# Using an ice immersed wort chiller.



## D_Skee (25/12/13)

Hi All, Merry Christmas.

I have just moved into all grain and am about to purchase an immersion chiller so i don't have to use a water bath. My problem is that my tap water comes out at around 20-22*C and i want to be around 17*C for pitching yeast. What are peoples thoughts if i were to get a second immersion chiller and place it in an ice water in my sink and run the tap water through the iced chilled coil then through to my chiller in the hot wort? is it worth my time to achieve only a few degrees?

Cheers,

DS


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## Bribie G (25/12/13)

Guy who regularly won medals in the Nats with his lagers does the following:

Freeze ice cream containers of water before brew day.
Fill a couple of big buckets with iced water with the smashed up blocks bobbing in them. Using a pond pump, circulate this water through the immersion chiller and back into bucket #1 until the "cool" has been used up. Then switch to bucket #2.

He pitched about 15 mins after draining the kettle into the fermenter.

I no chill but if I were ever to impetuously and insanely go for chilling, that's the method I'd use for quick results and minimal water usage.


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## Ducatiboy stu (25/12/13)

Would work. 

I would do the bulk of the chilling from the mains; then the last few *c thru an ice bath. I would also slow the water flow rate down when using the ice bath.

Note: A nicely formed coil is not as good as a randon ball of copper tube. Have a look at Wortgames avatar to see what I mean.


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## HBHB (25/12/13)

Summer tap water temps here can be as high as 30-32 deg C. Using a full 50 ft chiller i can get down to that tempin about 15 minutes. Then a small 15 odd ft copper coil in an esky or 20L bucket with icy water does the job to finish off on a slower flow rate. No issues.

Martin


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## schrodinger (26/12/13)

I use a method similar to what Bribie mentioned: two 7.5-m immersion chillers in parallel, chill water recirculating through an Esky filled with ice water. I start with the Esky half full, and top off the ice repeatedly. This is overkill for 5-gal batches, but I like overkill.


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## Bribie G (26/12/13)

Stu, where we are, cold water is cold water. However in vast areas of the country you can actually take "cold" showers. The OP doesn't have his location in the side bar, that could be helpful.
The other issue is that SEQ brought in water restrictions that would make your eyes literally water and as a result, average household consumption went down *voluntarily *to about half of Melbourne, as one example.
It's now deeply ingrained, when the Malignant Dwarf took over he pleaded with the population to use more water as he wasn't getting enough tunnel digging revenue from the water bills any more. The basically told him to feck off.

To let a tap just run and run for cooling purposes still fills me with genuine indignation. Guy I mentioned in the post uses his "spent" water on his roses.


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## Mardoo (26/12/13)

Ducatiboy stu said:


> I would do the bulk of the chilling from the mains; then the last few *c thru an ice bath. I would also slow the water flow rate down when using the ice bath.



Yep, I agree. On my set up the boil to 26-ish degrees takes about the same amount of time as the 26 to 18 degrees. I'm building a 5 meter coil to immerse in an ice bath to use on the second half of the chill.

And yes, try to reserve the water you use for your garden. You don't need a massive flow rate through the chiller to achieve the same results.


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## lael (26/12/13)

HBHB said:


> Summer tap water temps here can be as high as 30-32 deg C. Using a full 50 ft chiller i can get down to that tempin about 15 minutes. Then a small 15 odd ft copper coil in an esky or 20L bucket with icy water does the job to finish off on a slower flow rate. No issues.
> 
> Martin


What volume of wort are you chilling Martin?


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## lael (26/12/13)

schrodinger said:


> I use a method similar to what Bribie mentioned: two 7.5-m immersion chillers in parallel, chill water recirculating through an Esky filled with ice water. I start with the Esky half full, and top off the ice repeatedly. This is overkill for 5-gal batches, but I like overkill.


hey Schrodinger - what temps are you getting to at what speeds?

I'm really interested in this question as am struggling to chill the volume from my new system at a speed I like (80L) and am trying to work out how to approach it. Currently whirlpooling with an immersion chiller. But it took a while. I ended up putting into fermenters and in the freezer (fermenting chamber) at around... 30C to chill down overnight. Pitched in the morning. But I would like to be able to chill closer to pitching temps. I need to measure how long my current wort chiller is. Anyone have info on 'ideal' design that allows whirlpooling at the same time?


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## real_beer (26/12/13)

Don't waste your time building an ice chiller for a plate or coil & then filling it up with iced water, just surround it with ice & let the water drain out of the esky or container as it melts. That's how they're designed to work. If you ever look underneath an old plate chiller you'll see the feet they stand on are all different heights so it sits at an angle for the water to drain off the plate and out the drain of the container. All you do when you let water sit there is waste the ice chilling water thats supposed to have done its job when it melted. Same applies to portable keg systems.

Cheers

A couple of crappy pics:


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## Kiwifirst (27/12/13)

Ducatiboy stu said:


> Would work.
> 
> I would do the bulk of the chilling from the mains; then the last few *c thru an ice bath. I would also slow the water flow rate down when using the ice bath.
> 
> Note: A nicely formed coil is not as good as a randon ball of copper tube. Have a look at Wortgames avatar to see what I mean.


I hadn't thought of that. I have my nicely coiled copper tube, perfectly symmetrical and whilst the garden loves brew day, I do worry about the amount of water used in a 30 minute boil to pitch temp. I justify it with that the garden needs the water, but if I can cut that chill speed down then not only will the garden be happy, but the kids too 

I like the idea of two buckets of iced water and a pump system.


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## Middo (27/12/13)

I bought a 12w aquarium pump on eBay for around 20 delivered. Works a treat, with an 50 litre esky I use tap water to bring the boil temp down in the wort and with a 20 litre batch I switch it to recirculating the water with some large slabs of ice from 4 * 2ltr ice cream containers. Wort ready to pitch yeast in under 15 minutes.


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## Kiwifirst (27/12/13)

Just trying to picture this.

So lets say I have my copper coil in the brew pot. Then instead of water mains in and out to the garden, I could just run tap water with some slabs of ice in the esky that I have just cleaned the grain out of with a fish pump?

That....sounds simple, add that to the thread I just read with 30 min mash and 30 boil and I literally half my brew time  Well at least for the APA's.


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## Middo (28/12/13)

You won't want to recirculate the hot water and ice first... Unless you have about 4 bags worth for 20 litres. It will melt away faster than you think.... I tried this myself, now I'll use tap water out, refilling the esky, take the sting out then put the hose back in and recirculate with iced water.


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## Kiwifirst (28/12/13)

Middo said:


> You won't want to recirculate the hot water and ice first... Unless you have about 4 bags worth for 20 litres. It will melt away faster than you think.... I tried this myself, now I'll use tap water out, refilling the esky, take the sting out then put the hose back in and recirculate with iced water.


So just running normal tap water until what temp? Otherwise this would just be the same as running it straight through onto the garden. At what temp does it pay off to switch to iced water? I am guessing when you get round that 30c mark, because it seems to me that I can get to 30 ok and then it take a long time to take that last 10c heat out.


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## Middo (28/12/13)

I've gone by feel but the first few minutes it's pretty damn hot and after about 8 or so minutes I switch to ice once the heat has subsided. Getting the 12w or there abouts on the aquarium pump regulates the pressure and flow rate so you won't waste too much water.


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## Kiwifirst (28/12/13)

Middo said:


> I've gone by feel but the first few minutes it's pretty damn hot and after about 8 or so minutes I switch to ice once the heat has subsided. Getting the 12w or there abouts on the aquarium pump regulates the pressure and flow rate so you won't waste too much water.


Great. I will look into this. Looks like a great option for reducing the chill time. Especially that 30c to 16c or 17c for my next hefe


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## country_brewer (29/12/13)

please excuse my ignorance, but why not sterilise the chiller, put it in an ice bath, then run the actual wort through the chiller and straight into the fermenter?


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## warra48 (29/12/13)

You have just reinvented the system used in plate chillers.
Should work though, but cleaning and sanitising might be a bit of a pain.
Don't know how much ice you will need, but it may be a lot.


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## Kiwifirst (29/12/13)

country_brewer said:


> please excuse my ignorance, but why not sterilise the chiller, put it in an ice bath, then run the actual wort through the chiller and straight into the fermenter?


Not sure I'd want boiling wort running inside copper pipe. I know you can sterilise the tubing, but I'd still be nervous about how clean it really was. 
Secondly, if you are going straight into your fermenter, you'd need to be confident that the journey through the coil drops the temp enough to pitch, what if by the time it's been through it is only at 24c?


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## CosmicBertie (6/1/14)

Bribie G said:


> To let a tap just run and run for cooling purposes still fills me with genuine indignation. Guy I mentioned in the post uses his "spent" water on his roses.


I'd hope that as an old tinkerer, like myself, you'd come up with something like this for chilling: 

I pump my cooling water out of the rain water tank, through the immersion chiller and back into the tank. "No water was lost in the chilling of this wort."

And as i'm putting on my flamesuit, I chill to approx 24C and pitch. Then into the fermenting fridge set to whatever fermenting temp. I do this for both ales and lagers.


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## WitWonder (7/1/14)

Upon the arrival of the new Braumeister the plan is to have our current plate chiller (which nearly got beaten to death with a sledgehammer during the last brew due to it continually blocking during transfer) sitting in an ice bath. Mains water would be transferred through the plate chiller and out into an immersion chiller with the 'waste' water from the immersion chiller used on the garden. Theory being this will chill faster and to a lower temp than standard immersion chiller using mains water here in Perth which in summer can be fairly warm. 

**edit - shouldn't this be moved to 'gear and equipment' ?


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## Tahoose (10/1/14)

I haven't done any all grain brews yet (hopefully first one this week), but how about the idea of running the boiling hot wort through 10-15 of silicone hose submerged in a bucket of ice, could be sanitised prior to use, will easily handle the temperature and maybe with a tap at the end you could manage flow rate for the desired result....


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## Dan Pratt (10/1/14)

Silicon will cool it, copper pipe will cool the wort much faster and more efficiently.


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## malt_shovel (11/1/14)

This is what I used after I got the wort to around 35deg with tap water. Recirculation through the immersion chiller using a pond pump and ice water got to 17deg in under 15mins for 40ltrs of wort.


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## Middo (14/1/14)

If you want to save a few dollars you can just buy some copper pipe and get a cheap pipe bender on ebay. I did this myself by wrapping the copper around a corny keg.

I also bought a 12w aquarium pump on ebay for under $20 delivered.

Works a treat, here's some photos of the coil and the esky I use, like Malt_Shovel... I use tap water at first to get it down into the 30's then ice (recirculating) which gets it down to pitching temp real fast. I first used icecream containers for the ice but now I use chinese takeaway containers... got plenty of them and can stack them up high which gave me enough to do two brews on the weekend.

This was only the 3rd time using this and the first beer I did this with had a really good clarity and wasn't cloudy like my no chill beers.


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## Blitzer (14/1/14)

Think something like the below would work fine for recirc?

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/1350L-H-Energy-saving-Submersible-Water-Pump-Aquarium-Fish-Pond-Tank-Fountain-/151107331286?pt=AU_Pet_Supplies&hash=item232eb2e4d6


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## zappa (14/1/14)

I have been coiling the inlet hose to my plate chiller in a bucket of ice successfully for the last few brews. I don't need to worry about reducing temp first, because the source water is never much more than about 27c and the ice hardly melts. I seem to get wort into the fermenter at around 22 to 24c using this method. I intend to make a short immersion chiller for this purpose in the next few weeks (prior to my next brew) and think it will be more than sufficient (garden hose is a good insulator). I reckon this is a simpler approach to reducing wort temp first then recycling ice water through an immersion chiller in the boil kettle, but I guess it depends on whether or not water use is a problem. Mine comes from and is returned to a rain water tank.


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## Middo (14/1/14)

Blitzer said:


> Think something like the below would work fine for recirc?
> 
> http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/1350L-H-Energy-saving-Submersible-Water-Pump-Aquarium-Fish-Pond-Tank-Fountain-/151107331286?pt=AU_Pet_Supplies&hash=item232eb2e4d6


HAH!

That's the exact one I'm using you can see a bit of it in the esky, same seller even... got the watts wrong though, it's 19w not the 12w I previously posted....$19.20 delivered.

Good flow rate too, the hose is a cheapo from bunnings that I put all the hot water out on my front lawn then just put the end back into the esky once I'm ready to drop the ice in. The hoses always stay on the chiller, I just give the pipes a good wipe over and drop it in during the boil to sanitise it.


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## The_Duck (24/1/14)

I have been doing what Cosmic Bertie above suggested and using my water tank water in a closed loop. With 2500 litres of water available and a 4 L/m pump it gives a nice slow flow rate. I find my temps drop quickly to about 40 C in about 15-20 mins but getting down to about 20 is a real struggle. I am planning to create a small copper coil that can sit in line with the water coming out of the water tank and after cooling to around 40C, I can add the ice to pre-chill the water going to the immersion chiller to crank down the rest of the way. I am figuring maybe 3-5 m tightly coiled in a small esky should provide the surface area to get chilled quickly.

I think it will be trial and error to work out the sweet spot for adding the ice. Hopefully winter will not require ice at all as the water should be in the teens or lower anyway.

Duck


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## Bribie G (24/1/14)

Of course the elephant in the room here is no chill in a cube, that's all I've ever done for the last five years and no complaints.


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## Dunkelbrau (25/1/14)

I was thinking of getting an esky full of ice to submerge my plate chiller in and cool my wort to 8 for a lager.. 

I'm guessing that it will get down that far if I run the wort slow enough.

I do hate the water waste.. Especially if it just rained as there's no point watering the garden with it and we have a stupid front loader washing machine!


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## Gelding (31/1/14)

Jurt said:


> I was thinking of getting an esky full of ice to submerge my plate chiller in and cool my wort to 8 for a lager..
> 
> I'm guessing that it will get down that far if I run the wort slow enough.
> 
> I do hate the water waste.. Especially if it just rained as there's no point watering the garden with it and we have a stupid front loader washing machine!



not a chance dude, your ice bath will warm up from ambient long before you get wort down cool enough that way. You have to pump the water from the ice bath through the plate chiller. Unless that's what you meant ...


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