evoo4u said:
Food for thought , this one.
My heat exchanger consists of 9 metres of copper tube, and my transfer "wand" over the lip of the kettle and reaching down to the bottom (to avoid splashing and aeration) is also about 700mm of copper tube.
So could you discern a difference in taste if I were to make identical brews, one with the existing setup, and another If I replaced the copper with S/S?
I think if you're going to have any copper, the chiller coil would have the least impact: vs a copper manifold or hard-plumbed copper tubing. The rationale for this is:
-at wort pH and temperature the CuO (oxide) layer will dissolve and dissociate into Cu and O
-the continued contact in a manifold or piping basically oxidises the wort, staling the fresh, punchy flavours
-at 60-70°C the wort can potentially hold ~4ppm dissolved oxygen, vs 0ppm when boiling, so potentially less impact when boiling.
To answer your question, possibly - being more confident if you leave it in for a while and swirl your beer.
I had hard-plumbed copper, manifold, and chiller with continuous circulation. I compared this to my old 50L keg/drum setups and the malt was always very subdued compared to my old beers - which were typically chilled with copper coils, sometimes not. Since moving to fully stainless there has been a significant improvement in the malt punchiness. Incidentally that wheat doppelbock in the winter case swap was on the copper system - but needed a good chunk of Cara-munich II and a double decoction to have any sort of malt left over.
So I think if you had a manifold and chiller and changed to stainless, yes I could pick it. A chiller only I could pick if you left it in for a while and swirled your wort.
And yes... Stainless can be cleaned easier and has less potential for surface nasties.