Counterflow wortchiller

[madchef77]

I made a new set up with a counterflow wortchiller. Pretty excited about it. The first time I used it, it worked great expect for the fact that one too many hops where going through the copper tubing it got clogged. Does someone know a way to prevent the clogging?

[KernelCrush]

Whole or pellet hops?

[ihikeut]

Stainless screens, Stainless scrubies. I use a hop taco, witch is a 12" stainless sheet folded in half diagonally. Sewed down the sides with stainless wire and clamped to the drain of my boiling kettle. It's a little bit of work sewing it, because of the small mesh of the screen (40 X40 per inch) But well worth keeping hops and break material in the kettle.   

[philm63]

Planning on using my new plate chiller and pump on my next brew and I have been working on that problem for a while - wanted to come up with a solution BEFORE I experienced the problem. A filter of some sort seemed to be the prevailing solution; I chose a hop-spider.

On my last brew (AIPA) I started using the filter I purchased from http://utahbiodieselsupply.com/brewingfilters.php), and upon draining the kettle into my fermentor, I noticed I got just about every bit or wort leaving only about a 1/4 inch in the kettle. I used to leave 2 or 3 quarts of sludge on big hoppy brews. I use pellet hops.

So if this filter kept all that pellet sludge out of the kettle, it will not be passing through my chiller so, hopefully, no clogs! We'll see this coming weekend...

[madchef77]

OOOOOOOO Thanks for the ideas! Cant wait to try something out so I can get back to brewing.