Tropical Wort Chiller

[blueseamonkey]

Another wort chiller thread - but slightly different topic to the last one.

Its going to be several months before I can brew again - I'm moving house, have run out of ingredients and live in a country with no homebrew supplies So while I'm waiting I plan to build some DIY equipment ready for moving up to all-grain. I am planning to buy professional equipment in 1-2 years time so low budget stuff is better for now (makes me feel I haven't wasted as much money!)

First up is a wort chiller. I don't fancy lifting 5 gallons of boiling wort (I'm accident prone) so am thinking immersion or counter-flow chiller. Trouble is tap water is usually 80-90 degrees F here - sometimes hotter. I'm not sure I will have great water pressure where I live either. I was thinking of adding a pre-chiller using ice-water and salt. Here are my questions:

1. Can a pre-chiller be used with a CFC, or only with an immersion chiller?

2. Which type of chiller uses less water?

3. And from people living in hot areas - which works better?

4. Also - with no supply of Star San - how easy is sterilising a CFC?

I've seen the plate chillers - but they are a bit beyond my budget for now - especially once they are shipped from abroad.

I am aware of the no-chill method as well, but I am building this equipment for recipe testing and market research prior to (potentially) investing in a microbrewery - and I would prefer to use techniques as close as possible to what I will end up using on the larger equipment.

 

[woknblues]

Hey Kababayan!

You finally got tired of "San Mig" or "Beer na Beer" eh?

I lived in Manila and Baguio for a number of years. I am very curious how you come across brewing ingredients, but I'll keep it on topic for now!

Pre chillers can be used anywhere. All it really does is transfer the cold into the water before it hits your wort. You can even use a regular immersion cooler as one. I highly recommend you pre-chill the water, because you will never reach optimal pitching temps unless you have lotsa air-con!!

Having said that, obviously, if you are going to the microbrew level, a little copper immersion chiller ain't gonna do it. I would definitely get a CFC and you must have a good sanitizer. I think you can get iodophore pretty readily at pharmacies and whatnot.

As to water use, I might look into a small submersible pump. You can recirculate from an pre-chiller to the IC and back out to the pre-chiller again. Then you just need ice.

I'd love some details of your venture as well if you are willing.

I hope you have some good family / political / police connections! You know how it goes there!!

 

[blueseamonkey]

Thanks for your reply - I'll keep on topic in my first reply, then satisfy your curiosity in the second

So - pre-chiller (IC type); CFC and iodophor to sanitise would be the ideal method? I'll have to study the CFC projects and make sure I can get the connectors locally (and that my DIY skills are up to it!)

If the connectors are a problem, then an IC should be simple enough - perhaps this type? https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/diy-interwoven-rib-cage-immersion-chiller-106415/

 

[blueseamonkey]

So now to answer your other questions - Yes I am thoroughly bored now of all the pale pilsen type beers available here - they're decent enough beers, but 5 years of basically 1 type of beer is too long!

My first batch of ingredients came from a friend in the UK who packed them in a Balikbayan box and sent them for me (he paid for the lot! )

It was all pre-boiled extract kits, but I've caught the bug and want to keep brewing. There's about 15-20 other homebrewers in the country, plus 3 TINY nanobreweries, all struggling to get ingredients. Interest in craft beers is beginning to take off though and there's a growing number of bars now serving imported craft beers - mainly from the US, at really high prices.

I'm moving to Dumaguete in about 2 months time, a city in the Visayas region. Its a place surrounded by lots of scuba-diving resorts popular with foreign tourists, has 3 universities and a large middle-class population - so I'm thinking it could be a good place for a microbrewery. So far only San Miguel beers are available there, even Beer na Beer hasn't made it that far!

Looking at the figures, it should be possible to brew a decent microbrew, buying bulk ingredients (and equipment) from China, with specialist ingredients from other countries. Having done a little bit of market research I think I can wholesale this beer on for 2.5 - 3 times the cost of producing it - selling in bottles because so few venues have facilities for draught beer. I have no interest in running my own bar so this would be purely a packaging brewery.

I will have enough money to just about afford a 200Litre/ batch system with 4 fermenters from one of the more reputable Chinese manufacturers on Alibaba.com. But I am hoping to attract other investors so that I can increase to a 500L - 700L/batch system, even if I only buy 1 fermenter initially. That way I can keep my day-job, brew once a week, yet still hopefully turn a decent profit. Once the beer is selling well, I only need to buy a couple more fermenters to expand to something that will fund my retirement!

But for now I plan to practice all-grain brewing, decide on some recipes, test out the quality of the Chinese malts, and brew some samples to take round Dumaguete and find out if there really is a market for it.

My parents have been in Dumaguete for 5 years and have some fairly high-up contacts in the Chinese community (they're not Chinese themselves but lived in Hong Kong for 25 years) who will hopefully be influential enough to help with this project!

 

[woknblues]

Thanks for your reply - I'll keep on topic in my first reply, then satisfy your curiosity in the second

So - pre-chiller (IC type); CFC and iodophor to sanitise would be the ideal method? I'll have to study the CFC projects and make sure I can get the connectors locally (and that my DIY skills are up to it!)

If the connectors are a problem, then an IC should be simple enough - perhaps this type? https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/diy-interwoven-rib-cage-immersion-chiller-106415/

I feel you could source the fittings and connections you need to get one put together. It ill be 100x harder than going to home depot, etc. because there is no such thing as home depot, etc. you may have to go to 5 or 6 plumbing supply type places to piece this together. Then you will have everyone tell you "yes", when in fact they don't understand what you are saying, much less what you are trying to do.. You know what I mean here... Part of the adventure...

So now to answer your other questions - Yes I am thoroughly bored now of all the pale pilsen type beers available here - they're decent enough beers, but 5 years of basically 1 type of beer is too long!

My first batch of ingredients came from a friend in the UK who packed them in a Balikbayan box and sent them for me (he paid for the lot! )

It was all pre-boiled extract kits, but I've caught the bug and want to keep brewing. There's about 15-20 other homebrewers in the country, plus 3 TINY nanobreweries, all struggling to get ingredients. Interest in craft beers is beginning to take off though and there's a growing number of bars now serving imported craft beers - mainly from the US, at really high prices.

I'm moving to Dumaguete in about 2 months time, a city in the Visayas region. Its a place surrounded by lots of scuba-diving resorts popular with foreign tourists, has 3 universities and a large middle-class population - so I'm thinking it could be a good place for a microbrewery. So far only San Miguel beers are available there, even Beer na Beer hasn't made it that far!

Looking at the figures, it should be possible to brew a decent microbrew, buying bulk ingredients (and equipment) from China, with specialist ingredients from other countries. Having done a little bit of market research I think I can wholesale this beer on for 2.5 - 3 times the cost of producing it - selling in bottles because so few venues have facilities for draught beer. I have no interest in running my own bar so this would be purely a packaging brewery.

I will have enough money to just about afford a 200Litre/ batch system with 4 fermenters from one of the more reputable Chinese manufacturers on Alibaba.com. But I am hoping to attract other investors so that I can increase to a 500L - 700L/batch system, even if I only buy 1 fermenter initially. That way I can keep my day-job, brew once a week, yet still hopefully turn a decent profit. Once the beer is selling well, I only need to buy a couple more fermenters to expand to something that will fund my retirement!

But for now I plan to practice all-grain brewing, decide on some recipes, test out the quality of the Chinese malts, and brew some samples to take round Dumaguete and find out if there really is a market for it.

My parents have been in Dumaguete for 5 years and have some fairly high-up contacts in the Chinese community (they're not Chinese themselves but lived in Hong Kong for 25 years) who will hopefully be influential enough to help with this project!

WOW! I love Dumaguete. My MIL's family is from Kalibo/Boracay so I have been to the area extensively. Dumaguete is the only other city in the Philippines besides Baguio that I would be willing to live/retire. I love that boardwalk. We were in DUmaguete for a week, went around to Siquijor and whatnot. (Siquijor---I was underwhelmed with what to do there, but the 50 deg C "high speed" ferry ride there was probably not the best start, people were literally passing out before they opened the door, haha). There is an Austrian bar in the "town area" (or in a few blocks form the water) that I cannot recall the name of where we ate a couple of times, and of course, had some decent beer!! Across the street from that bar was a very good western style supermarket, for lack of a better term. Dumaguete has, like Baguio, enough culture, expats, infrastructure and interesting local activities to make it a good place to retire/live for a westerner, IMHO...

I would like to stay in touch. Very interested in your project!

 

[blueseamonkey]

It ill be 100x harder than going to home depot, etc. because there is no such thing as home depot, etc.

Actually there are a couple of branches of Home Depot now in Manila - one of the reasons I'm working on getting my equipment sorted BEFORE moving to the provinces. Unfortunately though, despite Home Depot and similar shops being as large as they are in America and Britain, they don't stock even half of the same things - so there's still no guarantee of finding what you need!


Dumaguete is a pretty cool place - the main reason we're moving is because my parents are getting old and need the support, but other than perhaps Manila and Boracay I don't think there's anywhere in the Philippines more ready for a microbrewery!

Siquijor I actually really liked, but mainly coz the beaches are beautiful and the snorkelling is truly incredible. Other than that though - unless you're into witchcraft - it's true there's not a lot going on!

I will keep posting here in HBT as I make my progress towards professional brewing - but if you're thinking of visiting this side of the world again make sure you let me know!

 

[Jon73]

My 2 cents on the cooling at the homebrew level: If you are fortunate enough to have your own beer fridge, an idea I heard was to store 100' or so of 1/4 or 3/8 poly tubing filled with water and a small inline pump. If it is coiled nicely it will take up little room, and then you can pump it through your IC or plate chiller. I haven't done this yet, but it is in my future. It's energy efficient and you can re-circ the water for zero loss.

 

[woknblues]

Actually there are a couple of branches of Home Depot now in Manila - one of the reasons I'm working on getting my equipment sorted BEFORE moving to the provinces. Unfortunately though, despite Home Depot and similar shops being as large as they are in America and Britain, they don't stock even half of the same things - so there's still no guarantee of finding what you need!


Dumaguete is a pretty cool place - the main reason we're moving is because my parents are getting old and need the support, but other than perhaps Manila and Boracay I don't think there's anywhere in the Philippines more ready for a microbrewery!

Siquijor I actually really liked, but mainly coz the beaches are beautiful and the snorkelling is truly incredible. Other than that though - unless you're into witchcraft - it's true there's not a lot going on!

I will keep posting here in HBT as I make my progress towards professional brewing - but if you're thinking of visiting this side of the world again make sure you let me know!

Sounds great!

My 2 cents on the cooling at the homebrew level: If you are fortunate enough to have your own beer fridge, an idea I heard was to store 100' or so of 1/4 or 3/8 poly tubing filled with water and a small inline pump. If it is coiled nicely it will take up little room, and then you can pump it through your IC or plate chiller. I haven't done this yet, but it is in my future. It's energy efficient and you can re-circ the water for zero loss.

This idea has me interested.

 

[HB_in_Subic]

I have the same issue. What has been working for me is running a normal wort chlller. The problem is that my tap water is typically 86 degrees. So I can get down to that quickly in about 10-15 minutes. I then add a 1.5 L frozen bottle of Mineral water (plastic bottle cut off of course). This typically gets me down to almost 80 degrees in about another 5-10 minutes. My kettle has a spigot and draining directly into the fermenting bucket aerates it and helps it cool a little bit. I then turn my thermostat down on my freezer fermenter to get the whole bucket's temps down further. After a couple of hours I adjust the thermostat back to my desired fermenting temperature.

I have been ordering my stuff (kits, equip) online and shipping it here via a cargo forwarder in the states.

 

[blueseamonkey]

In the end I decided to try out the idea I had originally, of running hot wort out the spigot of my brewpot, through 25 feet of narrow bore 1/4inch copper tubing (bought from an aircon repair place if anyone in the Philippines needs help finding some)

The copper tubing is bent round like an immersion cooler, but passes instead through a large (80 litre) bucket that I keep filled with ice water. Instead of bending back up, I made a small hole towards the lower end of the bucket and fashioned a small grommet out of a few centimetres of silicon tubing to seal the hole around the copper as it exits.

On brew days, I fill the bucket full of ice water, open the spigot on my brewpot and the wort siphons through slowly, cooling down to 18 degrees C or thereabouts in one pass. It also gets aerated slightly as it drips into the fermenter.

Its not very pretty - I'll try and post a pic next time I brew - but it works really well. As the water in the bucket heats up I bail off the hottest bit at the top, replacing it with an ice block that I wedge under the copper tubing at the bottom.

Essentially its a very similar principle to a CFC, just with wort passing through a large open bucket of water instead of a closed hose.

 

[FatDragon]

Chinese malt is fine, but I only get about 65% efficiency (with Beersmith calculating it as US 2-row) most of the time compared to my one attempt with imported malt (Weyermann Vienna) which got 84%, so it's probably got about 15-20% less potential than the professional stuff. As for hops and yeast, Chinese homebrew shops source those from abroad, usually using Yakima Chief for hops, which should ship to the Phil as well if you're buying in bulk.

I'd definitely look into where the local breweries get their malt from. Ordering imported grain (even if it's just the cheap Chinese stuff) on a homebrew scale without group buys would be pretty expensive.

 

[skuhn2004]

In the end I decided to try out the idea I had originally, of running hot wort out the spigot of my brewpot, through 25 feet of narrow bore 1/4inch copper tubing (bought from an aircon repair place if anyone in the Philippines needs help finding some)

The copper tubing is bent round like an immersion cooler, but passes instead through a large (80 litre) bucket that I keep filled with ice water. Instead of bending back up, I made a small hole towards the lower end of the bucket and fashioned a small grommet out of a few centimetres of silicon tubing to seal the hole around the copper as it exits.

On brew days, I fill the bucket full of ice water, open the spigot on my brewpot and the wort siphons through slowly, cooling down to 18 degrees C or thereabouts in one pass. It also gets aerated slightly as it drips into the fermenter.

Its not very pretty - I'll try and post a pic next time I brew - but it works really well. As the water in the bucket heats up I bail off the hottest bit at the top, replacing it with an ice block that I wedge under the copper tubing at the bottom.

Essentially its a very similar principle to a CFC, just with wort passing through a large open bucket of water instead of a closed hose.

A friend of mine does something similar.

He is pumping the wort through a plate chiller first. It then goes through an IC that he fills with water and freezes solid. It then circulates back into the kettle. The only water usage is what goes through the plate chiller and he is running that into a bucket for cleanup water. The re-circulation aerates the wort nicely.

The key is the 5 gal bucket that is frozen solid with the IC in it. When he is done he simply drops it back in the chest freezer for next time. He does 10 gallon batches. I would think if you scaled it up you could daisy chain multiple buckets together.

 

[blueseamonkey]

Having said my system was working well - it did for a while. Then it was time to demonstrate my brewing skills in front of a group of High School students I'd been teaching the basics of brewing to. On that day, the copper tubing blocked totally with hop debris and refused to clear.

I quickly cleared the tubing by conecting to the mains water, then re-bent it so that it could be used as a standard IC. I then co-opted my hot liquor tank and made it my COLD liquor tank, filling it with lots of ice and water. Because my brewstand has plenty of height in it, there was enough pressure for the cold water to go through the IC without a problem. It cools the wort down effectively enough, but much too slowly for my liking - takes about an hour and a half (for a 36 litre batch.) My students were suitably impressed with my improvising and left calling me a genius!

I think the reason for the long time is the small diameter of the copper tubing - its only 1/4 inch and doesn't allow for very good flow rates. But its a lot less hassle to use than the first system I thought up. Once I can afford to I will upgrade to either 1/2 inch or 3/4 inch copper to get better speeds. Water usage is actually about the same with both systems, so I wasn't saving much keeping a bucket full rather than allowing flow through the coil.