Water Friendly Wort Chiller?

[GUB]

Building the new setup and trying to think of ways to save a bit of the ol H20 during the process. Our old chiller didn't use a great deal of water, but enough to look bad to spying eyes (brewing in the inner city!). So I am thinking two things:

1. Build a new immersion chiller, (the old one is now too small) and collect the water on the other end for the garden etc...

2. Some how incorporate gravity and ice. Maybe a copper coil that runs through a bucket/container that can be filled with ice? Slowly run the finished boil through the coil into the fermenter, checking the temp to get the flow rate right and topping the bucket with ice when required. Or will this end up using massive amounts of ice, therefore water? Only worry with this system is that is maybe be super slow to get the temp req'd...cause once it is in the fermenter it would be an effort to put it back through the system again

It is a 3 tier system, all gravity.

cheers

 

[danman]

while im collecting all the components for AG brewing the method i plan on using is a 205L drum cut to the height of a 50L stainless steel beer serving vessel and with the help of a block and tackle in my shed raise said boiler into said 205L drum,fill with water and then use a copper coil inside the boiler to recirculate ice cold water form an esky using a water pump. may not work in your situation,but i have 2 2600W immersion heaters boiling wort with boiler sitting on a plank of MDF with caster wheels so i can wheeel my boiler under my block and tackle and int mo 205L drum. all water from the drum at end of chilling then exits thru a tap onto the herb garden,lawn etc. this is still only an idea but its the best i can come up with so far without spending heaps on march pumps etc.
hope to have helped/confussed
cheers,dan

 

[domonsura]

There's a thread somewhere where I've posted some pics of my setup, but I'm damned if I can remember which thread it is or what it's called.
here's some of the pics of it.

Basically, it collects rainwater from the roof which gets run from the second drum through some copper tube in a water/ice bath and then into the chiller, then back into the first drum (so the warm water doesn't contaminate the cold water in the first drum and defeat the purpose) . Re-circulation is done with a pool pump that I got for nix (which has since died, so I'm looking for a replacement...)

Having said that, all you really need to do to be conscience free is tyo collect the water, which you can do with the purchase of a 200l drum, and fit a tap to the drum so you can take water out of it for your houseplants/washing the car etc etc.......as long as you are doing something with the water as well as cooling with it, it's all good and you're doing your bit

 

[Simon W]

I've toyed with the idea of building a closed system, eg: chiller/radiator/pump, but I don't brew often enough to commit myself to building it.
Could use a small car radiator with a thermo fan on it which should get the water down to a few degree's above ambient. Another small chiller in an ice bath after the radiator and before the wort chiller could be used in latter stages of cooling to drop below ambient.
Just an idea.....

 

[braufrau]

Building the new setup and trying to think of ways to save a bit of the ol H20 during the process. Our old chiller didn't use a great deal of water, but enough to look bad to spying eyes (brewing in the inner city!). So I am thinking two things:

1. Build a new immersion chiller, (the old one is now too small) and collect the water on the other end for the garden etc...

2. Some how incorporate gravity and ice. Maybe a copper coil that runs through a bucket/container that can be filled with ice? Slowly run the finished boil through the coil into the fermenter, checking the temp to get the flow rate right and topping the bucket with ice when required. Or will this end up using massive amounts of ice, therefore water? Only worry with this system is that is maybe be super slow to get the temp req'd...cause once it is in the fermenter it would be an effort to put it back through the system again

It is a 3 tier system, all gravity.

cheers

There was a thread awhile back about how to reduce H2O in brewing. Someone (PP?) uses his cooling water in his top loader washing machine. Dunnow if that's an option for you, its not for me and my front loader.
Some of the sanitising water I collect in buckets to flush the toilet and as you say you can put the cooling water on the garden.

A counterflow chiller would use less water than an immersion chiller wouldn't it? linky Someone?

And I guess the chillout is the most efficient of all. linky

But $$ seems to be inversely proportional to use of water!

 

[braufrau]

Aha! Found the thread

 

[reVoxAHB]

Yep, great thread. I picked up the washing machine trick from it.. and when that's full i fill my kettle and spread it around the herb garden, etc. Not a drop goes to waste.

reVox

 

[Kleiny]

i will be using my rainwater tank 2500L and a pump just pump the water from the tank through the chiller and back into the tank.
another brewer on this forum Juddy uses this system and said it works well.

 

[v8r]

im no ag'er just yet, but have any of you guys considered hacking a cheap refrigerated water cooler for an immersion chiller? can be acquired for around $60 off ebay for reco'd ones, wouldn't take much to hack up and use the cold plate..

(ps: ive see this sort of thing done for cooling pc's, so beer cooling should be a snap )

 

[Steve]

When I started AG last year (or was it this year - cant remember?) I was using an immersion chiller. My mother in law who is our landlord got a water bill which was double the previous quarters bill and obviously she has to pay it. She couldnt understand why and I wasnt going to let on h34r: . I decided to go no chill. Even though all the waste water was being collected in buckets and put back on the garden/vegie patch I still felt guilty watching all this water being used. If I had a tank with rain water I would be probably still be using the chiller.
Cheers
Steve

 

[GUB]

Excellent guys...thanks for the info and the links...that old thread is interesting! Will let you know what we decide.
cheers

 

[plastic tolstoy]

I use an immersion chiller and water my (small) garden with that for about 20 minutes. That reduces the temp to the point when I add a whole bunch of sterlized ice bricks, which I use with a sterile glove to whirlpool the wort and drop the break material etc to the bottom. Stick the wort in the fridge for 5-10 minutes with the ice-bricks in it and it's done. The more sterilized ice bricks you have, the less you need to use water to chill. You could probably just use sterilized ice bricks if you had enough of them and your pot was big enough to handle the displacement.

But it's not like commercial breweries don't use plenty of water / energy. So if someone looks at you funny just sneer at them the next time they drink the swill they call beer. And that's just for drinking it, sneer at them even more when you think of the water gone into producing it.

 

[crozdog]

im no ag'er just yet, but have any of you guys considered hacking a cheap refrigerated water cooler for an immersion chiller? can be acquired for around $60 off ebay for reco'd ones, wouldn't take much to hack up and use the cold plate..

(ps: ive see this sort of thing done for cooling pc's, so beer cooling should be a snap )

v8r, big diff in both the amount of heat to be removed (ie volume of wort) and a the temperature delta ie start & finish temp between a PC & hot wort. I dunno if the water cooler would cut it cause I think they use a reservior of cold water to supply the demand ie they aren't instantaneous.

I have thought about doing this with the outdoor unit from a split system air conditioner - I reckon it'd work best with a counterflow/plate heat exchanger. Gotta talk to Luke some more cause I have an older 1 or 2 HP A/C I could use

 

[bigholty]

By my calculations, 1 kg of ice will cool 1 kg of wort by 80C. So if you want to cool 20L of wort from 100C to 20C you will need to melt 20kg of ice.

 

[Adzmax]

I've got a new (well kinda old really) spa at our place, has been filled for over 12 months and never used. Seeing the heater is not connected I've installed a T piece with a tap fitting. I just plug a hose on, turn the pump on and have the outlet spit back into the spa, works a treat

 

[PostModern]

But it's not like commercial breweries don't use plenty of water / energy. So if someone looks at you funny just sneer at them the next time they drink the swill they call beer. And that's just for drinking it, sneer at them even more when you think of the water gone into producing it.

To a degree I think we use a bit less water per litre of beer than the big breweries, but I doubt they throw much hot water down the drain. Don't most recycle the initial cooling water into the HLT? They're not only saving water, they're saving energy from the boil. It's in their commercial interest to be resourceful.

But think of the energy you save by not having all that glass recycled and shipped around the place both full and empty

 

[tangent]

i notice 1/2 of you lucky bastards have swimming pools.
how much is lost by evaporation off the pool compared to how much you use each brew session?

 

[chovain]

Don't most recycle the initial cooling water into the HLT? They're not only saving water, they're saving energy from the boil. It's in their commercial interest to be resourceful.

But think of the energy you save by not having all that glass recycled and shipped around the place both full and empty

Absolutely - Especially when large volumes are involved, it becomes uneconomical to waste anything at all. Whenever you read anything about breweries spending money to save water or energy, it doesn't take a genius to work out what their real reason is.

If you play around with a plate chiller, you can see that it would be easy to reuse all of your cooling water for your mash in and lauter with minimal heating.

I'd be surprised if breweries used more water than a home-brewer. They have the advantage of extremely expensive equipment to do all their washing and sterilising. If they can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to save them millions in water and energy, they will!

 

[Cortez The Killer]

I reckon give no chill a go and see if you still wanna chill after that

Cheers

 

[chovain]

I don't feel bad using water for cooling. Like a number of people, I run my cooling water between a couple of tanks. I then reuse it once it's cooled down. SHMBO sometimes takes some for the garden, so I need to supplement it with tap water from time to time, but I use no more water than the no-chill method.

To reduce the size of tank you need, use a CFC, or even better, a plate chiller. It all costs more, but I love my plate chiller!

I'm also pretty light on water in the sanitation department (I'm an oven sanitiser).

(Originally posted to wrong thread)