Wort Chiller Build

[jjacobs]

So I'm headed out to the in-laws for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend and my father-in-law and I are going to build a wort chiller. I've been weighing my options - and all seem to have their pros and cons. I thought I'd throw out my ideas and see what y'all thoguht. So....... without further ado:

IC
I have some concerns about the amount of water this would require for me to get the wort to pitching temperature. I live in AZ and the area I live in has particularly warm tap water. When the neighborhood was built, the builder (or city/county or whoever puts in the water lines) didn't bury the water lines in the area deep enough. In the summer, we don't even have to run our water heater - we just get hot water out of the tap. My fear is that I'd only be able to get the wort down to 85-90 degrees and it would take FAR too long. Also, my water provider has the highest cost for water in the metro area. Not to mention we're in a drought hear in the southwest, so it's probably not the most responsible thing to be using a ton of water for something that might not do what I want it to do.

CFC
Ditto my concerns on this one. Though it would probably use less water, I'm still not sure I could get the wort to pitching temperature given the average temperature of our tap water (particularly in the summer months... which seems like about 6-7 months of the year in AZ).

ICE BATH
I've been using an ice bath (on my partial boil extract beers) but it seems to take longer than I'd like (30 minutes+) but I'm not sure this will be a great option once I move to full boil AG sometime next spring.

I don't know what this would be called, but I thought this might be worth a shot.... I had the idea to use the extra bottling bucket I have, adding a ball valve at the top and then on the bottom on the opposite side. The inside would be a copper coil - much like an IC - that the wort would run through on the way to the fermenter and I'd fill the bucket all the way to the top with a bag or two of ice from the store along with enough water to fill the bucket to the top. I guess it's kind of like a "reverse" IC - instead of putting something cold into the wort, you're passing the wort through something FAR colder. You could also run some of the water out of the bottling spigot after the ice starts to melt from the wort running through it and replace with more ice if needed.

My thought is that this "should" use FAR less water, and "should" be faster than an IC or CFC given my water issues where I live.

What are your thoughts? Do you think this will work? Should it use less water? Will I be able to cool the wort to pitching temperature with one pass (I'm not planning on using a pump)? Tips? Concerns? Questions? Apprehensions?

Thanks for the help!

 

[noblesquirrel]

I would think that with the reverse immersion you would end up using a ton of water anyway due to the boiling wort running through the cold water. If I were you, I'd consider a glycol chiller, though that would be significantly more expensive... But I'd say Immersion chiller, If you set it up to gravity feed from an elevated bottling bucket with ice water in it, I'd think you could use ~10-12 gallons of water and get it chilled pretty quick. Good Luck

 

[GregT]

What I do is freeze one gallon milk/water containers. I then use a box cutter to cut away the plastic and put the giant ice cubes in a five gallon bucket where I already have a fountain pump. (I got the fountain pump for around twenty bucks at lowes.) I then fill the bucket with water fifteen minutes before the boil is complete. By the time the boil is done, the water is ice-cold. I then plug in my pump which is attached to the IC that has been in the boil getting sterilized. As the bucket starts going down in volume, I turn on a water hose into the bucket to replace the water that is going out. I always aim the water stream right onto one of the big pieces of ice. This method has cut down my cooling time significantly, has cut down on the amount of water it takes, and has allowed me to get the wort down to as cool as I want.

 

[jjacobs]

You're probably right - a cheap submersible pump is probably the way to go with a bucket of ice water. How fast can chill a 5 gallon batch with your method, Greg? How many gallons/minute do I want to shoot for when I'm looking for a pump?

 

[Jumbo82]

I just read an article in either BYO or Zymurgy about a guy who built a jacketed conical. The article had "Grail" in the title, maybe someone remembers it. Anyway, the guy runs glycol through a chest freezer and recirculates it through his jacketed conical. He also says that he uses the glycol to chill his wort, so he uses no water at all. Being in Arizona with 85-90 degree tap water, this might make sense for you. Its probably more of a project than you'd want to undertake, but its something to consider.

 

[GregT]

You're probably right - a cheap submersible pump is probably the way to go with a bucket of ice water. How fast can chill a 5 gallon batch with your method, Greg? How many gallons/minute do I want to shoot for when I'm looking for a pump?

I haven't actually timed it, but I'm guessing around 20 minutes or less for 5 gallons. I used to use the hose first, then go to the ice water. Then I decided to try just the ice water, and it went much quicker. The model I have says that it is a 200 Gallon per hour model.

 

[jjacobs]

Anyone have an opinion between an IC and a CFC with recirculated ice water? Which would cool the wort more quickly? Seems like CFC would be the way to go...

 

[GregT]

I just read an article in either BYO or Zymurgy about a guy who built a jacketed conical. The article had "Grail" in the title, maybe someone remembers it. Anyway, the guy runs glycol through a chest freezer and recirculates it through his jacketed conical. He also says that he uses the glycol to chill his wort, so he uses no water at all. Being in Arizona with 85-90 degree tap water, this might make sense for you. Its probably more of a project than you'd want to undertake, but its something to consider.

I remember reading something where someone had the RV glycol that circulated through a freezer and to a fermentation chamber where fans blew air across the glycol as it flowed through copper tubing. I remember that well as I tried to (unsuccessfully) convince my wife to let me drill a few holes in our freezer. I'll bet it would work well to pump that through a wort chiller. I just wonder though as the hot glycol returned how much it would up the temperature. Wouldn't you need quite a bit of it if you were recirculating it to get temps down into the 70 degree range?

 

[jjacobs]

Anyone have an opinion between an IC and a CFC with recirculated ice water? Which would cool the wort more quickly? Seems like CFC would be the way to go...

 

[GregT]

Anyone have an opinion between an IC and a CFC with recirculated ice water? Which would cool the wort more quickly? Seems like CFC would be the way to go...

I just did the IC. It seemed the easiest to build. All I did was coil some 1/2 inch copper and clamped hose on both ends. You may be right about the CFC being better. I just always wonder how much it would slow things down when the water is recirculated, though that is the responsible thing to do.

 

[Dog House Brew]

CFC, way less water and best option for gravity IMHO. If you have a pump you could go IM and whirlpool. I like the CFC. Made mine last night out of 1" hose and 20' of 1/2" type L copper. I wanted to be able to recirc back to the kettle if I wanted, and the size wouldn't slow me down. Easy to sanitize. With you water temp problems I would use a CFC and after the CFC I would make a small chiller of 3/8" to go in an ice bucket in series. CFC knockes it as low as you ca get with tap water, then the wort goes through the ice bucket an your done. The 3/8 size would give you great heat transfer and keep you from using too much ice. I think you could do an ale to pitch temp in a single pass. Just my $.02

 

[mugglesport]

I'm planning on building a wort chiller soon and have similar issues (our tap isn't that warm, but it can get over 80f in the summer). I'm planning on building a prechiller out of either 25 or 50ft of 3/8" copper and an IC out of another 50ft of 3/8" copper. To me, its less moving parts, less to clog, and less to clean than a recirculating system or a CFC. Plus, a long prechiller (such as 50ft) should cool the water to below 40 degrees before going through the IC.

However, here's another idea:

Tap water > Prechiller in bucket of icewater > CFC > Drain
...while at the same time...
Hot wort > CFC > Reverse Immersion in different bucket of icewater > Fermenter

So the result is ice cold water going through your CFC and pretty cool wort going through an icy cold reverse immersion. This might actually cool it too much

Edit: it also wouldn't hurt to still use an ice bath in addition to an IC. If you have enough space, the icebath could double as a cold water tank for a prechiller.

 

[LarryC]

This is slightly off the main topic, but I'm getting ready to try making an IC and I see that Lowe's has 1/2" "refrigeration tubing" for a reasonable price. Is this the type of tubing I would want?

 

[Dog House Brew]

This is slightly off the main topic, but I'm getting ready to try making an IC and I see that Lowe's has 1/2" "refrigeration tubing" for a reasonable price. Is this the type of tubing I would want?

Yes that is 1/2"OD

 

[HOP-HEAD]

Personally, I think if my tap water wasn't cold enough, I'd just build a smaller second imersion chiller. Place it inline between the tap and the actual chiller. The first one would go in the sink full of ice wat (with salt to further cool it), and the second in the wort. The ice bath would easily drop the tap water to very cold temps before proceeding down line to the worth chiller. Cheap, easy, and I believe effective.

 

[mhermetz]

I don't know what this would be called, but I thought this might be worth a shot.... I had the idea to use the extra bottling bucket I have, adding a ball valve at the top and then on the bottom on the opposite side. The inside would be a copper coil - much like an IC - that the wort would run through on the way to the fermenter and I'd fill the bucket all the way to the top with a bag or two of ice from the store along with enough water to fill the bucket to the top. I guess it's kind of like a "reverse" IC - instead of putting something cold into the wort, you're passing the wort through something FAR colder. You could also run some of the water out of the bottling spigot after the ice starts to melt from the wort running through it and replace with more ice if needed.

My thought is that this "should" use FAR less water, and "should" be faster than an IC or CFC given my water issues where I live.

Thanks for the help!

I had the exact same idea.... the bonus of this method is I can use the bottling bucket I currently do not use now that I keg.

I personally haven't tried it, but I see no reason why this would not work?
I think the plumbing would be a little harder though.

 

[New-B-Brewer]

Instead of running the cfc water through a tub of ice water to drop it a few degrees why dont you use a punp to pump ice water through the cfc?
Another idea for the reverse IC might be to use the copper tubing from a baseboard heater through a cooler filled with ice water. You could use copper elbows to make 5 or 6 runs of this baseboard copper back and forth through the cooler full of ice water. As the water warmed up you could drain some out and refill with more ice. The baseboard heater copper has aluminum fins attached to it that would help with the heat transfer.

 

[ziggy13]

I'm not sure if anyone has ever used this method before, but my friend owns a restaurant and sometimes has to quickly cool soup or other large batches of whatever he's making. He has something called an immersion cooler, it's a big piece of metal that you fill with water and freeze in the freezer. He then throws it in the soup to cool it down. I was thinking about trying it sometime to cool my wort down. Any input on this?

 

[Ohio-Ed]

I'm not sure if anyone has ever used this method before, but my friend owns a restaurant and sometimes has to quickly cool soup or other large batches of whatever he's making. He has something called an immersion cooler, it's a big piece of metal that you fill with water and freeze in the freezer. He then throws it in the soup to cool it down. I was thinking about trying it sometime to cool my wort down. Any input on this?

Sanitizing it might be a problem... When using an immersion chiller, you usually put them in the boil for the last 10-15 minutes to sanitize. 10-15 minutes in boiling wort may heat your frozen chiller to the point that its not so frozen any longer. Same kind of problem with just throwing ice in the BK.
However, if you sanitize differently, your thought may have some merit. I have heard of folks using frozen soda bottles or milk jugs.

 

[jds]

I just read an article in either BYO or Zymurgy about a guy who built a jacketed conical. The article had "Grail" in the title, maybe someone remembers it. Anyway, the guy runs glycol through a chest freezer and recirculates it through his jacketed conical. He also says that he uses the glycol to chill his wort, so he uses no water at all. Being in Arizona with 85-90 degree tap water, this might make sense for you. Its probably more of a project than you'd want to undertake, but its something to consider.

Paging Brewpastor! Brewpastor to aisle 10! The cool jacketed conical is his.

As for chilling without using tons of water, +12345 on the recirculating ice water. It's a convienent way to go. OP, since you're in an area where chilling is hard, why not take a look at no-chill brewing? https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/exploring-no-chill-brewing-117111/

 

[ziggy13]

Couldn't you just soak the immersion chiller in one step no rinse sanitizer?

 

[Ohio-Ed]

Couldn't you just soak the immersion chiller in one step no rinse sanitizer?

You sure can, that's why I said if you sanitize in a way other than to add the chiller to the boil, the idea might have merit. Personally, I don't typically have a batch of sanitizer big enough to "soak the immersion chiller" in available on brew day. Depending on the size of the frozen chiller, I think it will thaw well before you hit pitching temps if you drop it in boiling wort.

I have a Counter Flow Chiller that works great when using gravity feed, but it's made from 3/8" copper and is pretty slow when trying to pump.

For the last few brew, I put a 1/2 copper coil in a bucket and re-circulate wort through it back to the BK. I put a garden hose in the bucket and just let if overflow. I run it like until the wort is down to about 100f, then shut off the water and add ice to the bucket to knock it down to pitching temps.