wort chiller

[scorpio_fl]

hey therew yall...seems the game has changed...I thought we were talking about getting the water colder for the chill, now we're talking about running the wort through it, I don't know...any way, think about what I said...( I didn't explain it very well) If you take a 50 or 100 ft hose, already coilled up when you buy it, leave it coilled up, hook up an input hose and an out put hose, put it in a bucket of ice water,hook up the outside water to one end and the immersion chiller to the other side...( colder water going to the immersion chiller) now on the output side of the immersion chiller have an out put hose with a shut off on it...open it a little so the water is forced to soak up the heat before it's allowed to just run through...(operator adjustment) this is what I mean't with my other post...buddy b...

[beer_bear]

If you take a 50 or 100 ft hose, already coilled up when you buy it, leave it coilled up, hook up an input hose and an out put hose, put it in a bucket of ice water,hook up the outside water to one end and the immersion chiller to the other side...( colder water going to the immersion chiller) now on the output side of the immersion chiller have an out put hose with a shut off on it...open it a little so the water is forced to soak up the heat before it's allowed to just run through...(operator adjustment)

Have you tried this yet? I'm getting ready to build my chiller system and this is close to what I want to do. I was just going to leave the output end open and control the flow with hose pressure. I'll try it both ways. Thanks.

[scorpio_fl]

doesn't it make sense that if you control the flow then the water you went to the trouble to chill is doing as much as it can...slow at first then a little faster later, as the temp droppes...this would maximize the cold water after the initial heat is taken off...I live in fl and have a 250 ft or so well and use a friends cfc, so I haven't been worried about this, but I'm thinking about going back to a immersion chiller . I actually thought I might try running a small flow of water through the hose in water in my freezer to create the ice , anyway...good luck...buddy b...

[WichitaBrewer]

Scorpio, I believe that there's sort of a yin and yang about utilizing your method of heat transfer. On the one hand, the faster you run your ice water through your chiller the more rapidly you will exchange heat, and therefore, the faster you will chill your wort. Unfortunately, the more rapid you push your water through the less efficient your heat exchange will be. However, what it seems that you are trying to get at is maximizing the average difference in temperature between your chiller and your wort. I would test your theory first with near boiling water to see how quickly you are able to get the wort down to 75-79 with both methods. Whichever gets you past the 80-90F window (which a lot of the nasties that we don't want growing in most of our beer styles thrive best) faster would be the best method in my book. There probably is a middle ground somewhere there though where your method would achieve efficient chilling without sacrificing too much time to get the wort to a pitchable temp. Then again, I've never tried to chill this way so I could be completely wrong. Good luck and if you try doing this, let us know how it worked out!

WichitaBrewer

[scorpio_fl]

I agree with you wholeheartedly, time being of the essence, I would temper my rate of flow with how much temp I felt on the outgoing hose...when I felt decent heat I'd open up the output more...

[Thirsty Boy]

hey therew yall...seems the game has changed...I thought we were talking about getting the water colder for the chill, now we're talking about running the wort through it . . .

Yeah, sorry about that. I went a little bit off topic to ask a question about the way I chill. Gotta learn not to hijack other people's threads.

On the bright side, it sounds like BrewNoob has done pretty much what you actually were suggesting (except he got all serious and used copper tubing) and its working for him really well.

Thanks for all the info. Eventually I'm going to try out all these different ways of chilling, then settle on the one I like best.

[BrewNoob]

It's ugly but cools wort to 71F in under 20 mins. prechiller i use straight ice and it's no recycling anything, water out through the prechiller though the wort chiller and down the drain. Not cheap if you pay for water but I don't pay for water ATM.

http://s62.photobucket.com/albums/h103/BrewNoob/

Gerard

[WichitaBrewer]

Chiller looks fine to me, BrewNoob. How much ice does it take to operate the pre-chill for a batch?

WichitaBrewer