Pre Chiller

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hammer one

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I just have to ask. Has anyone built a larger than normal pre chiller and used it to cool wort? To take the place of a counterflow.
 
No a pre chiller is what you use to cool your tap water before you run it through your counterflow or plate chiller. It's pretty much a cooler full of ice with copper tubing run through it.
 
No, but I've always wondered if a coil is even necessary if you have an airtight container.

For example, if you had a 5 foot length of 4" PVC, capped one end and installed a cleanout plug on the other end. Both ends would have a hose connection. Fill the pipe with ice, hook up the hoses and turn the water on. The water pressure should force the water all the way though the ice and up into the IC. I think this would work pretty well and be extremely cheap to build, but I suspect it would melt the ice too fast.
 
The other thing I thought of would be to take a pre chiller, stick it in a 5 gal Home Depot bucket, fill it with 4 gallons of water and freeze the whole damn thing in the freezer so the pre chiller is surround by a solid block of ice. And you wouldn't even have to buy a bag of ice or use the ice from your fridge.
 
Get yourself a 5 -6 gal. bucket or sink and a small submersible pump like they sell at Lowe's and Home Depot for small ponds and fountains, and run your tap water through your chiller until you hit 100 - 110 deg. and then fill your bucket or sink with lots of ice blocks from your wife's Tupperware that's been taking up all the room in the freezer, and hook up your pump to the chiller and recirculate the ice water till it melts. This should drop your temp. from 100 to 70 in about 5 minutes. Makes sure you agitate the wort while the ice water runs through it. This will also save some of the wasted water exiting the chiller, its kind of green...good luck!
 
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