Braumeister Chiller Revisited

[Brew Matt]

After deciding that a 30 plate chiller (Chillout Mk3 or similar) was the way to go after speaking to some in the know, I have heard from others equally knowledgable backing immersion chiller (copper 14 meter or greater).

I had dismissed the immersion option, but the immersion/whirlpool argument put forward by Jamil (http://www.mrmalty.com/chiller.php) is a pretty convincing one - to the extent where it mentions changing from plate to immersion.

Seeking feedback, particularly with respect to the Braumeister 50L. I know Speidel make an immersion chiller themselves (which doesnt sell well; maybe for good reason?) - is anyone using using a better immersion chiller (or has anyone made a whirlpool chiller to suit)?

Some of the points mentioned in no order include:

-The BM boil gets interrupted by the Immersion chiller when placed in wort for sterilization 20 minutes before end of boil
- Improved hop aroma for immersion/whirlpool without having to add a hop rocket or similar inline to plate chiller

Feedback invited.

 

[Nick JD]

I wonder why BMs don't come with built-in chillers?

 

[MHB]

The Braumeister Stainless immersion chiller is well made of good quality material problem is the designers had in mins 5-6oC tap water, not the 16-20oC more typical around here.
The Braumeister chiller should work very well with a pre-chiller; personally Im a big fan of counterflow chillers, either plate or tube in tube.
Mark

 

[Florian]

-The BM boil gets interrupted by the Immersion chiller when placed in wort for sterilization 20 minutes before end of boil

This is one of the two main reasons that made my copper coil redundant. I guess if you incorporate the time it takes to reheat into your boil calculations you should be fine, I just couldn't be bothered. But it isn't too hard after all.

The other thing to consider is, as Mark mentioned, the water temperature. I'm guessing that where you are the tap water is still quite warm all year round, so unless you chill your chill water you won't get below 20 degrees or even higher. Depends on what you wanna do I guess, but for my mainly lager brewing it just doesn't work.
Obviously this applies to both immersion and plate chiller.

Looks like you've finally decided to go down the BM route?

 

[SJW]

I just finished an brew on the BM, and I used my old imersion chiller. Used the water tank water to get it down to 40 deg C, then a bucked of crushed ice water with a pump from a garden fountain in it to bring it down to 18 deg C. Took 15 min all up. To easy.

 

[Sunshine_Brewer]

I like the idea of a stainless coil, my 10M copper coil has seen better days.
One trick to eliminate the boil losing it's vigour is to add the coil at the start of the boil. You do lose some volume but only a kettle or two.

 

[DeGarre]

Hello all, my first post here downunder.

I have the Speidel chiller for my 20L BM and it is an absolute doddle to clean, just needs a little rinse, nothing sticks to it. I sanitise it by dumping it into a Starsan bucket and a few minutes before the end of boil start pasting the upper part of the coil with a ladle/starsan. 2 first times I brewed I dumped the chiller into the BM to sanitise but this interrupted the boil big time.

I get from 100 to 20 deg c in 20 minutes without whirlpooling but granted my water is 4 deg c in the winter and only couple of degrees warmer in the summer.

 

[Stormahead]

I'm thinking a brown pump, plate chiller immersed in an esky of ice, pumping into the fermenter from the BM.

 

[Malted]

I'm thinking a brown pump, plate chiller immersed in an esky of ice, pumping into the fermenter from the BM.

I have not tried this but I do use a plate chiller gravity fed from the BM and notice the whole device doesn't really get hot, just the half where the hot wort goes in. It might be an inefficient way to use the ice. I reckon a prechiller might work better.

I tried a big barrell of ice slurry and recirculated this through the plate chiller with a pump. It soon melted and became hot so that the cooling water soon became hotter than if I had of just used the garden hose. My innatention was the fault. It made me think about how to deal with chilled water to go to the plate chiller. I think it is best to keep the chilled water away from the heated water exiting the plate chiller.

I am thinking it would be better to have a coil chiller in the ice in which your cooling water passes through before going to the plate chiller. The ice would only be subjected to the garden hose water temp and would last a bit longer effectively making your garden hose tap water cooler before going to the plate chiller.

I also think that a temp guage on the outlet of the chiller is a good idea; it is now on my list of things to do.

 

[donburke]

I have not tried this but I do use a plate chiller gravity fed from the BM and notice the whole device doesn't really get hot, just the half where the hot wort goes in. It might be an inefficient way to use the ice. I reckon a prechiller might work better.

I tried a big barrell of ice slurry and recirculated this through the plate chiller with a pump. It soon melted and became hot so that the cooling water soon became hotter than if I had of just used the garden hose. My innatention was the fault. It made me think about how to deal with chilled water to go to the plate chiller. I think it is best to keep the chilled water away from the heated water exiting the plate chiller.

I am thinking it would be better to have a coil chiller in the ice in which your cooling water passes through before going to the plate chiller. The ice would only be subjected to the garden hose water temp and would last a bit longer effectively making your garden hose tap water cooler before going to the plate chiller.

I also think that a temp guage on the outlet of the chiller is a good idea; it is now on my list of things to do.

cooler water going into the chiller should result in cooler wort out, so this should be a better result

you would also need to agitate the pre-chiller that sits in the ice, as it will soon form thermal pockets and wont be that effective in pre-chilling your water

work out how much water you use for the chiller, then if possible, chill this volume of water in the fridge the day before, then pump this through the chiller

 

[Stormahead]

Good points, makes perfect sense.

This might go hand in hand with the miracle box I'm hoping to make up this week.

 

[bear09]

This is one of the two main reasons that made my copper coil redundant. I guess if you incorporate the time it takes to reheat into your boil calculations you should be fine, I just couldn't be bothered. But it isn't too hard after all.

The other thing to consider is, as Mark mentioned, the water temperature. I'm guessing that where you are the tap water is still quite warm all year round, so unless you chill your chill water you won't get below 20 degrees or even higher. Depends on what you wanna do I guess, but for my mainly lager brewing it just doesn't work.
Obviously this applies to both immersion and plate chiller.

Looks like you've finally decided to go down the BM route?

Good thread. I have always used an immersion chiller and I have always stirred the wort whilst cooling it. I have always been worried that this may be damaging the wort but it seems as though I may have been doing the right thing. My issue was that I couldnt just sit there and let 100's of litres of water go down the drain. If I stirred the wort it cooled rapidly.

Anyhow in response to the thread above, I solved this issue with an immersion element. Just before I put the immersion cooler in I would hit the wort with the immersion element. This would cause a rapid heavy hard boil (way too hard), then Id drop the cooler in. The boil would balance back to rolling within 30 seconds at which time id quickly remove the immersion heater. Another important thing that helps is to make sure your immersion cooler is EMPTY of water. If its full of cold water youll knock the crap out of your boil. If it full of air the boil come back really quickly.

 

[Malted]

you would also need to agitate the pre-chiller that sits in the ice, as it will soon form thermal pockets and wont be that effective in pre-chilling your water
work out how much water you use for the chiller, then if possible, chill this volume of water in the fridge the day before, then pump this through the chiller

Both good points, cheers.

 

[eamonnfoley]

Both methods (CFC and IC) have their pros and cons. You wont get one answer. personally use a Blichmann therminator and love it. But I make sure it gets a bake in the oven before use. And I circulate boiling wort through it for 15 mins during the boil. One trick with a CFC is to circulate back into the brewpot when chilling, meaning you get several passes through the chiller, before directing to the brewpot. You can also get your cold break to stay in the kettle using this method.

 

[Ross]

If you are using a fermentation fridge for your brews, then there really is little need to get your beer all the way down to pitching temp.
Just get it down to whatever temp you can quickly & easily, then finish it over a few hours in the brew fridge.

Cheers Ross

 

[sim]

The other thing to consider is, as Mark mentioned, the water temperature. I'm guessing that where you are the tap water is still quite warm all year round, so unless you chill your chill water you won't get below 20 degrees or even higher. Depends on what you wanna do I guess, but for my mainly lager brewing it just doesn't work.
Obviously this applies to both immersion and plate chiller.

Thinking systems-wise, for what its worth i find it works nicely enough if you already use a fridge to ferment to prechill water in it the day before in an old fermentor or cube or two. Doesnt interupt any brewing processes as its just using the fridge before the brew goes into it. Tap water to take it to 35c, 2c chilled water to take it to 15c, ice slurry if you want to get to 6c.

 

[argon]

If you are using a fermentation fridge for your brews, then there really is little need to get your beer all the way down to pitching temp.
Just get it down to whatever temp you can quickly & easily, then finish it over a few hours in the brew fridge.

Cheers Ross

After a few attempts at a prechiller and prepping chilling water in the fridge etc etc. I could never get it much below about 25C without using an unconscionable amount of water. I now just get it down to as low as it will go without too much buggering about... usually about 30C then bung it in the fridge and pitch yeast the next morning. I brew at night and after filling it about 10.30pm, get up and pitch about 6.00 6.30am and give it a thrashing with the sanitised perforated strainer spoon for aeration. Hassle free and pitching at the correct temps, whilst not dragging out the brew day.

As long as everything is properly sanitised and sealed up there is very little risk.

 

[Murdoch]

I use an immersion cooler in the BM to cool
I have used both methods mentioned previously, putting in preboil & leaving in for the whole boil & supplementing the boil with an immersion heater when putting it in during the boil & both worked well
I have found its important to have the cooler empty prior to putting in as it will absorb too much heat energy
Run the pumps in manual to circulate the wort with a towel over the top & it will drop to below 50 degrees in 10-15 minutes but the heat transfer slows down a lot after that but its generally high 20`s by 30 mins then I cool the rest of the way in the fermenter fridge but I do intend to make up a prechiller sooner or later.
I`ve wondered how effective a SS immersion cooler would be ?
SS doesnt have anywhere near the heat transfer qualities of copper
I suspend my cooler by SS hooks so as it doesnt rest on the BM`s heating coils
I notice within a few seconds of putting the cooler in the hot/boiling wort the top tails of the copper pipe are so hot it will burn you.
The SS hooks it sits on dont get anywhere above warm even after a 90 minute boil

 

[Brew Matt]

I use an immersion cooler in the BM to cool
I have used both methods mentioned previously, putting in preboil & leaving in for the whole boil & supplementing the boil with an immersion heater when putting it in during the boil & both worked well
I have found its important to have the cooler empty prior to putting in as it will absorb too much heat energy
Run the pumps in manual to circulate the wort with a towel over the top & it will drop to below 50 degrees in 10-15 minutes but the heat transfer slows down a lot after that but its generally high 20`s by 30 mins then I cool the rest of the way in the fermenter fridge but I do intend to make up a prechiller sooner or later.
I`ve wondered how effective a SS immersion cooler would be ?
SS doesnt have anywhere near the heat transfer qualities of copper
I suspend my cooler by SS hooks so as it doesnt rest on the BM`s heating coils
I notice within a few seconds of putting the cooler in the hot/boiling wort the top tails of the copper pipe are so hot it will burn you.
The SS hooks it sits on dont get anywhere above warm even after a 90 minute boil

View attachment 52938

Interesting point with the copper vs stainless steel - i think we all know that copper is the better conductor of heat (and this can be seen in electronics, with the more effective heatsinks coolers being made from copper), but it is easy to be blind sided by the lure of stainless steel - but not as effective in this application. Makes you wonder why Speidel went for stainless steel (though it has been mentioned before that their water supply temperature is lower than ours - maybe they were not expecting to have as much demand for the BM abroad in hotter countries).

Murdoch, can I ask what make model of immersion chiller (IC) you are using - in the photo it appears to fit into the BM nicely (is that a 20 or 50 in the photo?). I would like to find out which IC would offer the highest cooling surface area to suit a 50L BM.

In the Jamil article, i think it says that the optimum circumference for the cooler coil is close to that of the containing vessel. Prior to reading this I would have guessed having the cooler coil circumference bisecting the vessel radius half way would have been the most desirable.

I am thinking that if you already have a pump attached, that an alternate method to prevent boil interruption when placing the IC into the BM would be to recirculate some boiling water through this first, and therefore the chiller would be close to same temp as the boil when inserted.

I have heard that the BM pumps can be modified some how to create a whirlpool effect - providing this is possible, I wonder how much difference in cooling there would be in doing this vs manually running the pumps during cooling without any modification. I believe that pumps will not manually turn on until wort temp of less than 80 degrees C is reached.

One thing for sure, there's definitely are a lot of factors to consider when planning the 'perfect' brew setup!

 

[MHB]

Snip
I have heard that the BM pumps can be modified some how to create a whirlpool effect - providing this is possible, I wonder how much difference in cooling there would be in doing this vs manually running the pumps during cooling without any modification. I believe that pumps will not manually turn on until wort temp of less than 80 degrees C is reached.

One thing for sure, there's definitely are a lot of factors to consider when planning the 'perfect' brew setup!

90^oC before the pumps will work
M