Stainless CFC Choices

[SpikeBrewing]

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I like the design and convoluted inner tubing. But I'm not going to put copper anywhere in my system, so will wait on a SS version. Longer total length would be good too. I'm currently using an all stainless Exchillerator, which gets the job done but has more restriction than desired (small inner tubing) and maybe also too short.

What’s your concern with copper? There are actually a few benefits to using copper outside of way better heat transfer. We’ve tested stainless inner coils and it would need to be 10x longer to have the same cooling.

 

[BAF]

What are the benefits of copper?

My old copper IC gets gnarly looking, and then is shiny and bright when I pull it out, and I don't like all of that crap ending up in my beer. I don't really trust the copper where I can't inspect or manually clean it. And I feel better running hot PBW for cleaning through SS versus copper.

I can chill 10 gallons of wort from boiling to under 90F in under 15 minutes with my SS Exchillerator. Could be faster, sure, but it's not horrible. What's a copper chiller going to gain me, 5 minutes? That's not a huge difference and doesn't seem to warrant making the cooler 10 times longer. An extra few minutes is worth the tradeoff to me to keep everything stainless.

 

[SpikeBrewing]

What are the benefits of copper?

My old copper IC gets gnarly looking, and then is shiny and bright when I pull it out, and I don't like all of that crap ending up in my beer. I don't really trust the copper where I can't inspect or manually clean it. And I feel better running hot PBW for cleaning through SS versus copper.

I can chill 10 gallons of wort from boiling to under 90F in under 15 minutes with my SS Exchillerator. Could be faster, sure, but it's not horrible. What's a copper chiller going to gain me, 5 minutes? That's not a huge difference and doesn't seem to warrant making the cooler 10 times longer. An extra few minutes is worth the tradeoff to me to keep everything stainless.

Copper is very widely used in brewing and distilling so there’s really not an actual concern there. PBW and Star San are fine.

As an example our chiller would chill 10gal in about 10min and it would be able to get down to yeast pitch temps (as opposed to 90F like you stated).

 

[BAF]

As for yeast pitch temps, that isn't really going to happen for me in the summer given my tap water temperature. But I just chill as low as I reasonably can, and let glycol take it the rest of the way.

But, you said there were benefits outside of the heat transfer, so I'm genuinely curious what they are?

 

[maddjaxx]

I use the stout for some time now and it works flawlessly. I have three ways on my boil kettle so I can run through the chiller to bring down temp- add whirlpool hops and whirlpool without the chiller for set time then run through chiller to get to transfer temp. I run my water through a plate chiller and utilize my glycol system to keep the water temp down to 50. The outlflow water goes back into my HLT until It is full and I add cleaner and raise temp to 185 to transfer through system and clean all vessels including cfc. I have never had a clog or issue with the stout and I do have tee with temp sensors on both water and wort outflows to watch and adjust rate of water as needed. Tri clamps on wort and cam lock on water. I did design my panels so I have extra temp sensors throughout the system. I run a 1 bbl system and it has no problems cooling 35 gallons of wort.

 

[TLaffey]

What’s your concern with copper? There are actually a few benefits to using copper outside of way better heat transfer. We’ve tested stainless inner coils and it would need to be 10x longer to have the same cooling.

Primarily concern about coppper contributing to accelerated beer aging. As others have said, SS is also easier to clean. Completely agree that the heat transfer is much better with copper, but the other points are what caused me to eliminate copper.

 

[SpikeBrewing]

As for yeast pitch temps, that isn't really going to happen for me in the summer given my tap water temperature. But I just chill as low as I reasonably can, and let glycol take it the rest of the way.

But, you said there were benefits outside of the heat transfer, so I'm genuinely curious what they are?

Couple benefits of copper (other than being 30x more thermally conductive) are copper ions react with sulphur to form copper sulfate and this reduces the amount of H2S which gives the rotten egg/taste in beer. It also has been said that it can help with head retention.