Pump / plate chiller/ hopstand

[Jtk78]

I have researched this some, but not extensively. The home brew club I just joined has a plate chiller, and last week was the first time I saw one in use. To say I was impressed was an understatement. I do not have a pump yet, but have been kicking it around. I've been thinking about how I would use these tools in my process and wonder what you think about the following for a hopstand situation.

I did not have a whirlpool fitting on my boil kettles, but I do have 1 fitting with a valve. So I would set the chiller and pump up to my kettle outlet, then run it back to the kettle from through the top for the last few minutes to sanitize.

Once the flame was out, I would:
- start the water through the chiller, but still keep the wort returning to the kettle until I reached 180ish.
- cut the water off to chiller, add whirlpool hops TO HOP SPIDER and run pump for 15-20 minutes for my hopstand.
- once time was up, turn cold water on to chiller again and move wort outlet to fermenter.

Obviously if I'm not using a hopstand in the recipe, I could skip that and go to the fermenter quicker.

I have hot water in my garage, so I could quickly run hot water through the pump and chiller, then some PBW, then rinse with hot water again.

Does this sound reasonable, or am I off my rocker here? I would love to speed up the chilling process.

Thanks.

 

[brick_haus]

Sounds like a textbook description of a very good option of how to do it.

 

[schematix]

I used to do something like this in the past but ultimately i moved on because the utilization from the hop spider was awful. I'd estimate something like 50% for bitterness and flavor/aroma.

So then i switched to just free balling the hops. I got my bitterness and aroma/flavor back.

However, the chiller clogged every time i used it. So i switched to a Hydra IC. No more clogs. The actual cooling time is slightly longer but the clean-up time is like 1/10th so it's a net gain.

I still use the plate chiller for chilling water, and even dozens of cycles later it's still blowing out chunks of hop debris. -1 to plate chillers for wort.

 

[Jtk78]

Thanks for the confirmation Brick.

Schematix - so I have read about the hop utilization issues, but I'm using one already, well actually I'm using a hop bag from @wilserbrewer. So that really shouldn't be effected at all. I could argue it may even improve in my setup because I don't always get great whirlpool when my immersion chiller is in the wort now. And if I step away for a moment, it stops fairly quickly. This way that wort would be going around without me hoovering over it.

 

[LarMoeCur]

I've seen brewers whirlpool with just hose and piece of small piece of tubing vise grip held to the kettle. So, you don't need a installed whirlpool arm.

I'm not a fan of the 180 degree hop stand. Holding the wort above 160F is converting SMM to DMS. Not getting exactly the hop flavor and aroma you're looking for won't ruin a beer but DMS will.

I've done it two different ways with great results.

1. I throw the hops in at flame out and immediately start the cooling process. I would recirc from the chiller until at my desired temp. The cooling process will take at least 20 minutes unless your have 50F degree groundwater. From 212 to 160 you will extract all the hop flavor and aroma you are looking for. You will still be extracting below 160 just not as much.

2. Now if I were using a plate chiller. I would for sure be running my mason jar hop back. I would not want the hop particles getting pumped into my chiller. I would put the flameout hops addition in the jar. I would gravity feed the from the kettle to the hop back to the pump and through the chiller then back to the kettle until at fermentation temp.

"Because people can perceive DMS even at very low flavor thresholds (of 10-150 parts per billion) it can have a significant impact on the flavor of finished beer." I try to get my beers below 140 as quickly as I can because of that statement.

 

[Jtk78]

Thanks LarMoeCur. If I try this setup, I think I would brew something that doesn't have a hopstand in it the first time around to test the process. I really don't notice any hop material with the use of my hop bag currently. The hopback does look interesting. Do you have an issue with the flow getting restricted?

 

[LarMoeCur]

I watch it closely for the first 5 minutes. Ready throttle the pump back if necessary. I've only had to one time on very heavy hopped IPA. I had to throttled the flow back the liquid found the path of least resistance and I went back to full flow a few minutes later. The hop back works pretty good as a filter.