wort chiller idea

[Tinga]

Could I just siphon the wort out of my kettle through copper coils in an ice bath? I've got 40 feet of copper coils that I'm planning on trying this with. I figure if 40 lbs of ice can chill 5 gallons ice bath style in 30 then why can't I chill the same amount of wort in the same amount of ice faster by increasing surface area and contact time?

I realize this is a closed system with diminishing returns but I hate to waste all that water doing the IC the traditional way.

I have all the equipment set up and will test this idea out on Saturday morning. Just looking for if someone has any ideas of how to make this work better or any other ideas.

 

[arturo7]

This should work. I imagine it would be a pain in the arse to get that siphon started.

One word of caution. I did the same thing with a pump. Worked like a champ until I got some contamination inside the coil. It cost me 3 batches of spoiled beer to figure it out.

 

[Tinga]

I plan to gravity feed the tubing from a valve on my kettle.

I realize the dangers of having a long piece of tubing. I will have to sanitize and clean before and after every use.

 

[LizardBrew83]

Make sure you have a boil screen or something to block the hops and trub, so you don't clog the chiller.

 

[Bobby_M]

How do you get your ice? What is the cost associated with 40 pounds of ice vs. the cost of 40 gallons of water?

 

[Tinga]

taco johns across the street has 10 lbs of ice for $.99 and our rental house doesn't have an outside water connection. I need to fill my brewing water buckets up in the bath to avoid filling them up at the kitchen sink.

wasting water is about wasting money its just simply about wasting the water straight up..... even though I live a couple blocks away from the world's largest lake.

dang I wish I lived close enough to the shore of lake superior I could just pump the lake water around. That water is consistently around 60 or so.

 

[lylo]

Yeah and has an SG of about 1020 in some places.

 

[JuanMoore]

I used that method for many many batches when I first started brewing. It works well, but you need to stir the ice water the whole time for it to be effective. I used ~20' of 3/8" OD copper coiled in a 5 gal bucket, and ran it through as fast as it would go. It chilled 5 gal batches to pitching temps with 20# of ice in ~15 min this way. Start out with a minimum amount of water so that you have room to keep adding ice as it melts. Don't worry that the first runnings are super cold, the later runnings will be warmer and it will even out. It takes a little practice to be able to hit your pitching temps. The major PITA part of this set-up was getting the coil clean and sanitized without a pump.