The best wort Chiller

[seawort]

Yeah, I just got mine - $90 for the pump, and a flat $10 to ship. It arrived well packed and still in the factory sealed box (tate1560 was the seller)

thats who I got mine from too. Needs a cord, but nothing a trip to home despot couldn't fix, and I like the cord housing better as I have certain peoples that like to trip over cords and we wouldn't want the wires pulled out of the housing...:cross:

 

[Bobby_M]

He doesn't have any on open auction at the moment but I emailed anyway.

 

[D*Bo]

I built my CFC with 30' of copper. It takes 15 to 20 min to gravity drain 10 gal as opposed to 30+ with the immersion, but it goes quickly from boiling to less than 60 very quickly with no exposure to the air. With a lid on the kettle the temp never drops less than 205 even in 20* weather. Plus it uses far less cooling water. Full blast with immersion, barely cracked ball valve with the CFC.

 

[b767fo]

I made a DIY IC with 2 coils; 25' of 1/2" cu in an ice bath and 25' of 1/2" cu in the wort. With an input temp of 55 deg F I can cool 5 gal of rolling boil to 76 deg F in 9 min. It helps to stir/agitate the wort while cooling. For the cost ($90 for the cu and all fittings) this is a pretty good compromise between cost, performance and ease of use.

 

[Bobby_M]

Note: that Tate guy on Ebay has a bunch more March pumps for $90 buy it now. I got one.

 

[Lil' Sparky]

And I didn't even get a chance to bid against you...

 

[Philip1993]

I built my CFC with 30' of copper. It takes 15 to 20 min to gravity drain 10 gal as opposed to 30+ with the immersion

I'm confused. Why does your IC take longer than the CFC? Once the wort is cool, you can siphon with a garden hose of you like...

 

[funkswing]

THREAD RESURRECTION!!!

BierMuncher - in that classic IC in a strainer pic, I'm guessing that you don't do a whirlpool to get a hop/break/trub cone? Could you walk me thru that process, it seems pretty nice.

I'm guessing it goes like this: you put the IC in strainer bag, then add to the boiling wort with 10-15 min left in the boil. At flameout you start the chilling process. (Do you stir the wort while chilling? Seems difficult with that bag in there). Then once chilled you siphon the wort out from inside the strainer bag to your fermenter. So, you skip the whirlpool step to get a trub cone b/c the strainer keeps all that stuff away from the siphon.

I autosiphon my cooled wort into my fermenter like so after using my IC, but I have started doing a whirlpool with mixed results (lately I have gotten NO hop/trub/break cone, just a mass mess of crap for the last 2 gal of wort ). I am interested in this process.

 

[tunoffun]

I don't buy this statement at all.
What exactly makes them better?

 

[N3Bruce]

My concern with a counterflow or plate chiller is that unlike an immersion chiller, which chills the whole batch at once, as Brew Boy and others have stated, there is the whole DMS issue, plus something he didn't mention: Excess isomerization of late hop additions. That remaining hot wort will continue to break down your aroma hops. An immersion chiller is pretty efficient at getting the temperature down from 212 degrees at knockout to about 120 degrees, but as the temperature of the wort gets closer to the temperature of the chill water, efficiency drops off. Perhaps someone with both an immersion and plate or counterflow chiller could do a hybrid chill by knocking the first 80-100 degrees with an immersion chiller, then bringing it down the rest of the way with the counterflow or plate chiller.