Use hose/water pressure to create whirlpool

[jonnojohnson]

I'm curious if anyone has ever come up with an idea to use the water pressure in a coil immersion chiller to somehow also create a whirlpool.
It just seems like I already have this force available to me in the form of water pressure from my hose it would be so cool if this could be used to stir the wort somehow. I figure it would have been done by now if it were simple though.

Any ideas?

 

[Bobby_M]

I'm sure you could create a water driven motor to turn a stirrer. I wonder if the cheap harbor freight drill pump could be purposed backwards.

 

[day_trippr]

I'm sure you could create a water driven motor to turn a stirrer. I wonder if the cheap harbor freight drill pump could be purposed backwards.

Aw, man, you had to go and put that idea in my head...

Cheers!

 

[Bobby_M]

If anyone has the harbor freight drill pump, can you throw hose pressure on that thing to see if the shaft spins?

 

[dutchoven]

If anyone has the harbor freight drill pump, can you throw hose pressure on that thing to see if the shaft spins?

I have a drill pump and will give it a whirl ... Though I have a feeling it won't work that well ... It takes quite a bit of force to get the spindle to turn. Then there's the force required to mix ~5 gallons of wort.

 

[dutchoven]

So no go on the drill pump ... Even at the highest pressure, I couldn't get the shaft to spin -- the water just forced its way past the turbine.

 

[Bobby_M]

Yeah I guess the impeller designs would be different.

 

[BOBrob]

how about a gadget long enough to reach the bottom of pot shaped like a tuning fork or just a rod bent at say 10 deg. that can be run using your standard drill. Have to careful about the chiller with it though. Hmmmm now ya got me thinking.....they do use something like that to degas wine.

 

[JuanMoore]

how about a gadget long enough to reach the bottom of pot shaped like a tuning fork or just a rod bent at say 10 deg. that can be run using your standard drill. Have to careful about the chiller with it though. Hmmmm now ya got me thinking.....they do use something like that to degas wine.

You mean like a cheap stir paddle? If you use one of the plastic squirrel cage designs there wouldn't be any risk of damaging the IC. I use a cheap $4 HF mixing paddle to keep the temps even in the HLT of my HERMS.

 

[BOBrob]

No , that would be mixing when you want more of a tornado, whirlpool to clump up in the center. Maybe if you kept one up high enough off the bottom at high speed??? Hmmmm..I have to go to Menards when I get out of work anyway . Maybe run the drill in reverse so the wort is pushed against the pot would work, they seam to have a slight angle to the fins. Try it and let us know. Cheers

 

[jonnojohnson]

My main goal is really to make sure the water is circulated through the IC coils to ensure rapid cooling. The whirlpool for trub collection is a secondary benefit to me. I'm trying to avoid standing there for 15-30 mins with a spoon.
I could certainly create a stand for my cordless drill and use a paddle but I just thought it would be cool to use the water pressure if possible.
I do like the squirrel cage paddle idea if water pressure is a no-goer. What plastic are they made of though? Can they handle 210F?
Does anyone have any idea what the best design is for a mixing paddle in terms of creating a whirlpool? Larger diameter better than smaller? Higher location in the wort rather than lower?

 

[DeafSmith]

So no go on the drill pump ... Even at the highest pressure, I couldn't get the shaft to spin -- the water just forced its way past the turbine.

Those are vane pumps - a rotor mounted off center in a cylinder - the rotor has 4 vanes which are not spring loaded - they depend on the centrifugal force of the spinning rotor to extend and stay in contact with the cylinder walls. The pump might work in reverse if you could get it spinning at high speed first, but I don't see any way to do that.

 

[subliminalurge]

Here's another angle to think about. No idea if it would work...

Would it be possible to somehow use a venturi to create suction to draw wort through a tube and then discharge it back into the pot? Basically the same thing lots of guys already do with pumps, only replacing the pump with water pressure.

Hmm... If those little blue plastic things attached to a kitchen faucet can drain a waterbed, then it seems like there should be enough force available.

Just can't figure out how it could be designed to recirculate rather than draining the wort out with the chill water. That'll take a better engineer than me, assuming it's even possible.

 

[DeNomad]

If you have a march pump and camlocks/quick disconnects available why not hook pump the wort from the lower pick-up tube to another fitting about 3/4" up the wort with a tube along the circumference of the boil kettle?

 

[Bobby_M]

Here's another angle to think about. No idea if it would work...

Would it be possible to somehow use a venturi to create suction to draw wort through a tube and then discharge it back into the pot? Basically the same thing lots of guys already do with pumps, only replacing the pump with water pressure.

Hmm... If those little blue plastic things attached to a kitchen faucet can drain a waterbed, then it seems like there should be enough force available.

Just can't figure out how it could be designed to recirculate rather than draining the wort out with the chill water. That'll take a better engineer than me, assuming it's even possible.

Nope, they just pull a vacuum. No way to create positive pressure there.

 

[jonnojohnson]

subliminalurge, I've been thinking along those lines for the last couple of days. I just don't see how you keep the water and the wort separate though.

DeNomad, I've seen this done and there's a good description of that by Jamil here: http://www.mrmalty.com/chiller.php
However I a) don't have a spigot on my brewpot or a pump for that matter and b) I just like the idea of using water pressure.
It may not be possible but I thought I'd throw it out there to see if anyone had any great ideas.

 

[subliminalurge]

subliminalurge, I've been thinking along those lines for the last couple of days. I just don't see how you keep the water and the wort separate though.

DeNomad, I've seen this done and there's a good description of that by Jamil here: http://www.mrmalty.com/chiller.php
However I a) don't have a spigot on my brewpot or a pump for that matter and b) I just like the idea of using water pressure.
It may not be possible but I thought I'd throw it out there to see if anyone had any great ideas.

Well, it's certainly possible. The only question is whether it's feasible...

Basically all you need to track down is a very small hydraulic motor. I just don't know where to find small ones, my only experience with them is on heavy machinery, and those are definitely impractical for this application.

 

[jonnojohnson]

Which blue plastic things are you referring to?

 

[Bobby_M]

Venturi pump, wort wizard, water bed draining kit.

You can use it to pull a vacuum on a carboy using a carboy cap to facilitate wort transfer without gravity.

 

[subliminalurge]

Venturi pump, wort wizard, water bed draining kit.

You can use it to pull a vacuum on a carboy using a carboy cap to facilitate wort transfer without gravity.

Yep, that's what I was referring to...

It's the tee shaped piece in this kit. (Wow, I used to buy those kits for $7 back when I had a waterbed. Guess it's been awhile....)

Never heard of using one for transferring beer, though. Cool idea....

 

[jonnojohnson]

Ahh, I had seen the Wort Wizard advertised as a drain pump and wondered if it could be used. I wonder what would happen if you hooked two of them together via their vacuum ports. Water would create the vacuum in the upper one which would then pull the wort into the lower one. The question is would the wort be sucked up the vacuum port or would it go straight through like the water?
Or would you want to hook up the vacuum port of the water WW to the outlet port of the wort WW and have the Wort exit the vacuum port?

Then there's the question of whether these things can handle high temps etc.

 

[jonnojohnson]

I've thought about it every way and I just don't think it's gonna be practical to get the wort moving via a vacuum without something quite complex so it's back to the drill/paddle concept.

At the risk of starting a major debate, how fast should one stir the wort as it's cooling?
Ie: is there a problem with aerating the hot wort? Should I start slow at the high temp's to avoid oxygen and increase the speed to a full-on whirlpool when below a certain temp?

 

[Bobby_M]

You just don't want it to pull a vortex. 100 RPM would be cool.

 

[jonnojohnson]

Yeah from what I can tell from a quick search there is a slight chance of a problem with hot side aeration during cooling. I'll just set the speed to pull a nice whirlpool without bubbles.

 

[subliminalurge]

hot side aeration

Yikes...

That's sort of a Christianity vs Islam scale holy war topic right there.... And then throw in some Buddhists and Witches just for good measure.

I don't even want to admit that I have an opinion on that, much less tell what it is.....

 

[jonnojohnson]

Haha, I realized pretty quickly after I started searching.
I went looking for stirring options and ended up getting one of these from Home Depot for $f:

The shaft is steel (no coating) and the blade is polypropolene which should be safe.
I figured my cordless drill doesn't like to run particularly slow so I decided to get a blade that was pretty small. That way even at reasonably quick rpm's I don't get huge vortexing and aeration.
Built a jig for my drill last night and tested it out in water and it does a beautiful job. Slow moving water around the edges & no splashing at all. When I removed the drill all the particles in the water started to clump together in the center of the pot.
I just need to figure out a nice controlled way to pull the drill trigger with a clamp or something. I'll post pics when I can.