Second batch in the fermenter

[fatmoose]

Last night I was finally able to get around to brewing the Hop Head Double IPA kit I have from Midwest Supplies, things seemed to go pretty smoothly. There is quite a nice variety of hops that goes into this beer and will be my first experience with dry hopping. This beer has really got me looking forward to July!

Since my first brew I fabricated an immersion chiller and was really impressed with how quickly that dropped my wort temp. The only problem was that I didn't have enough hose to drain it out of my garage so I was just draining into a spare bucket, ended up just being able to run about 6 gallons of through the chiller but that took it from boil to 128F in about 10 minutes with the help of a couple of frozen and sanitized water bottles. I did like that fact that I was able to capture and re-use that water rather than just draining it off. I think I can get better results if I slow down the flow through the chiller so as to pick up more heat from the wort. Alternatively, I might have to think about converting it to a counter flow chiller!

 

[TipsyDragon]

im not to sure about slowing the water flow. while yes this will allow the water to absorb more heat from the wort and carry it away. but think about it on a hot day which cools you off more a slight breeze or a strong fan blowing directly on you. it may be worth a try to see which is more efficient.

 

[fatmoose]

If the volume of water you have available for cooling is unlimited then I agree with you, the more flow there is the more temperature differential and the greater cooling capacity.

I was musing more about how to do this while only using enough water through the chiller to fill up my 6.5 gallon bucket. I like the idea of capturing and re-using that water rather than just running it off somewhere. Bit of a random tangent, not really worth worrying about too hard. If I really wanted to do that I suppose I might be better off using a pump to recirculate the water and throwing some ice chunks into it or something.