Wort Chiller With Limited Water

[thunderchild]

Group,

I am about to make my wort chiller (standard copper roll) but am living in an environment of limited water. Has anybody any thoughts or designs that enable the water consumption to be limited?

 

[shawnheiderich]

I also have a copper coil. I just try and justify the water I use to cool the wort by.

Having the mash tun empty and using the water to fill for cleaning about 45l, then empty this water into the kettle once all wort out and clean kettle.

Capturing the residual water (45l) and using on garden after cleaning rest of my gear.

About 90l of water gets me to 45c ish then straight into the cold fridge for about four hours and pitch.

I guess unless no chill you use some water, unless you have a water tank and pump.

Shawn

 

[LethalCorpse]

What I'm planning to do when I make mine is make it a closed loop system. You need a radiator of some sort - the bigger the better, but if you're strapped for space, a car heatercore will do; appropriately sized fans; a pond pump; a reservoir - a container with a lid that you can attach barbs to the sides; some hose and fittings - garden hose or that vinyl stuff from bunnings will do; and some automotive coolant. It's basically the same as a watercooling setup as used in computers, but with a coil in your wort instead of a waterblock on your CPU. Should cool quite efficiently, maybe not as fast as using water from the tap, but certainly fast enough.

 

[Bizier]

Fermenter of refrigerated water recirculated with a pump. This is what I have been planning for my own use. Was thinking of filtering this for brew water, or use it for cleaning water or for plants etc.

 

[PostModern]

Group,

I am about to make my wort chiller (standard copper roll) but am living in an environment of limited water. Has anybody any thoughts or designs that enable the water consumption to be limited?

If your water is coming from a tank, direct the warm output water back into the tank.

 

[thunderchild]

If your water is coming from a tank, direct the warm output water back into the tank.

Genius! So simple it's Brilliant!

Thanks

TC

 

[PostModern]

People are always telling me I'm simple.

 

[marlow_coates]

We hit this problem as well when we first used our copper chiller.

Solution for us was to get a couple of large bins from bunnings and sit underneath the down pipes on the house. One decent downpoor or rain and we had two big resovoirs (can't remember how to spell this word).

We also collect all the washing water from the washing machine into simple buckets. Adds a lot of water surprisingly.

All of this water is run through first and then dumped on the garden. Great way to water it without using any tap water.

This brings temps down to between 25 and 35C depending on season.

We then have heaps of pre frozen water bottles to chuck into the remaing 15L of water in one of the bins and begin recirculating this.

This was tricky to get going at first but now we use zero town water, water the garden, and crash chill 50-60L of boiling water in no time at all. :icon_cheers:

A note on trying to recirculate from the beginning: the water being pumped out after doing it's copper coil run is bloody hot. It would require a large water tank to not be affected by this water being pumped back in (obviously depends on size of brew and size of tank). I would suggest using whatever gray water you have to get the initial temp down (occurs rapidly due to temperature gradient), then recirculating through your tank, then when there isn't much gradient in temps to keep bringing it down use an ice/water bucketful for recirculating and dropping the final degrees to desired temps.

Good luck.

 

[drsmurto]

A note on trying to recirculate from the beginning: the water being pumped out after doing it's copper coil run is bloody hot. It would require a large water tank to not be affected by this water being pumped back in (obviously depends on size of brew and size of tank). I would suggest using whatever gray water you have to get the initial temp down (occurs rapidly due to temperature gradient), then recirculating through your tank, then when there isn't much gradient in temps to keep bringing it down use an ice/water bucketful for recirculating and dropping the final degrees to desired temps.

Good luck.

Have the water going thru at full tilt and the wort trickling. The water out of the chiller is still cold enough to drink.

 

[zabond]

I too rely soley on tank water- garden hose wound in a coill around the kettle that sits inside a cut down 60ltr oil drum -frozen stubbies[plastic] on top/around hose back into tank no water loss and shower in morn no different
Russ