Wort Cooling Concept

[WortMonger]

Catt22, I'm a little worried. I feel your counter flow chiller you plan to use in your second step would cool your wort faster than this new procedure you are planning/manufacturing. I don't know what kind of counter-flow you have, but in my case I'd have to say that for $200 I don't think you can beat 10 gallons of wort from boiling to 68*F in 5 minutes, with 58*F tap water on speed like the Therminator does. I recirculate back into the kettle while filling my HLT again with hot water for cleanup later. Of course I have the hurdle of clean only wort going into the Therminator, but I get 12+ gallons below 140*F to halt DMS very quickly and lock in hop flavors/aromas, like minutes. I get to pitching temperatures within 15 minutes unless it is summer. I am not trying to down your new project so please don't take this the wrong way, I just don't see its efficiency so I question its purpose past what you already have. Convoluted tubing would have been awesome to have used for even greater turbulence inside the copper.

 

[Catt22]

The store bought counter flow chiller I have uses 3/8" OD tubing with a garden hose outer cover. The problem I have with any type of standard counter flow chiller is that while it will cool the wort adequately, it's too slow for use to circulate back to the kettle repeatedly. I don't think I can get more than about one or two gallons per minute flow through my regular counterflow chiller. I have not actually measured the flow rate, but it's not fast enough to suit me.

I would like to buy a maxi chiller or one of similar design as they seem to have the volume capacity I need. I am leery of plate chillers for two reasons. They appear to be difficult to keep clean and the narrow gaps between the plates might make them susceptible to plugging with hop debris and trub. Maybe those are not issues at all, but they worry me none the less.

I'm on a tight budget right now, so the $200 cost is a little out of range. Might get one later on though.

I think that there will be more than enough turbulance inside the copper tubing with all those right angle turns the wort has to navigate. I couldn't justisfy the added expense of the convoluted tubing in my mind. There are probably a number of ways that this design could be improved upon. I was seeking something that would be cheap to build and easy to fabricate with commonly available materials.

I'm anxious to see how well it works myself. I only have about $50 invested in materials, so it isn't an expensive experiment as experiments go.

 

[Cape Brewing]

+1 on Wortmonger's comments...

I picked up a 30 plate chiller for about $80... and I go from boiling to 70 on 10-12 gallons of boiling wort in a little over ten minutes just running my hose through the other side.

30 Plate Brazed Heat Exchanger Wood Furnace Boiler SVO - eBay (item 250401993844 end time May-05-09 10:10:59 PDT)

True you need a pump but I have one in my rig already... so... for roughly $200 you could get a March 809 and a 30 plate chiller.

 

[Cape Brewing]

... and just another comment on the re-circ... I whirlpool off my my March 809 and the plate chiller.... I don't have a problem with flow at all. I pump through the plate chiller, back up into the boil kettle through am elbow and whirlpool the wort as I chill.

 

[BrewBeemer]

Nice. How long does it take you to cool 5gal of wort? Do you just use cold tap water or throw ice and salt in, too? How much wort is wasted?

With the tranny coil removed and held low and flat plus the QD removed on the hot wort out side off the boil kettle I can recover about all the wort in the system except what little is that is inside the March pump chamber. All the rest gravity flows out into a clean container. I can live with the loss of 3 to 4 ounces of wort at the most that is inside the March pump impeller chamber on a 18 to 19 gallon batch headed directly to the fermenter.

I was looking at those 30 plate heat exchangers years ago that Cape Brewing has posted but gave up thinking about all the grain particles that have 30 plates and small passage ways to get collected into. My fear was how to get all that matter removed once it has been jammed into those tight spaces hence the use of smooth bore copper tranny coolers with those exterior aluminum cooling fins. Cleaning plus the use of free 55 gallon barrels became easy to handle the large coolers plus easy on the wallet and the high volume in gallons vs the wort volume. Everyone has their own ideas on brewing projects. This works for me, simple, cheap, trouble free and it functions as planned, rather better than I expected.

 

[Cape Brewing]

How would you get grain into the plate chiller?

You're not going to circulate your mash through it.... just your boil. You shouldn't have any real grain particles in your boil.

I pump boiling water through it, a little star-san and then some clean water... done.

 

[madewithchicken]

I am not sure if someone mentioned it already but I think that those transmission coolers have lead in them. I know that car radiators often do.

 

[Bobby_M]

Catt22, I'm a little worried. I feel your counter flow chiller you plan to use in your second step would cool your wort faster than this new procedure you are planning/manufacturing. I don't know what kind of counter-flow you have, but in my case I'd have to say that for $200 I don't think you can beat 10 gallons of wort from boiling to 68*F in 5 minutes, with 58*F tap water......

I think Catt's design will work for what the goal is but switching between two different chillers (that have to be sanitized) seems like a waste of energy to me.

If you wanted faster flow through a CFC, you can build one with a 1/2" OD core and 3/4" ID hose. I wouldn't go any bigger on the core without using convoluted.

I personally picked up a huge plate chiller on ebay for $100 and with tap water around 45F, I can empty 11 gallons into the fermenters at 60F output in less than 8 minutes.

 

[beerthirty]

+1 on Wortmonger's comments...

I picked up a 30 plate chiller for about $80... and I go from boiling to 70 on 10-12 gallons of boiling wort in a little over ten minutes just running my hose through the other side.

30 Plate Brazed Heat Exchanger Wood Furnace Boiler SVO - eBay (item 250401993844 end time May-05-09 10:10:59 PDT)

True you need a pump but I have one in my rig already... so... for roughly $200 you could get a March 809 and a 30 plate chiller.

I went with this one. M 20 Plate Brazed Heat Exchanger Boiler Wood Furnace - eBay (item 260378353991 end time Apr-15-09 06:32:51 PDT)
Look at the difference in heat transfer.

 

[Catt22]

How would you get grain into the plate chiller?

You're not going to circulate your mash through it.... just your boil. You shouldn't have any real grain particles in your boil.

I pump boiling water through it, a little star-san and then some clean water... done.

Not grain, but trub and hop debris would be my concern. I'm just not convinced that everything would pass through the narrow gaps of the plate chillers. Too many hard to reach corners for my peace of mind. OTOH, I know several people who use them without problems, so maybe my concern is unfounded.

 

[beerthirty]

Not grain, but trub and hop debris would be my concern. I'm just not convinced that everything would pass through the narrow gaps of the plate chillers. Too many hard to reach corners for my peace of mind. OTOH, I know several people who use them without problems, so maybe my concern is unfounded.

To solve that issue I put mine in the oven on self clean. When its done just rinse the ash out.

 

[Catt22]

I think Catt's design will work for what the goal is but switching between two different chillers (that have to be sanitized) seems like a waste of energy to me.

If you wanted faster flow through a CFC, you can build one with a 1/2" OD core and 3/4" ID hose. I wouldn't go any bigger on the core without using convoluted.

I personally picked up a huge plate chiller on ebay for $100 and with tap water around 45F, I can empty 11 gallons into the fermenters at 60F output in less than 8 minutes.

Yeah, there probably won't be a need to switch back to my original chiller. Might have to slow the pumping rate for the final trip into the fermenter, but that shouldn't be a problem at all. Cleaning and sanitizing isn't really much trouble. I just hook everything up in a looped circuit, including all of the hoses and circulate hot cleaning solution through it. While probably overkill, I sometimes let it circulate overnight.

I also considered making another tubing in hose chiller with larger copper tubing as you suggested. I experimented a little with some 1/2" ID soft copper, but had trouble bending it without it kinking. There's probably a way to do it, but it may require some special equipment that I don't have.

 

[WortMonger]

To solve that issue I put mine in the oven on self clean. When its done just rinse the ash out.

Yep, I bought a pressure canner that can handle it and love the sterilization factor. Star-San is awesome, but can't compare to 30 minutes at 15 psi in the P-canner.

 

[Catt22]

Yep, I bought a pressure canner that can handle it and love the sterilization factor. Star-San is awesome, but can't compare to 30 minutes at 15 psi in the P-canner.

Plus with the pressure cooker you can can wort for starters and store the jars at room temperature. A pressure cooker is near the top of my want list.

 

[Catt22]

My High Volume Rapid Chiller fabrication in progress. Should have it completed this evening. Hope to try it out before the end of the week.

Thought I'd post an update. Ran a test this evening using plain water. It worked very well exceeding my most optimistic expectations. Dropped the temp from boiling to 130 deg. F in under four minutes. I forgot to measure the tap water temp, but I think its around 55 or so. I continued chilling down to typical pitching temperature of 75 deg F. Approxmately twelve minutes total time elapsed.

I plan to use it for a twelve gallon batch of IPA tomorrow. We'll see how well it performs under actual brewing conditions.

 

[WortMonger]

Well, I am so glad it worked. I admit I was skeptical, but am very pleased you didn't pay for copper you can't use.
Keep the information coming and "Rock it man!" :rockin:

 

[Catt22]

Well, I am so glad it worked. I admit I was skeptical, but am very pleased you didn't pay for copper you can't use.
Keep the information coming and "Rock it man!" :rockin:

You were hardly the only skeptic. I had serious doubts myself. This was a low risk experiment as I had most of the materials on hand. Gonna brew with it today if all goes well.