Wort Chiller Just Ain't Chillin

[Ollieb]

Hey fellas - looking for some feedback and or tips from anyone who has experience using SS wort chillers.

With high hopes of being able to abandon no chill brewing and cubing I purchased my first wort chiller the other week. The ones that are like spirals looping around from the bottom and leading to the top of the kettle so to speak.... Bit like a good ole slinky.... damn they were fun....

All the material I have read indicated to me that once plumbed up and dropped in your kettle at the end of the brew it should bring down your wort temp to approx 20-25 degrees within about 15-20 minutes of running normal tap water through it.

I got no where near that sort of efficiency out of it. After half an hour I managed to only bring it down to about 50 degrees. In the end I turned it off because I felt so bad wasting all that water!

Has anyone else experienced this and or have a few tips on how to use these things properly.

For the finer details the ambient temp on the day was about 22-24 degrees. The tap water running through the chiller was about 20 degrees (I measured out of interest) and the pressure of the tap water was reduced to a slow rate of flow.

I am lead to believe that the water coming out the other end is meant to be pretty damn hot hence transferring the heat from your wort, mine at best was lukewarm.

Feed back of any description would be super great!

Cheers,
Ollie

 

[peter.b]

Is it a counterflow or straight immersion?? Its all about flow rate. Too fast and the cooling water wont be in contact with the hot stuff for long enough to absorb the heat. Stainless is great for cleanliness but not the worlds greatest heat conductor. Copper is better for heat transfer. Slow your flow and give that a crack.

Beers,

 

[Judanero]

You can always make a pre chiller coil.

Get some copper pipe, make a "birds nest".

http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/71974-ghetto-immersion-chiller/page-3

Put said birds nest in an esky filled with ice slurry or ice blocks in water (ice cream containers make nice sized ice block), and have this before the 'in' of your SS immersion chiller. That will bring the temp down even further as the water through your chiller will be colder.

It also helps to agitate the immersion chiller inside your kettle thereby exposing more of the wort to the chiller, is there space in between the coils of your chiller? That will also help expose more wort to the chiller.

I used to run my 'out' water to a sprinkler that watered the garden, or back into the rainwater tank to reduce the waste factor that comes with an immersion chiller.

 

[Ollieb]

Is it a counterflow or straight immersion?? Its all about flow rate. Too fast and the cooling water wont be in contact with the hot stuff for long enough to absorb the heat. Stainless is great for cleanliness but not the worlds greatest heat conductor. Copper is better for heat transfer. Slow your flow and give that a crack.

Beer

Peter - it is a straight up immersion chiller, perhaps I need to slow the flow rate right down... I'll give it a crack as you suggest.

 

[Ollieb]

You can always make a pre chiller coil.

Get some copper pipe, make a "birds nest".

http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/71974-ghetto-immersion-chiller/page-3

Put said birds nest in an esky filled with ice slurry or ice blocks in water (ice cream containers make nice sized ice block), and have this before the 'in' of your SS immersion chiller. That will bring the temp down even further as the water through your chiller will be colder.

It also helps to agitate the immersion chiller inside your kettle thereby exposing more of the wort to the chiller, is there space in between the coils of your chiller? That will also help expose more wort to the chiller.

I used to run my 'out' water to a sprinkler that watered the garden, or back into the rainwater tank to reduce the waste factor that comes with an immersion chiller.

Judanero - that birds nest ghetto chiller is intense... I like the idea of having a chiller to run the "in" pipe of water through the esky before it hits the immersion chiller.

Also mine is pretty tightly packed/spiraled together so I might try stretching it apart a little as well. Great tip about recirculating the water for the garden, I will definitely give that a go.

Thanks for tips mate.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

The spiral immersion chillers are THE WORST type. They look nice, but really do a bad job of chilling hot wort quickly

The best design is a random birds nest of tube or the " flying spaghetti monster"chiller.

The reason that coils dont work that well is because the coil only takes heat away from the wort that is surrounding the coil. If you place a thermometer near the coil, then in the dead center of the coil you will notice a big variation in wort temp. Water is a poor conductor of heat so it takes ages for the volume to cool.

If you have a coil then the best thing to do is agitate or stir the wort. Unfortunatly this stops the trub from settling on the kettle floor.

 

[JaseH]

Or ditch it and get a plate chiller.

 

[Black n Tan]

They work fine as long you keep the wort moving.

 

[Batz]

They work fine as long you keep the wort moving.

True, nothing wrong with them at all.

 

[The Judge]

Like the others said - keep it moving.

With respect to copper vs stainless:

Copper rate of heat transfer 400 W/m/C
SS316 rate of heat transfer 17 W/m/C

Copper transfers heat at a rate of around 380 Watts per unit thickness per degree in temp more than stainless steel. i.e. waaaay better.

 

[dago001]

I had no problems with mine when using it a few years ago. Moved to a plate chiller now as I used the IC coil for my herms. The biggest issues is trying to put too much water through it. The water needs plenty of contact time in the wort to chill effectively, so as you said, it should be hot water coming out when you start chilling. So the only way for it to not chill effectively is to have too much water flow. 1/4 of a hose water flow max.
When you first turn the water on, just turn it on so it just starts to flow out of the hose. Thats it.
Cheers and hope that helps
LB

 

[dicko]

The ability of any chiller relies on the temperature of the coolant being cooler than the desired wort temperature.
I have made pre chillers similar to what is described above and they require the coolant that they sit in to be constantly on the move or you will have locallised heating and the chiller wont work.
Even with the coolant moving that method is very inneficient unless you possibly had a giant pre chiller vessel.

I have an immersion chiller and our water supply can be as high as 30 deg c in the summer from the tap.
I have a 60 litre container (old Fermenter) that I sit a submersible pump in and with 40 litres of ice slurry I can get my wort to 9 deg c in the middle of summer by pumping the slurry water through the chiller with it sitting in my kettle.

I use the tap water to get the wort to around 40 deg and then switch the hoses to the submersible pump and return the water to the tank (fermenter).
I will have my tap water on for 10 minutes to get down around 40 deg and I save the hot water for cleaning and then switch to the submersible and then when I am about 6 to 7 deg from what I want to achieve in my kettle I drop the return line into two 20 litre cubes and use the same water next time.

The advantage of an immersion chiller is that you have the option not to carry any trub from your kettle to your fermenter....exactly the same as when the big boys use settling tanks.

The OP needs to consider many variable before he takes the advice of some and discards his IC.

 

[The Judge]

The biggest issues is trying to put too much water through it. The water needs plenty of contact time in the wort to chill effectively, so as you said, it should be hot water coming out when you start chilling. So the only way for it to not chill effectively is to have too much water flow. 1/4 of a hose water flow max.

This doesn't make sense to me. If you increase the flow rate of water, (the water isn't so hot as it exits the exchanger), meaning that it is cooler inside the exchanger. A bigger temperature differential between your wort and cooling medium means a bigger rate of heat transfer. Unless you're trying to save water I don't see how that is efficient for cooling.

 

[Ollieb]

I had no problems with mine when using it a few years ago. Moved to a plate chiller now as I used the IC coil for my herms. The biggest issues is trying to put too much water through it. The water needs plenty of contact time in the wort to chill effectively, so as you said, it should be hot water coming out when you start chilling. So the only way for it to not chill effectively is to have too much water flow. 1/4 of a hose water flow max.
When you first turn the water on, just turn it on so it just starts to flow out of the hose. Thats it.
Cheers and hope that helps
LB

Cheers LB - I think reading everyone's comments it appears my pressure was to high for the water to make contact. I will also do my best to keep it moving a little.
Appreciate the feedback.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

They work fine as long you keep the wort moving.

That is one of their downfalls. You need to keep the wort moving. But in saying that they are good for whirlpooling.

Personally, I like to keep as much trub as possible in the kettle, and with something like the FSM style you can chill without the need to agitate the wort.

Using a coil without moving/agitating will take a long time. But, if you are prepared to do that then they work well, with advantages over a plate chiller like not having to filter/screen the input of a plate,sanitation of the plate chiller internals. But plate chillers have other advantages.

Whatever method you use, you need to be aware of there downfalls and benifits and take that into account. All chillers acheive the same result at the end of the brew day ( including throwing hot cubes in next doors pool ).

Over time you will work out what is best for you.

 

[SnakeDoctor]

I use a stainless chiller, works great but you DO need to keep wort moving, I spend 10 minutes moving the chiller around in the urn after the initial cooling has been done, about 20 minutes to chill down to ale pitching temp.

 

[Beertard]

I'll have to try keeping the wort moving for a bit next time, but I do like to see it settle and go clear in the kettle.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

I do like to see it settle and go clear in the kettle.

Thats where the majic happens.

 

[LorriSanga]

I do the roll of copper pipe in iced water pre chiller as well.
Water full boar plenty of cubes to collect water - cleaning/plants etc.
After 10 mins - stir. After 8 more mins - 24oC. Yahtzee!

 

[Black n Tan]

The ability of any chiller relies on the temperature of the coolant being cooler than the desired wort temperature.
I have made pre chillers similar to what is described above and they require the coolant that they sit in to be constantly on the move or you will have locallised heating and the chiller wont work.
Even with the coolant moving that method is very inneficient unless you possibly had a giant pre chiller vessel.

I have an immersion chiller and our water supply can be as high as 30 deg c in the summer from the tap.
I have a 60 litre container (old Fermenter) that I sit a submersible pump in and with 40 litres of ice slurry I can get my wort to 9 deg c in the middle of summer by pumping the slurry water through the chiller with it sitting in my kettle.

I use the tap water to get the wort to around 40 deg and then switch the hoses to the submersible pump and return the water to the tank (fermenter).
I will have my tap water on for 10 minutes to get down around 40 deg and I save the hot water for cleaning and then switch to the submersible and then when I am about 6 to 7 deg from what I want to achieve in my kettle I drop the return line into two 20 litre cubes and use the same water next time.

The advantage of an immersion chiller is that you have the option not to carry any trub from your kettle to your fermenter....exactly the same as when the big boys use settling tanks.

The OP needs to consider many variable before he takes the advice of some and discards his IC.

I use the same method as Dicko and it works well. I have a water tank so it is pretty guilt free and I typically only need the ice when making a lager. I also have a plate chiller, but prefer the immersion chiller for the reasons Dicko has highlighted. The plate chiller however works well in tandem with a hop rocket.