Cleaning Cfc

Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum

Help Support Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

lou

Well-Known Member
Joined
27/4/04
Messages
170
Reaction score
0
howdy

I'm tring to decide whether to go CFC or immersion. I like the idea of the ease of imersion and the price - ease of consrtruction- but CFC are very popular with many people. My biggest worry with CFC is cleaing them - is it hard, what do you use and is it worth the hassle compared with immersion

lou
 
I use an immersion, and am happy with it. But, CFC's have many advantages, and I think the investment would be worth it, as you'll use it forever.

People seem to run their choice of sanitiser through the CFC for a while, I think the hassel is worth it.
 
Only used a CFC once so far but I can't get to worried. As long as you clean it well after you use it then either just circ boiling water through it for 10mins or circ some beer line cleaner ot the like through it.

Made the cooling process a lot easier though :)
 
Immersion chillers are dead easy to make. Dump it in your boiling wort for the last 15 minutes to sanitize it. The low pH wort will make it very nice and shiney. While chilling, move the coil around a bit to cool all the wort. Just a small amount of agitation, so that hot wort moves and comes into contact with the coil. After chilling, syphon or rack off the wort leaving the hot and cold break behind. Wash the coil immediately.

Counterflow are a bit more involved. You can make your own with a bit of plumbing fittings, or use the commercial kits. Clean with your favourite cleaner. I use a few litres of sodium percarbonate, rinse with water, then fill with some iodine solution, just prior to running wort through. Others, circulate with a pump hot wort through to sanitise. Once again, rinse thoroughly after use.

The trick with counterflow chillers, if gravity fed, you need enough headroom to flow from the boiler, through the chiller, then into the collection vessel. My CFC is large diameter, with only a few turns, with a strategic hole dug to accomodate the 30 litre collection fermenter. I collect about a 1/3 of the wort from the chiller, transfer to the main fermenter, pitch yeast, then collect the remaining wort, let it settle overnight, then drop this into the fermenter the next morning. This means 2/3 of the cold break is removed.

Counterflow chillers are more efficient in their use of cooling water. With a tap from your boiler, you can control and slow the rate of wort through the coils. So long as the CFC is long enough, your wort will come out very close to the cooling water temperature.
 
I have a nice new counterflow chiller (thanks Grumpy's!) in the cellar as part of my all grain setup. When I baptise this baby in my next brew, I plan on decanting the wort from the kettle into a 10L bucket and then rough pour the wort into the fermenter - I don't have an aeration kit so I use this method to put a bit of air into the chilled wort before pitching the yeast.

I don't care if cold break gets into the fermenter - its good nutrient for the yeast and I skim the krausen at about day 3 or 4 to catch the cold break slick on top of the krausen before it sinks back into the brew.

I skimmed my "Dangerous Dunkelweizen" (SG 1.055 - see recipe section) the other night and had a fresh pale cream krausen on top of the wort by the following morning...

Cheers,
TL
 
My CFC cleaning is quite simple, like many others do i just bring 10litres of water to the boil(which only takes around 10mins with the jet power burners from globe).
When the wort boil is finished i just run the boiling water through the CFC while i wait for everything to settle from the whirlpool.
After use i just rinse out with some water.
Never had any probs with cleaning it this way and its all to easy.

So basically lou there is no big drama's involved in cleaning a CFC.

Cheers Jayse
 

Latest posts

Back
Top