Wort Chiller Ideas

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.

Wax

Well-Known Member
Joined
6/1/04
Messages
224
Reaction score
1
I dont have running water near my garage where Im trying to setup my brewery. Ive got about 10 15ltr water containers lined up along the wall and that is my water supply. This will work fine for filling up the hlt and cleaning my equipment but Im pretty sure 15ltr at a time of room temp water feed only by gravity wont be sufficient for any kind of wort chiller. So Ive been thinking about alternative wort chillers that dont require running water. I was thinking I could run the wort from the kettle through a pipe that is coiled inside and esky filled with ice.

Is this going to work? Has anyone tried to doe something similar? Has anyone got any other ideas for a wort chiller that doesnt require running water?
 
i dont see why that wouldnt work. as long as you have somewhere for the wort to go. you could just recirc back to the kettle (if you are pumping) until you get the right temp. or if you get the right temp after one pass, just run it straight to the fermenter.
one alternative is sitting the kettle in a tub of cool/ice water. of course for this you need a tub wide and deep enough to fit the kettle into.
if you arent doing full wort boils, add some cooler water to the fermenter and dump your wort onto that. this could be tricky though, because to go from boiled wort to a good pitching temp you would need some really cold water.
thats all i got for now.
joe
 
How far is it to running water. Surely a couple of rolls of the cheapest garden hose you can find will be a lot less hastle. I've seen 15m of hose for $4 before from hardware stores. Not prime quality but would get you there. Just a though and a lot easier than what your trying to accomplish.

JD
 
Justin, unfortunately it's not an option. I'm in a town house, the garage is under ground and the closest tap is probably 50m away in a common area and it's hocked up to a sprinkler system. A bugger I know. I've seen these eskies used to cool the beer lines from a keg also so I figure I can kill two birds with one stone.
 
G'day Wax,
The ice idea would work but you will find that as the hot wort flows through the pipe the ice surrounding the pipe melts and actually insulates the pipe from the ice and therefore hinders the cooling process.
If you were to use that idea it would be very important that you move the ice around constantly while the wort is running through so as to achieve maximum cooling. Someone said on one of these forums about adding alcohol (methylated spirits) to the ice and that would really make it cool.
I tried it once with tap water flowing through a coil in a esky of ice and it froze the water in the coil that was in the ice. I had the water flowing very slowly at 400 mls per minute.
The kettle in the tub of cold water is a good idea and works OK but if you have got a big kettle it is pretty heavy and HOT at the end of the boil.
I hope this helps,
 
wax,
if you brew inside why not plug it up to your laundry / kitchen sink ?
if you brew outside, a beer drinking neighbour might trade water for beer!

just a thought

cheers
crackers
 
something i've tried/done before is similar. i use an immersion chiller in the hot wort and fill the esky with water and bag of ice and use a small indoor water feature pump to push in through the coils. it works ok and i let the first batch of hot wat go down the sink and keep filling the esky up with ice and water. once the water is around body temp, i put the run-off hose in the esky and added a bit more ice.

works ok for me
 
G'day Wax,

What I'm planning on doing is to use an old washing machine tub (the white plastic tub that the SS drum sit in), seal all holes except for the drain at the bottom, connect the drain upto a pump (from the washing machine itself), connect the pump to the CFWC, then connect the CFWC back to the washing machine tub. Put 5-10 frozen PET bottles of water into tub and fill with water. When wort has been boiled, turn CFWC (cold water) pump on to start circulating the water from the tub through the CFWC and back into the washing machine tub, then turn wort pump on. I'm hoping that this will work OK.

Beers.
 
Back
Top