Wort Chiller Supreme! - Idea

[newbies13]

Pretty basic idea that I haven't seen done so far, although I imagine someone else has at least thought about it.

A problem I have run into with my standard coiled wort chiller is that the water running from my faucet is not that cold. So there is a lot of really efficient chilling at first, and that tapers off and makes me waste more water and takes longer.

So why not chill the water running through the wort chiller? The best way I can think to do this is with another coiled wort chiller, submerged in salted ice water. This should allow lots of surface area / time for the water running through the wort chiller to be cooled, at which point it leaves chiller #1 and flows through chiller #2 which is submerged in my hot wort.

The result should be super fast cool wort with less wasted water / time.

Thoughts?!

 

[kh54s10]

It has been done and if you really search there are a lot of threads on the idea.

I made a chiller out of 20' of copper tubing. I then made another and coiled it a bit tighter. In the winter when the water is cold I put both into the kettle. In the summer I put the smaller one in a bucket of ice water. Mid summer it still takes over 1/2 hour!

Other people use water pumps to push ice water through the chiller.

 

[Pratzie]

Yup that's what a lot of people do. Take another bucket or tub with a bag or two of ice, recirculate that ice water with a submersible pump. Ice will melt but it will be efficient enough to put a big dent in the temp of the wort. Plus two bags of ice will cost most people 3-4 dollars at most.

 

[newbies13]

Seems like the way to go, I know mine have been having a rough time once it gets to around mid 80's as it's always warm in san diego.

 

[jperry]

I feel your pain... I have a hard time getting below 80*f, unless its winter. Im looking to build the same of type contraption. I finally built a temp controller, for fermentation.

 

[Bobby_M]

Search "Prechiller". The problem with prechillers is that you now have another heat transfer to worry about. Just like the wort chills faster when the wort is being stirred or whirlpooled, the incoming water is cooled better when the prechiller coil is moved around in the icebath. Now you need two people to effectively run the operation. To take one of these tasks out of the picture, you can pump the icewater directly into the IC with a pond pump. I've also had luck gravity draining icewater into the chiller, which works especially well if you have a second floor balcony or deck over your brewing area.

 

[Beer-lord]

Pre-chillers do help alot but in my case, when my tap water is 82 degrees, I get much better cooling with a pond pump recirculating ice water as has been mentioned.

 

[maida7]

It has been done and if you really search there are a lot of threads on the idea.

I made a chiller out of 20' of copper tubing. I then made another and coiled it a bit tighter. In the winter when the water is cold I put both into the kettle. In the summer I put the smaller one in a bucket of ice water. Mid summer it still takes over 1/2 hour!

Other people use water pumps to push ice water through the chiller.

I've done it both ways and the ice water recirculated with the cheap garden pump works several times better than the pre-chiller.

It doesn't require a fancy or powerful pump. This is the pump I use to recirc the ice water. http://www.harborfreight.com/lawn-garden/pumps/92-gph-miniature-submersible-fountain-pump-68389.html

 

[hunter_le five]

http://www.austinhomebrew.com/product_info.php?cPath=178_33_145&products_id=12577

 

[mpcluever]

Yes I would imagine that unless you have a huge prechiller that the water coming out is not ice cold meaning that it's more efficient to pump and recirculate ice water through the chiller. Run your chiller as normal until you knock it down to 100F or so, then switch to recirculating ice water.

 

[Clonefan94]

I use a pre-chiller. I started with a 50 foot coil, used part of that to make a pre-chiller, since 50 ft. would have been too tall for my IM and part of it would have been sitting out of the wort.

The big thing I've noticed when using it isn't that it gets my temps down any quicker, as much as it gives me that few extra degrees at the end to get it down to 60.

 

[pmcint01]

I used the submersible pump in a bucket of ice water then into my Immersion Chiller Method. First time I pumped the ice water first and ran through 40 lbs of Ice fast. The second time I chilled down to 90 with the tap water first then I ran the pump with the ice water to get it to 70 and still went through the ice in 5 mins. Ice cost me $7.

 

[newbies13]

I like the idea of recirculating, it seems much less wasteful.

 

[atreid]

Yeah don't use ice water for the initial cooling otherwise you're just wasting your ice which you probably have in limited supply.

As said earlier, reach the best cooling you can with tap water and then pass your ice water through the chiller to lower temps down a little more.

Last time I brewed it was so hot and I couldn't go any lower than 25C with tap water through my plate chiller. I then emptied a 60 liters keg of ice water through an immersion chiller (fairly slowly) and managed to reach 19-20C (35 liters of wort). It was limit but I had no more ice and those temps are very decent (wlp060).

 

[mtnagel]

I capture all the water coming out of my IC and use it for laundry or my swamp cooler.

I thought about doing the immersion pump thing, but then I figured it's just one more thing to break whereas the pre-chiller from cooper tubing should last a long time if not my lifetime.