Wort Chillers

[Kai]

I was in the lab at uni today and spied a condenser on some distillation apparatus. It's one of the ones with a twirly tube down the middle of a fat column; a poor picture is shown below. Fore those that have never seen these things before, they're around 8-10 inches long 2-3 inches wide, made of glass, and the twirly tube that the distillate flows through is around 1 cm or less in diameter.

I must admit, I was drooling over it a bit. I was wondering if one of those would make an adequate wort chiller? I know they'd be too expensive, but I wonder nonetheless
Later I was talking to my father on the phone and he told me they're called an internal revenue condenser... even the name of the damned thing is cool.

So, purely idle speculation... would they?

 

[Jazman]

OOOPs u forgot the pic

 

[Kai]

$%&#

 

[sosman]

IIRC they are called Leibig condensers.

I don't think it would have enough heat transfer to cool wort effectively. If you can borrow it you can find out and report back to us.

 

[big d]

may depend on how glass likes being placed into boiling wort.my guess is you will shatter it and ruin the beer unless you like crunchy beer

cheers
big d

cold glass/hot glass/shattered glass

 

[Kai]

Dicko - it wouldn't be placed in the wort, you'd use it like a counterflow chiller. Since it's lab glass and meant for use in distillation, I don't reckon it'd be in danger of breaking.

sosman, a liebig condenser also has a water-jacketed barrel, but the inner tube's a straight tube only. You might be right on the heat transfer properties of the glass, though. I'd like to 'borrow' this one to try it out, but it's probably not a good idea

 

[danbeer]

Usually they are used for condensing vapours, so I'm not sure one would cool
hot wart to a sufficiently cool temperature.

But!

Mostly they have ground glass quickfit fittings, so you could hook a couple together in series to do the job.

Of course, by the time you bought a couple of these (even on e-bay - you would be surprised and shocked at how expensive new lab glassware can be!) it would be cheaper to make/buy a CF chiller.

Not to mention that your coppe chiller won't break the first time you accidentally bump it against something,

 

[big d]

cheers kai
but dicko i aint try big d

 

[GMK]

Just buy one of my SS Coils for 30.00 and be done with it...

 

[big d]

hi ken
as a collector of s/s these look real sweet.may not cool as well as copper but look a million dollars betta.
love to buy one but im sticking with the rustic copper . <_<

 

[Kai]

cheers kai
but dicko i aint try big d

Ah #$&! it just ain't my night. Sorry big d, I wasn't reading properly, I remembered the name had a d in it and that was close enough.

And I haven't even drunk anything tonight. Maybe that's the problem.

 

[Justin]

I agree here that they probably wouldn't cool well enough, as it's easier to cool and condense vapour than it is to chill a boiling liquid down (takes less energy). I'm not sure if its big d or dicko that has basically this set up for their chiller but much larger and made out of a copper coil in a PVC tube (cool water flows through the PVC pipe, beer through the copper pipe). I think they are generally called hybrid chillers (actually it might be in How to Brew as well).

For more on these kinds of condensers and liebig's etc. see www.homedistiller.com

Cheers, Justin

 

[Trough Lolly]

Just buy one of my SS Coils for 30.00 and be done with it...

$30 is a lot less than the $80 I spent at Grumpies on the Counterflow Chiller <_<

Cheers,
TL

 

[user 384]

Do you know what makes a good wort chiller, the CHILLZILLA :lol: !

I bought this little number from Northern Brewer, and it works a treat. Yeah I paid more than $30 or even $80, but just like a quality grain mill, kettle etc, it should last many many many years. Even with all the bells and whistles that I've bought for my brewery and kegging system, it doesn't even come close to the cost of one quality Mountain Bike and associated equipment. Home brewing like any hobby has some large up front costs, but they are worth it.

Spend some money cos' ya can't take it with ya!

Cheers
MAH

 

[GMK]

I have one of these - they r the Bees Neez as far as cooling wort go.

Well worth the money.
Mine was just under 100.00 USd.

 

[big d]

hi mah
you have an address for northern brewer or web site?
its another to buy item.ken brought his ccfc along to jayses brew day and i was impressed.

cheers
big d

 

[user 384]

Big d

There are 3 suppliers you can pick from

St Pats US$99 - http://www.stpats.com/

More Beer US$109 - http://www.morebeer.com/

Northern Brewer US$115 - http://www.northernbrewer.com/chilling-etc.html

Only reason I went with Northern Brewer is they had more things I wanted, and it therefore worked out cheaper to buy it all from them.

WARNING - If you open up any of these sites you will be tempted to buy more than you intended

Cheers
MAH

 

[dicko]

Personally, i wouldnt even muck around with an immersion chiller because even the simplest CFWC works fine and can easily be gravity fed.
Those ones from the US are excellent ( seen GMK's in action ) and I've seen a Goliath one ( similar to Grumpy's ) work on gravity as well and with good results so use the s/steel coil for a miracle box etc and buy / build a copper CFWC.
The one I use is a Hybrid Mongrel built thing (see the photo gallery) but it didnt cost a lot of money and it works.
Just finished a brew and it cooled the boiling wort to 17 deg c. this afternoon with the ambient temp in the shed at 21 deg c. and the tap water temp at 15 deg c. and a two degree differential is about normal for any of the CFWC's.

Cheers

 

[Murray]

I was in the lab at uni today and spied a condenser on some distillation apparatus. It's one of the ones with a twirly tube down the middle of a fat column; a poor picture is shown below. Fore those that have never seen these things before, they're around 8-10 inches long 2-3 inches wide, made of glass, and the twirly tube that the distillate flows through is around 1 cm or less in diameter.

I must admit, I was drooling over it a bit. I was wondering if one of those would make an adequate wort chiller? I know they'd be too expensive, but I wonder nonetheless
Later I was talking to my father on the phone and he told me they're called an internal revenue condenser... even the name of the damned thing is cool.

So, purely idle speculation... would they?

I use these condensors daily. You would be looking at close to $1000 a new cheap proper glass condensor. I reckon it would be near useless for cooling wort, regardless of how it was set up.. It would be great for distilling alcohol though.

 

[nonicman]

*(10 gallons (38 liters) of boiling wort to 20C (68F) in 7.5 minutes, using only 22 gallons of cooling water. This corresponds to 28kW cooling power in liquid/liquid mode)

Multi-Purpose Ultra-Efficient Heat Exchanger

The AmphoraCoil looks interesting but expensive.