Ghetto immersion chiller.

[431neb]

Hey Neb, you got a pipe bending tool handy?

My immersion chiller is nowhere near as well formed as yours, and the bendy bits are just about to kink if I add any more unsupported bend to them.

If you've got a pipe bender or some level of skillz, maybe I could borrow them/you some time. Would recompense you in either quality beer, or languishing of praise, of course.

The fella next door is a plumber and a good mate so the pipe bender was easy. So easy that he virtually did it for me. I seem to have a lot of mates who are plumbers and two are within walking distance.

If your pipe is already kinked or mis-shapen (the wort chiller you dirty bastards), bending it could be tricky. I reckon that cutting off the deformed section and silver soldering some nice bends onto your existing unit would be the right idea. Either way, I'm sure I can make it happen. PM me and I'll make inquiries on Thurs night.

What you need to do to increase the cooling speed is.

Agitate the wort as you cool

or

Make a birds nest out of your tube to increase the areas of hot wort.

Agreed. I think mine might work better if there was more separation between the coils too. Too anal for birds nests and won't be agitating chillers when I can either eat my dinner (always seems to be dinner time when I'm chilling) or have a beer.

I dunno if my method helps with the cool-down but I "whirlpool" after flameout and whack the lid on the keggle in the belief that the wort will swirl for a while and help with heat transfer. I'm new to all grain though and haven't tried other methods. So I'll keep my coils for a bit longer I think.

For those that are curious I whirlpool again after I hit my temperature and walk away for another half hour. Still wanting a better trub cone and more compact / solid trub so not sure if my advice really is advice or a mistake to be avoided. If only I could lift the ******* thing out without disturbing the cold break and hop snot. Others will advise.

PS

I tried to update this thread from my phone today so that I could amend the time it takes to chill my wort. 40 minute or whatever I said up there ^^^ was a guess - 25 or 30 minutes would be much closer to the mark but the water in my tanks is an icy 15 degrees.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

seperation does not work. Been there...blah blah

What you need to do is allow the pipe to become available to as much of the wort in a non uniform way....you want the pipe to be in as many places as possible.

The best chiller I have seen looked like a ball of tube.....it ugly as as **** but it cooled wort like you would not believe......

 

[Camo6]

This setup used to work for me. Used it in my biab setup with a lil brown pump to recirc and worked a treat. Will have to reemploy it in my herms setup (still using the same IC minus the whirlpool attach. ) as cooling is a lot slower and have to constantly agitate as per Ducati's post.

 

[WarmBeer]

I'm planning on using my newly acquired March pump to recirc from my kettle outlet, back through silicone hose, which will be attached with some stainless wire to the chiller, just under the surface of the wort. This will give me a ghetto whirlpool immersion chiller until I get my skit together to make/jerry a real one.

At the moment, I just need to bend both the bottom, and top sections so I've got a nice stable chiller to secure the hose to.

Edit: Camo beat me by 30 seconds.

 

[431neb]

Camo this is the coolset chiller I have ever seen Pardon the pun and thanks for the link. Methinks modifications are in order. Now I'm shitty that I rushed mine.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Grrrrr....coils are not as good as a birdsnest....

 

[Camo6]

Edit: Camo beat me by 30 seconds.

My missus tells me this all the time.

Camo this is the coolset chiller I have ever seen Pardon the pun and thanks for the link. Methinks modifications are in order. Now I'm shitty that I rushed mine.

This is the build I used too. I ended up spacing the coils with copper wire but then it made the 18m of tube taller than the kettle. Will post a pic if I can find one.

Grrrrr....coils are not as good as a birdsnest....

Now your starting to sound like the kids at work with their gen Y haircuts. Curls get the girls!

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

No...curls get your wort chilled faster...and that is what you want

Using a coil coil and stiring is all well and good but you are missing the point of a quick chill and having the trub settle ....

You want to have a good fast chill but also allow the trub to settle ..

Makes for a clearer wort in your ferm.

 

[pk.sax]

The meaning of ghetto is lost here...

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

I so want to.....

 

[technobabble66]

No...curls get your wort chilled faster...and that is what you want

Using a coil coil and stiring is all well and good but you are missing the point of a quick chill and having the trub settle ....

You want to have a good fast chill but also allow the trub to settle ..

Makes for a clearer wort in your ferm.

Hey Ducatiboy stu,

Sorry if i'm being a bit of a thickee, but it'd be great if you could spell out a little bit of this for me. (I'm still trying to decide whether it's worth going the cheaper Immersion Chiller option for the time being)

Can you clarify how you get a nice whirlpool & cone formed while chilling with your big birds nest style of immersion chiller??

I had kinda assumed the simple coiled version was used to allow the whirlpool to occur while chilling, and you just had to accept the compromise in efficiency due to reduced mixing/contact.
Wouldn't the big birds nest cause too much agitation thru the whirlpool & prevent the cone forming? And i thought the cone had to form while the wort was hot. Or can you just whirlpool after the IC has chilled the wort down.

Thanks!

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Go away

 

[technobabble66]

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

You dont need to whirlpool if your trub settles nicely. Which is what a good chill will do

 

[technobabble66]

Aah. Comprendez
Thanks

 

[pk.sax]

If you have high resistance to flow in the middle, the energy in the vortex in the centre will drop significantly, aiding precipitation. As long as your design lets you introduce that energy into the wort in the first place.

Aim is to get high rotating fluid around the walls of the kettle and slow/stationary hops n break in the middle.

 

[Beerisyummy]

Aim is to get high rotating fluid around the walls of the kettle and slow/stationary hops n break in the middle.

You can add a ring to the bottom of the kettle to aid in this. It creates a great little low pressure system that catches all the crap.

 

[431neb]

You can add a ring to the bottom of the kettle to aid in this. It creates a great little low pressure system that catches all the crap.

BiY can you take a picture and whack it up here so we can see it. I'm assuming that you have done the same.

If you have high resistance to flow in the middle, the energy in the vortex in the centre will drop significantly, aiding precipitation. As long as your design lets you introduce that energy into the wort in the first place.

Aim is to get high rotating fluid around the walls of the kettle and slow/stationary hops n break in the middle.

My logic, (I call it logic anyway) leads me to believe turbulence, that interferes with the (unnecessary - see I am listening Ducatiboy stu!) whirlpool is going to prevent the descent and consolidation of the trub / break. Can you expand on effective methods of introducing that resistance and do you mean smooth / uniform resistance like a ring as mentioned above or can it be more "intrusive". I'm leaning towards uniform and wondering if something like a false bottom would work? The perforations should slow that vortex in the middle nicely.

You dont need to whirlpool if your trub settles nicely. Which is what a good chill will do

Anyone else that doesn't whirlpool? I could save 20 minutes on a brew day if I could simply chill and drain into the fermenter without removing the chiller. In which case I will hastily fabricate a birdsnest DBS.

 

[donburke]

can someone post a pic of a birdsnest chiller, i've got no idea of what it looks like

i still believe a whirlpool is beneficial, even if chilling superfast you will end up with the trub spread evenly over the base of a flat bottomed kettle

you could raise your pickup tube, but the benefit of whirlpooling is to concentrate the trub in the centre, leaving the perimeter of the pot clear, which is where the pickup tube should be positioned

 

[donburke]

I'm planning on using my newly acquired March pump to recirc from my kettle outlet, back through silicone hose, which will be attached with some stainless wire to the chiller, just under the surface of the wort. This will give me a ghetto whirlpool immersion chiller until I get my skit together to make/jerry a real one.

At the moment, I just need to bend both the bottom, and top sections so I've got a nice stable chiller to secure the hose to.

Edit: Camo beat me by 30 seconds.

there is a ideal depth and angle with which the whirlpool outlet should be positioned, i think the thread here was titled 'angle of the dangle' or something like that. if i remember correctly, about 1/3 of the way up was ideal.

i recommend you consider that thread before you make your permanent modification