Wort Chilling In Summer

[pk.sax]

What about pumping the cooling water through a small radiator then have a fan blowing on it? Maybe it would bring the water temp down a little bit.

air is a bad conductor of heat. Expecting the radiator to cool by circulating room temp air will do nothing. Need the heat loss of evaporation/melting to make it work.

If you had water flowing on to the radiator, that would help much better. In fact, cover the radiator with a wet towel and then have that evap and cool the radiator. Anyway you look at it, the temperature drop would be negated pretty quickly unless you can chill down a big heavy radiator with a lot of thermal mass that can absorb enough heat out of the chilling water. Which brings us back to - use an immersion chiller in an ice bucket.

 

[popmedium]

I fill a couple of two litre coke bottle with water, freeze them, sterilise them and drop them in to the pot once cooling seems to slow down. So usually the first one goes in at 35C, then the next at about 27C. I haven't had any infections or anything yet and it gets me down to pitching temp...

joel

 

[sim]

Prechill chill water in an old fermenter to what ever temp in the fermentation fridge the day before. Works for me.

 

[Maheel]

Prechill chill water in an old fermenter to what ever temp in the fermentation fridge the day before. Works for me.

and run the cold water in the chill plate with a pump or ?

 

[pk.sax]

he's talking kit brews..... I would assume.

 

[sim]

he's talking kit brews..... I would assume.

no, sorry, imersion pump $30 or what ever from bunnings ect through chiller (imersion in my case). I use air temp tap water to start with.

 

[sim]

and run the cold water in the chill plate with a pump or ?

Yeah. You could gravity feed actually, but pumps are pretty inexpensive.

 

[pk.sax]

do you run tap water through the chiller for the bulk of the initial chilling? I'd have thought just dumping a few blocks of ice in the water would do the trick.

 

[sim]

for a 40 litre batch i use 90 litres air temp then 50 litres at 5 degrees. All is reclaimed and used again and again (mmm tasty) the firrst 60 litres super hot soaks the chiller coil at clean up.

takes about an hour to get down to 18 degrees. i think its 20 meters of 1/2in copper coil. Could be faster but i usuallyt need that whole hour to clean fermentors etc.

Obviously this works year round and gets a double use out of the fermentor fridge, booyah!

 

[sim]

I'd have thought just dumping a few blocks of ice in the water would do the trick.

ive plenty of fridges, but a bit light on with freezers.

 

[reVoxAHB]

I use my dedicated herms vessel as a water pre-chiller.

I drop the (herms vessel) hot water just after mash, and at end of boil fill it with a bag of ice and tap water. I use a pump for the wort so it's a matter of throttling wort or water flow but can always dial to ale pitching temp. It's been a while since I've dropped to lager. Got it pretty close from memory and let the ferm fridge sort out the last few C.

My measured tap water temp is usually around 24-26C during summer months. I've got a lot of uninsulated external copper running to my brewing area where it sucks the heat in.

Cheers

 

[KillerRx4]

yeah i noticed last year perth's water got hotter and hotter in summer too, couldnt get below 30 and dont wanna wear out my fridge(s)
i was actually thinking of grabbing myself another plate chiller and putting it in series with my existing one and recirculating ice+ water in the second one so

Kettle 100c ->
Chiller 1 (tap water) -> ~30C
Chiller 2 2x bags of ice + a bit of water in the MT recirculating -> ~ 12C as i like my lagers

its either that or getting a hopback

This is what I do for lagers. 2 plate chillers.
1st gets tap water, for bulk heat exchange. second gets water recirculated from mash tun with a few ice bricks from ice cream containers chucked in.

Ales, get down to tap water temp with the 2 chillers hooked up in series.

Single pass at fairly high flow rate, something like 10l/min.

Note. this setup requires 2 pumps. & 2 plate chillers. probably not the most cost effective solution, but very easy & reliable.

 

[Thefatdoghead]

My 30 plate plate chiller runs the wort out of the kettle and into the fermentor from 95deg to 25 deg with 24deg tap water. I reckon if I hook my $30 immersion pump up and run ice cold water through the cooler the wort would be 18deg or less going into the fermentor. I still have to try it but I reckon it's going work great for lagers as well. 50L eski full of ice and water should do the trick. I think a couple of bags of ice is $5 maybe?