Wort Chiller not great

[TheWiggman]

Maybe you're misunderstanding me Adr_0, I said cool the wort down to ~30°C THEN use the ice bath. If the ice is 1-2°C and the wort is 30°C, then the net result will be somewhere in between.

Or what about an HDPE water container Stu? h34r:

 

[detunednath]

Thanks all. Great advice & much appreciated!

 

[detunednath]

Brewing a lager tomorrow.
My plan, after all the excellent advice I've received here, is as follows:

1) Tap water through wort chiller - running out into the pool.
2) pond pump immersed in bucket of ice - recirculating ice water through wort chiller, back to bucket of ice. Means I don't actually need the ice coil right? Any point in hooking it in line in the ice bucket anyway?

I'll let ya know how I go!

On the point of moving the chiller around though - won't this stir up trub? Recently wort was looking quite clear before I moved the coil around while chilling. I assume that's just a trade off? Move coil = more efficient chilling but with stirred up trub?

 

[HBHB]

On the point of moving the chiller around though - won't this stir up trub? Recently wort was looking quite clear before I moved the coil around while chilling. I assume that's just a trade off? Move coil = more efficient chilling but with stirred up trub?

Yep, and as it chills further the trub will settle quite fast.

 

[Sambrew]

Don't ever recirculate energy in a heat exchanger. You will end up warming the wort again until everything balances out. You can add ice again but your quantities of ice will approach what you need for an ice bath and you lose any benefit of actually using a heat 'exchanger'.

The only effective way to cool is single pass. Eliminate recirculation from your vocabularies and you will start winning.

If you are limited by the amount of ice you have, doing the first step with tap water is a good idea. If you have a few bags, why not use it all the way through and in 15min you're done.

I find that recirculating water from my 2500L rainwater tank through my chiller works just fine! Maybe it just comes down to thermal mass? If you have a big enough Ice bath for the input of recirculated heat to be insignificant you're winning, but a bucket aint gonna cut it. Replacing the Ice during recirculation increases your "cooling" capacity.

 

[Adr_0]

Brewing a lager tomorrow.
My plan, after all the excellent advice I've received here, is as follows:

1) Tap water through wort chiller - running out into the pool.
2) pond pump immersed in bucket of ice - recirculating ice water through wort chiller, back to bucket of ice. Means I don't actually need the ice coil right? Any point in hooking it in line in the ice bucket anyway?

I'll let ya know how I go!

On the point of moving the chiller around though - won't this stir up trub? Recently wort was looking quite clear before I moved the coil around while chilling. I assume that's just a trade off? Move coil = more efficient chilling but with stirred up trub?

Maybe you're misunderstanding me Adr_0, I said cool the wort down to ~30°C THEN use the ice bath. If the ice is 1-2°C and the wort is 30°C, then the net result will be somewhere in between.

Or what about an HDPE water container Stu? h34r:

Ok, fair enough.

Brewing a lager tomorrow.
My plan, after all the excellent advice I've received here, is as follows:

1) Tap water through wort chiller - running out into the pool.
2) pond pump immersed in bucket of ice - recirculating ice water through wort chiller, back to bucket of ice. Means I don't actually need the ice coil right? Any point in hooking it in line in the ice bucket anyway?

I'll let ya know how I go!

On the point of moving the chiller around though - won't this stir up trub? Recently wort was looking quite clear before I moved the coil around while chilling. I assume that's just a trade off? Move coil = more efficient chilling but with stirred up trub?

You still absolutely need the ice coil. Plastic hose doesn't conduct heat that well, and you need surface (copper tube) to remove the heat from the tap water before it goes into the wort.

How big is your batch size, 23L?

If you can leave the first coil in a bucket of water until you get your wort to 30-40°C, then chuck in a 4kg bag of ice yes you will get somewhere in the 10-15°C range.

 

[detunednath]

So to update on today's brewing: pretty successful!

Ended up dropping pond pump in the pool & recirculating that through immersion chiller til wort hit about 32°C. Seemed to stabilise there even though pool was at 27°. Guess that's the inefficiency of heat transfer through copper?

Then switched to recirculating ice water from a bucket. 2 bags of ice and about 100g of salt. Pond pump clogged with ice at first - took me 5 mins to realise what was going on. Then dropped wort to about 15°C.

Was happy with this so pitched. All up about an hour from boil to 15°. I'll Probably be faster without problems I now know to look out for.

Cheers for all the advice! Very much appreciated!

 

[GalBrew]

Salt is probably not going to be great for your coil long term.

 

[Adr_0]

What is your batch size Nath?

 

[mb-squared]

given your skills at bending copper tubing, you'd be able to whip one of these up in no time: http://www.thegatesofdawn.ca/wordpress/homebrewing/wort_chiller/

run your boiling hot wort through that and it will come out the other side at whatever temp your tap water is. then, if you want colder temps, continue your wort's journey through one of your current coils that you've immersed in an ice bath and your wort will come out the other side at whatever temp you want (depending on flow rate).

This is what I do (CFC followed by immersion coil in ice) and I'm able to turn 50+ litres of boiling wort into 50+ litres of icy cold wort in less than 10 minutes.