Wort chilling epiphany

[Northcalais40]

So in batches past I've used an immersion chiller for about 20-30 min. to get the temp down to 120f ish. This was set up with a sump pump in a bucket of ice water (lots of snow in winter) and recirculating into the bucket to save water (well). Bad design so it's slow. At this point I would run off through a chiller wherein the copper coil (25') sits in an ice bath and the kettle drains through the chiller to the carboy. I am careful to fully clean and sanitize the chiller, no infections yet. I always end up with nice cold wort.

So last night, I decided that since the second stage chiller was doing all the heavy lifting, I bagged the immersion chiller altogether. The result was 77f wort fully racked to the carboy in 10 minutes from go.

I set up my hlt with sanitizing solution, ran it thruogh the chiller, left it sitting full of sanitizer while I boiled. When I was ready to chill, I drained the hlt half way and inserted the copper coil and filled with snow. Then I let the kettle drain to the carboy full flow while I stirred the slush and added more snow.
I did have to continue draining the hlt a few times to make more room for snow.

All in all, pretty gratifying. I think that Newton's law of cooling implies that two objects in thermal contact seek the same temp, but in proportion to their mass and time. Or rather, the object of smaller mass is going to cool (or heat) quicker. College was long ago, physics is like a muscle, subject to atrophy without use.

Any thoughts? Trouble with a lack of cold break? Did I figure out what half of everyone already does?

 

[RiverCityBrewer]

Sounds kind of like how a counterflow chiller works, except you have the copper coil in a larger water bath while agitating the chilled water instead of the chiller in a hose and running the fluids in opposite directions. No harm in using equipment you already have to get the job done better, kudos to you.

 

[2morrow]

I had this same idea during my last brew. Glad to hear someone is having luck with it.

 

[Burgs]

So did you use the same sump pump to pump your wort through the immersion chiller, or were you able to gravity feed it?

I wouldn't be worried about running wort through my immersion chiller, but I'd want my pump insides to be food-safe.

 

[dummkauf]

same concept as a CFC, only instead of cold water running along the outside of the copper in another tube, you just have a whole water batch instead of an outter tube