Wort chiller with pump

[Chris_Primavera]

Since my garden hose is under 8" of snow and ice, and my kitchen faucet is not threaded, I had to find an alternate method of supplying my wort chiller with cold water.

I bought an EcoPlus 728310 Eco 396 Submersible Pump It comes with hose barbs, but the smallest is for 1/2" I.D. tubing. HomeDepot had a threaded fitting with a 3/8" barb that worked perfectly.

I placed the pump in a five gallon bucket with a large bag of ice and about a gallon of cold water. Less than ten minutes to take a 2-1/2 gallon boil to 80°F. Total investment less than $25.00

 

[dkevinb]

Nice. I use a very similar setup in the summer when my tap water is too warm to chill to pitching temps. I use the hose to drop the temp down to 100-120 F, then start circulating ice water to bring it down the rest of the way. Works fine.

 

[djonesax]

I do exactly this as well. I can cool 10 gallons to pitching temps in about 20 minutes.

 

[Chris_Primavera]

Forgot to mention -

If you let the first gallon of water from the chiller go down the drain and fill the bucket with another gallon of cold water, the outflow will be way down from the boil temp and it will keep from melting all the ice right away.

 

[augiedoggy]

I use a $1.50 faucet to hose adapter and just power my chiller with cold water from my faucet... Just something to consider... any aquarium store has them as well as many hardware stores.. I have no idea what kind of chiller you use but the very cold winter ground water temps bring 5.5 gallons of wort to 65degrees in about 3-4 minutes with my plate chiller .... realistically it should be damn close to ice water temps out of the faucet...

 

[bja]

Wouldn't it have been easier to bring your garden hose inside and let it thaw?