Which Plate Chiller Should I Choose ?

krenshaw · Jun 17, 2011

i have the B3-23A 30 Plate Beer Wort Garden Hose Chiller from duda.. that thing does its job and then some.. i used to have a counterflow chiller and the exit water felt like it was in excess of 120 degrees, though the exit water of my duda is just warm and cools 5 gallons much faster.. i would say if you add on their hose barb options the barbs aren't very long though and i really had to wrench down my clamps on silicone to keep them from popping off.. a future upgrade would be for me to figure out how to fit sanitary fittings on there to keep the same as the rest of my hardware, can't go wrong with the duda quality though!

Bigscience · Jun 17, 2011

I'm looking at the same kind of thing for a build. I also started a survey type thread to just collect the stats.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/plate-chiller-survey-251969/#post3014920

Naz · Jun 18, 2011

krenshaw said:
i have the B3-23A 30 Plate Beer Wort Garden Hose Chiller from duda.. that thing does its job and then some.. i used to have a counterflow chiller and the exit water felt like it was in excess of 120 degrees, though the exit water of my duda is just warm and cools 5 gallons much faster.. i would say if you add on their hose barb options the barbs aren't very long though and i really had to wrench down my clamps on silicone to keep them from popping off.. a future upgrade would be for me to figure out how to fit sanitary fittings on there to keep the same as the rest of my hardware, can't go wrong with the duda quality though!

Went ahead with the B3-23A 30. According to Duda the inceased length should help improve chilling effectiveness, so we'll see. Hope yer right! Also, we have Camlocks on everything because it makes everything so much easier to connect and disconnect. Bargainfittings.com always has everything in stock and for good $$$.

bnmir · Jun 18, 2011

So how easy is it to accidentally clog a plate chiller? What kind of prefiltration is necessary to use one without fear of clogging when using pellet hops?

passedpawn · Jun 18, 2011

bnmir said:
So how easy is it to accidentally clog a plate chiller? What kind of prefiltration is necessary to use one without fear of clogging when using pellet hops?

I've never had it happen. I've used mine in about 30 batches. I use pellets tossed into a hop spider, so most of the hop residue doesn't get to my chiller.

Naz · Jun 18, 2011

bnmir said:
So how easy is it to accidentally clog a plate chiller? What kind of prefiltration is necessary to use one without fear of clogging when using pellet hops?

We also use a Hop Stopper similar to this:

and have had no trouble with bits of pellet hops getting caught up in it. Having said that, make sure you thoroughly rinse and clean your plate chiller after every use, preferably as soon as you're done transferring to your fermenter/carboy. Dont forget to sanitize before you use it!