Anti-no-chill Tips For Bribane Water Resticted Ag Brewers

[shadders]

Dunno if any of this has been mentioned or tried yet on the forums so sorry if I'm repeating previous material...

just tried out a few idea's on this weekends AG brew session for cooling relatively legally under the current water restrictions...

Firstly... this is for users of immersion chillers... though I imagine it could be used for counterflow as well..

Went out a bought a few 60l garbage bins from bunnings for water collection ($10 each)... ran the chiller from the tap with outlet into the bins... kink the hose (the part after the chiller) partially and hold it in place with a brick or something else heavy... this increases the pressure in the copper coils which will improve heat transfer by itself, as well as reducing the flow of water giving more time for the heat transfer so a double benefit... I had about about 250l water storage capacity which was enough to get it down to about 30-35 degrees. Takes a little longer that fast flowing water but reduces the amount by 50-70% by my calculations...

If you want to further increase try the second copper coil in the ice bucket trick... I've found this works ok but at fast flow rates (i.e. without kinking the hose) you don't get a whole lot of benefit... I didn't do it this time but I imagine with the higher pressure/reduced flow rate you would get much more benefit (depending on how much ice you've got might be worth waiting till it's cooled 20-30 degrees before using the ice water)...

Anyway I didn't use ice water this time... Once I got it to 30-35 degrees it was time to drain into the fermenter... before I did though... in went the ice blocks... I prepared these a few days ago... a few 2L icecream containers with a couple of drops of hysan to sterilise and then mixed with water... In the time it takes to freeze the hysan has plenty of time to work... no worries about it stopping the ferment... wolfgang who sells it reckons he puts a a couple of mills in his beer to help oxegenate...

I over did it a bit... based my caculations on beersmith infusion calcs which didn't work at all (suggested I'd need the ice at -50 deg!)... For 30l or wort at 30-35 degrees I put in 5.2l of hysan cleansed ice and it dropped it to about 14 degrees.... Will have to think a bit harder about the numbers....

Fortunately it was a double batch so once I'd poured half into the 2nd fermenter and topped up with tap water it was at about 20 deg.... Used a single packet of safale s-04 in one then poured a litre of that wort in to the other fermenter this morning and both are bubbling away happily now...

As for the water.... it's sitting around in bins and I can bucket it out and use for watering garden at the legally appropriate times... as far as I'm aware this is full compliance with water restrictions...

Hysan is an absolute wonder.....

Oh and I think the whole whole cooling process took me about 10 mins longer than running the hose flat out... Not counting the 5 mins it took me to fill the hysan/ice containers a few days earlier...

 

[pint of lager]

Make sure when using an immersion chiller, that the wort is slowly moving so it comes into contact with the cooling coils.

Most people achieve this by every so often jiggling the immersion chiller coils up and down.

Quite some time back, Chiller posted pictures of his immersion chiller which also included a slow spinning SS prop that kept the wort moving. You should be able to find the picture by searching on the nick Chiller and immersion.

You could also run the water into the washing machine to do a load of washing, use the water to wash your brew gear up, wash the dog as well as water the garden.

 

[Wortgames]

I'll definitely agree with the washing machine, it's a great use for hot water.

As for efficiency, the golden word is 'turbulence'. You want maximum movement in both the wort and the coolant. Messy coils are better than neat ones, and copper with crimps, kinks and dents will exchange heat far better than nice smooth round stuff as the water inside it sheers and eddies, making contact with more copper.

Thinner pipe is also better (greater surface area relative to volume) so if you are currently using 1/2" think about going for 3/8" or 1/4" instead.

Even just jiggling the chiller makes a huge difference to the temp of the outflow (and therefore the efficiency). Think of it like rocking a baby to sleep - you can do it idly while drinking beer or watching TV, you just need to keep it moving is all.

 

[SpillsMostOfIt]

This might be a dumb idea, or someone else has had it and already been told it was a dumb idea.

You have been warned!

Imagine you had an old fridge/freezer/aircon. In my mind, I am thinking of a split-system air conditioner (you'll see why in a moment).

You remove the relevant bits of the fridge/freezer/aircon and plumb in your immersion chiller through some flexible pipe. It costs some time, coolant and a few bottles of your finest to the fridgie who does the work.

No water. More gear. What's not to like?

 

[DarkFaerytale]

save water, don't shower for a couple of days after a brew

-Phill

 

[FNQ Bunyip]

This might be a dumb idea, or someone else has had it and already been told it was a dumb idea.

You have been warned!

Imagine you had an old fridge/freezer/aircon. In my mind, I am thinking of a split-system air conditioner (you'll see why in a moment).

You remove the relevant bits of the fridge/freezer/aircon and plumb in your immersion chiller through some flexible pipe. It costs some time, coolant and a few bottles of your finest to the fridgie who does the work.

No water. More gear. What's not to like?

Hi spills,, Interesting thing I have been thinking along these lines in the last couple of weeks ,, going back though some basic refrid stuff I have and some of my past experiments with refridgeration units for solvent extraction of plant matrials and I think that the pressures created by the refridgerant expanding to a gas in the coils could be too high ,for both the coils and the high side of the compresser, as your putting the coils into a boiling wort 100+ ... so it could be a case that you would still need a water coil to get to a lower starting temp befor putting the refriderant coil in ...

I stand to be corected on this by anyone with more refridgeration experiance than I , and would like to see this idea given some work...

:beer:

 

[ausdb]

Hi spills,, Interesting thing I have been thinking along these lines in the last couple of weeks ,, going back though some basic refrid stuff I have and some of my past experiments with refridgeration units for solvent extraction of plant matrials and I think that the pressures created by the refridgerant expanding to a gas in the coils could be too high ,for both the coils and the high side of the compresser, as your putting the coils into a boiling wort 100+ ... so it could be a case that you would still need a water coil to get to a lower starting temp befor putting the refriderant coil in ...

I stand to be corected on this by anyone with more refridgeration experiance than I , and would like to see this idea given some work...

:beer:

FNQ you are on the right track. Most commercial freezer units have a thing called a crankcase pressure regulator fitted to the condenser unit. This is to stop the thing from overloading just after a defrost when the evaporator coil is above 0C (and return gas temp/pressure) is high as freezer units are designed to normally operate with the return gas coming back at a lower temperature (hence pressure)

Refrigeration systems are not really good at handling widely varying loads ie the medium to be cooled is 100C one minute then 30C 10 minutes later. So as you say use tap water to cool the thing most if the way and your refrig system at the end. OR use your refrig system to cool a glycol mix (which can go down Below 0C) and circulate the glycol mix through a chiller coil that gets thrown in at the end.

As POL has said before the MOST important thing is to keep the wort moving and circulating around the coils.

 

[apd]

I had about about 250l water storage capacity which was enough to get it down to about 30-35 degrees.

shadders,

Is that a typo or did you really use 250 litres of water?

I am currently no-chilling but thinking of moving to an immersion chiller. I didn't realise how much water was needed however.

Are other immersion chiller users going through this much water?

Thanks,

apd

 

[SpillsMostOfIt]

Hi spills,, Interesting thing I have been thinking along these lines in the last couple of weeks ,, going back though some basic refrid stuff I have and some of my past experiments with refridgeration units for solvent extraction of plant matrials and I think that the pressures created by the refridgerant expanding to a gas in the coils could be too high ,for both the coils and the high side of the compresser, as your putting the coils into a boiling wort 100+ ... so it could be a case that you would still need a water coil to get to a lower starting temp befor putting the refriderant coil in ...

I stand to be corected on this by anyone with more refridgeration experiance than I , and would like to see this idea given some work...

:beer:

I was looking at the 'show us yer fridge' thread this morning and thought some more. The really cool biodiesel fermenter thingies made in Perth got me thinking about a brewery-wide cooling system.

Imagine being able to use the same system to control ferment temps as well as cool the wort. I was originally thinking about the multi-outlet airconditioning units. The bath thing sounds intriguing as you could then control the amount of glycol/water moving through the various cooling devices to suit their purpose and use a fridge compressor?

Clearly I am belittled by the amount of fridge knowledge here...

 

[oldbugman]

I was actually working on a refrigerated counter flow chiller the other day.

In the end my design worked but was down on capacity as I used a small condensing unit that was lying round work.

So after I then returned to the books to work out the required capacity on it.


Things we assume in the calcs.

-Dropping the wort 75deg C, from 95 to 20deg
-Wort has the same specific heat as water 4.187 (I'd love someone to be able to help me out on this part as I know this isn't right. obviously gravity of wort will mean no two worts have the same specific heat)
-A flow rate out of the kettle of 1 litre per minute or 0.0167 litres per second

Energy req=flowrate X tempchange X specific heat
E=0.0167 X 75 X 4.187
E = 5.24 KW



I was using a half KW unit and had to turn the flow rate right back on my 70deg tap water to get it to come out at 16deg, but it did work. just needs some more tinkering and for me to find a large refrieration unit, which then raises the problem of me having no room for a such a creation to live at my place.

 

[tangent]

i use a whole coil of 1/2in copper tube as an immersion chiller.
I chill down to about ~40C with 75L-100L of water.
This is used for washdown and the garden.
I stir the wort with the chiller every now and again.

 

[Jerry]

shadders,

Is that a typo or did you really use 250 litres of water?

I am currently no-chilling but thinking of moving to an immersion chiller. I didn't realise how much water was needed however.

Are other immersion chiller users going through this much water?

Thanks,

apd

apd,

FWIW my immersion chiller (which is no work of art) got my last brew done to around 30C in 35 mins and used about 70-80 litres. That was acheived by also stirring gently.

Scott


Edit - Can't spell me name. :blink:

 

[colinw]

Why not use a pump to recirculate water from a swimming pool or water tank? A few thousand litres of cool water should easily drop a normal volume of wort down without increasing in temperature by more than a fraction of a degree. Anyone with either a pool or tank should be able to chill without discarding any water at all.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Living on tank water, I actually have no idea how much water runs thru my chiller.

I use the first couple of minutes of hot water to wash down my tun and bottom, then it goes back into the tank. Generaly I chill for about 2hrs, it lets me clean up, attend to the domestic issues, play with the kids etc.

The advantage of a long chill is lots of break on the bottom of the kettle. Roughly 1ltr and nice clear wort into the ferm.I dont use Irish moss or whirflock

Bring on the no chiller mob

Flame suit ready and waiting... :super:

 

[SpillsMostOfIt]

Bring on the no chiller mob

Flame suit ready and waiting... :super:

I'm a recent no-chiller. I like it, but I am yet to hear a convincing explanation of how to adjust your hops calculations to accommodate the cube. I'll learn, I'm sure, but in the meantime will keep experimenting and otherwise respect the topic title...

With regard to compressor-based chillers, I was thinking along the lines of:

http://au.lge.com/md/product/prodcategoryl...ctId=1100000162

It's creator's marketing department claim it will do around 7kW. Is that enough overkill?

 

[oldbugman]

It's creator's marketing department claim it will do around 7kW. Is that enough overkill?

nah that'd be perfect, just not cost effective. I have basically put it onto the back burner till I end up somewhere where I can have a cool room running and just use the condensing unit for 30mins.

 

[chris.taylor.98]

You need to slow the flow rate down after the initial temperature drop otherwise your water use is going to be very inefficient.

If the water is going in and coming out at almost the same temperature while the the wort is still warmer, it is not really doing its job.

I'm going to try and chill my water in an ice bath before feeding it into the wort chiller to see if I can get away with even less water for my next brew (I usually use about 70L), especially now that we are heading into lager season.

 

[SpillsMostOfIt]

nah that'd be perfect, just not cost effective.

Oh... Sorry, I misunderstood...

I figure you could probably cool (say) 50litres of glycol down to quite cold using a bar-fridge compressor. You then have two immersion chillers - one as the hot side and one as the cold side - and a pump. That would have to be cheaper than my 'no cost spared' idea?

 

[redmond]

Spills, I had this conversation with a couple of mates the other night. One of them is a fridgy and he come up with a similar idea to yours but I am waiting on him to get back to me with exactly how he will do it.

The other guy suggested maybe getting an old car radiator and an electro fan and recirulate the water through that.

I personally tried a small esky half filled with water and topped up with a number of 2l frozen milk containers and recirculated the water from there. This worked ok but it didn't get down far enough for me. If I try this way again I will discard those few litres that are really hot and recirc the rest.

 

[oldbugman]

I put my immersion chiller in a bucket of water and ice and use that as a pre chiller for tap water.

so it went thru my chiller then into a counter flow.

We probably ran the flow of water to high and it went thru the ice quite quickly but we were getting a 20deg out instead of 25. I then started jiggling the immersion chiller around in the bucket of ice and we got 16 coming out of the immersion chiller.