to drop below 140 as fast as possible. Then put pump in bucket of ice water and go pump->hose->IC in wort->hose back to bucket

 

[E_Marquez]

In Texas Summer heat.. I found when using just my prechiller in a cooler full of ice water, tap water in, through prechiller, to chiller stiring the wort around the chiller and the ice water around the prechiller the ONLY way to get wort temps down fast and low.. Otherwise a thermal layer builds up right next to the copper coils, and the hot wort / ice water never "gets" to the copper line.

The pond pump in the ice water takes care of the issue on the prechiller side.. so no I just have to stir the wort.

Some folks get rid of the prechiller and just push ice water to the chiller... Likley that works as well.. But I figure I have the prechiller... and it's in ice water... might as well use it...
Need to get some temps both ways to confirm if the prechiller is still helping

 

[ChefRex]

I have a hose fitting on one end, the other is a pain 3/8 hose, i just slip it over the end, pump it out the opposite direction.
Little POS pump that i use, needs a 12volt converter which i had, works great.

 

[ChefRex]

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