Recirculating through chiller questions.

[#brewlife]

hi guys,

Having trouble with my CFC not chilling to 20”ish in 1 pass. In Brisbane with 26c ground water so with the water flowing full blast the best I could get after throttling back the wort a bit was 36c.
I’ve read of people recirculating back to the kettle till the whole pot is at pitching temp but am curious what people are doing with the break material?
I’d typically whirlpool after flameout to get the trub and hot break into a cone then drain/pump from side of tank through CFC leaving as much material behind and let the cold break swim freely in the fermenter.
I’m using keggle (decommissioned ones ofcourse) so I don’t think putting a pumped whirlpool arm will be that effective as tall narrow pots aren’t meant for whitlpooling. I can get a reasonable cone by stiring with a spoon but not sure the pump will be powerful enough and don’t want a whole heap of hot break and hop material in my fermenters.
Does anyone recirc? What sort of success have you had and what process do you follow?
Cheers

 

[Bonenose]

I recirc to get temp down to 35-40c using water from the tap then switch to pumping iced water to get pitching temp.

 

[Dan Pratt]

I recirc down to 60c either at flame out of end of whirlpool hop additions. .

By doing this the gradient from the kettle 60c wort down to <25c for into fermenter is much lower and requires less energy to chill the wort ( chill to 18c from there, ground water is ~ 22c by average )

Mind you, i leave the whirpool for a 10min rest before the cooling phase into the FV but you cant avoid cold break.

Cold break though has vital nutrients for the yeast and will not have any adverse affects on the beer.

 

[#brewlife]

I recirc down to 60c either at flame out of end of whirlpool hop additions. .

By doing this the gradient from the kettle 60c wort down to <25c for into fermenter is much lower and requires less energy to chill the wort ( chill to 18c from there, ground water is ~ 22c by average )

Mind you, i leave the whirpool for a 10min rest before the cooling phase into the FV but you cant avoid cold break.

Cold break though has vital nutrients for the yeast and will not have any adverse affects on the beer.

Im currently testing a keg or esky full of ice water to get it down to pitching temp. Never been worried about cold break just wondering if recirc mixes all the hops and hot break through the wort so it’ll all end up in the fv?

 

[raturay]

I just made myself a pre-chiller to use with the Grainfather. After last summer in Brisbane I just got frustrated having to wait so long at times to pitch the yeast. I brewed yesterday and while it wasn't a hot day as such it worked great. I put the tap water through the CFC first with a flow rate of about 1.5 litres/minute. I recirculated the wort until I had used three "garden" buckets of water. I then ran the hose water through the pre-chiller and the wort straight into the fermenter. It think it was reading 63c in the Grainfather and the wort went into the fermenter at 19c which coincidentally was the temp that I wanted to ferment at. So the yeast was pitched in less than an hour from the boil finishing.

I probably overdid the pre-chiller a bit. I put it in a good esky and filled it around half way with water. One bag of ice went in with maybe 10 minutes to go in the boil. I dumped a second bag of ice in 5 minutes before running the water through it. The coil is 18 meters of copper. I think one bag of ice would have done. The copper coil cost me $90. Not cheap but I'm sure it will be a worthwhile investment for the summer.

 

[#brewlife]

That’s for the update. I just did the same but put the ice water through the counter flow. Ice water was in keggle hlt and only got down to 18. It ate the ice pretty quick(4x2l buckets of ice and 4x500ml bottles of water) as i was outside in the sun and it’s hot today. Got it down to 25 in 1 pass so it’s in the chest freezer till it get to 20.
I think I’m going to buy 2 cheap 100l esky sand make an ice bath in one to get it down below 5 degrees and recycle the water to the other esky for next brew day.
My CFC is a bit short at 4m but it’s all the copper I had left

 

[ABG]

I run a garden hose into my immersion chiller until the wort hits 80 degrees. The run off water goes back into my HLT to be used later on cleaning my Robobrew.

At 80 degrees, I do a hop whirlpool for 20 minutes. I disconnect the garden hose from the chiller and fill up a 60L plastic garbage bin with about 20 frozen water bottles (taking the caps off as I put them in the bin) and put enough water in to cover all the bottles. At the bottom of the bin I've got a cheap pond pump I bought from Bunnings. I then hook up a hose from the pond pump to the inlet of the chiller and another hose from the outlet of the chiller back into the bin. At the end of the whirlpool, I turn the pump on and watch the temperature of my wort drop crazy fast. The ice in the bottles last until the wort drops to pitching temp for ales. For lagers, I generall need to throw in another dozen frozen bottles to get the wort temperature down to 10 degrees. The water in the bin stays ice cold down the bottom the whole time, while the water toward the top becomes tepid. Because the pump is at the bottom of the bin drwaing in ice cold water, it drops the temperature of my wort really quickly.