Since I am using pellet hops with out a spider or bag, anyone anticipate clogging problems with a plate after a 10 min whirlpool at flameout and direct transfer through plate chiller?
When using a plate chiller, most definitely, yes! Use roomy bags, hop spider, or some sort of filter!
After having tried several filter methods over the years I've found bagging hops to work best for me. Even for 4-8 oz of pellets in 5.5 gallon NEIPAs.
All my hops get bagged into 1 or 2 large 9x22" fine mesh hop sacks, tied and clipped to a kettle handle. They get "massaged" frequently with the brewspoon (I use a wooden paddle actually), and lifted and drained periodically, for better, more thorough extraction and dispersion due to wort exchanges, forcing hoppy wort to drain out and fresh wort to flow back in freely both during boil and whirlpool. I like the results.
Bringing the wort down from boiling to 140F should be fairly fast even with warmish summer tap water.
For faster chilling to get the wort
below 130F use a pre-chiller, an immersion coil inside a bucket with water and ice. Either in single pass or by recirculation. As long as the delta T between the wort and the chilling water is 40F or larger it will chill. But a delta over 80F brings diminishing returns.
