Chilling your Wort

I see a lot of posts regarding the use of immersion chillers and just saw today's Beersmith email regarding building your own.  What prompted me to post is when I again saw the reference to a garden hose adapter for use as cooling water, or joining 2 chillers.

I'd like to make a suggestion and although I've search for it on these threads to avoid redundancy, maybe I'm missing it in old posts so my apologies if that's the case.

Anyway, my suggestion may be especially helpful for those of us that pay for our residential water (plus my sewer bill is based on water usage!  Double whammy!).  My son and I brew 5 gallon batches, and picked up one of those large black pond liners (any tub will work as long as it is a bit bigger than your brew pot) as a water bath.  I then put a small submergible pond pump (under $75 or so) in the water bath, fill with just a few inches of water and a 20 lg bag of ice.  Place the brew kettle in the ice bath and connect the pump outlet to the immerision coil inlet.  Connect a piece of tubing to the immersion coil outlet and leave the other end in the ice bath.

Turn on your pump (get one with an adjustable flow dial) and now you've got cooling from both external and internal sources.  We find that the 20 lb of ice melts in about 10 minutes so we replensh with another ~10 lb or so.  We are routinely seeing cooling from boiling wort to ~80 degrees F in 17 to 20 minutes tops. 

Hope this is helpful!

Keith

I always get the strangest looks when I tell people I do this but here goes. I just dump two 7 pound bags of ice directly into the wort after I turn off the burner. It took a little toying around with the amounts of water I start with to end up the right FG after the ice melts, and adjustments to hop amounts and boil times to get the bittering where i want it, but I go from full boil to 75 degrees in about 5 minutes. I usually have to run water through the immersion cooler for a few minutes to get it down the last few degrees. I have yet to make an undrinkable batch. I don't get caught up in trying to duplicate other recipes too much.

I buy two gallons of distilled water at the store and freeze it. When it's time cut it open and put the ice in the primary and poor the wort over it. Thats how I chill the wort down before pitching the yeast.

I like it. Though I might dump the block of ice directly into the pot of hot wort so as not to aerate the wort while it's still hot. Then again, my peasant pallet can't taste the difference between aerating hot or cold.

Ya I have never been able to taste the difference between aerate hot or cold. But you do make a good point as I start to increase my scale.

Hi Keith,

That is funny because I was just pondering doing something similar myself.

Currently I run through a pump then through a plate chiller and then through a copper coil in a bucket of 20lb ice water. I do this because I live in Hawaii and the water coming out of the cold tap is not cold enough to chill sufficiently even if you run the entire batch through the plate chiller 3 times. I don't like this system as it is a lot of stuff that has to be cleaned and sanitised.

I was thinking of getting a nice Stainless Steel immersion coil and connecting it to an immersion pump in a giant fish box style cooler (which I already have) full of water cooled with 50 pounds of ice to 0c. I think this would be easier to deal with, with minimised chance of infection from the cooling system.

I like this idea of recirculating ice water because I get the double whammy of sewage and water bill as well. I'm thinking of getting a drill pump that attaches to a cordless drill that does about 65 GPH. Would that be enough flow you think?

I use a 10-gallon water cooler for my mash tun. During the boil, I dump the mash tun. After the boil I run tap water through my immersion chiller and into the mash tun to clean it. Once the wort is down to about 80F, I drain the water in the mash tun until it barely covers the outlet, then put two 1-gallon jugs of ice plus the contents of the refrigerator ice maker into the mash tun/cooler. I pump the chilled water through the immersion chiller and direct the exhaust water back into one of the frozen jugs. The exhaust water gets well-chilled before it overflows the jug and runs out into the cooler to be recirculated. When I'm chilling a lager I sometimes have to switch the exhaust to the second jug to hit 45F and I have a third back-up jug of ice in the freezer for times when the ground water is especially warm. Stirring the wort speeds the process, but the wort will cool without supervision while you read or watch football.

I use a March pump, but an inexpensive submersible pump should work equally well - depending on the volume of water it can move - and might be much cheaper. Any container-pump combination should work. I haven't tried it but multiple passes through a counterflow or plate chiller might work equally well with a constant flow of well-chilled water.

If I'm new here that's because I want to learn and understand, I repeat what a friend said here: I've never been able to taste the difference between hot and cold air out. ???

_________________
femme russe pour mariage

I've seen complicated coil plans that look impossible to clean to me. I like simple designs and I dont introduce any water to my batches after boiling.  I made a cooling coil  from a 3/8 " 25 foot coil of copper. I just wrapped it around a 19 liter corny keg, then bring one end back up to the other, bend the ends to fit over the boil kettle lip. . I didnt even attach any connections, I have a 1/2 ' blue watering hose (potable rated) without an end that slips over the tubing tightly.
I just cut the 50 ft hose about 10 from the end. Just slip the 10 foot end on coil outlet  and put outside garage on driveway ( i'm a garage brewer), inlet connects to hose from  water bib. To fill boil kettle for total batch water just slip the hose onto the 1/2' hosebarb connected to bk outlet valve. Simple and works well.

As cooling is happening, I take the outlet hose on the driveway and rinse out all the brewing equipment to make use of the water instead of wasting it.  I dont turn the tap on full, just crack open then a half turn more. Cools in 20 minutes. takes less water than lawn watering. Not much at all. I also dont fill tanks with star san to sanitize . A few quick sprays from a spray bottle is all that required to wet the surfaces entirely. I feel people waste more water doing that than with cooling.

I have also used the coil in the mash, (pic with clear silicon tubing). running hot water from the bk batch water with a small 12v pump recirculating when needed to maintain tempurature, I have used the coil in the hot water and ran the mash through that to keep temps, all using the bare ends of coil and silicon tubing from pumps. I made a small copper "hook" that I use for pump outlet and can move to the top of any desired kettle.
The pump is really from a solar water heating recirculating system, $65 from Ontario beer kegs. I keep 12volt boat batteries charging in my shop as well, so I grab one and use it to power my brew station.

I use a 50 foot coil with a recirculation arm & a March pump.  The whirl-pooling of the wort helps to chill it much quicker.  The recirculation arm makes hop stands a snap!

twhitaker said:

I've seen complicated coil plans that look impossible to clean to me. I like simple designs and I dont introduce any water to my batches after boiling.  I made a cooling coil  from a 3/8 " 25 foot coil of copper. I just wrapped it around a 19 liter corny keg, then bring one end back up to the other, bend the ends to fit over the boil kettle lip. . I didnt even attach any connections, I have a 1/2 ' blue watering hose (potable rated) without an end that slips over the tubing tightly.
I just cut the 50 ft hose about 10 from the end. Just slip the 10 foot end on coil outlet  and put outside garage on driveway ( i'm a garage brewer), inlet connects to hose from  water bib. To fill boil kettle for total batch water just slip the hose onto the 1/2' hosebarb connected to bk outlet valve. Simple and works well.

As cooling is happening, I take the outlet hose on the driveway and rinse out all the brewing equipment to make use of the water instead of wasting it.  I dont turn the tap on full, just crack open then a half turn more. Cools in 20 minutes. takes less water than lawn watering. Not much at all. I also dont fill tanks with star san to sanitize . A few quick sprays from a spray bottle is all that required to wet the surfaces entirely. I feel people waste more water doing that than with cooling.

I have also used the coil in the mash, (pic with clear silicon tubing). running hot water from the bk batch water with a small 12v pump recirculating when needed to maintain tempurature, I have used the coil in the hot water and ran the mash through that to keep temps, all using the bare ends of coil and silicon tubing from pumps. I made a small copper "hook" that I use for pump outlet and can move to the top of any desired kettle.
The pump is really from a solar water heating recirculating system manufactured in solar panels factory , $65 from Ontario beer kegs. I keep 12volt boat batteries charging in my shop as well, so I grab one and use it to power my brew station.

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Well your entire system sounds fantastic..Thanks for sharing all the details and I will get similar system soon..

Hi,

I have a well, so my temps stay consistent year round.  Also, I don't pay for water or sewer charges (a perk to being in the country).  However, when I was using an immersion chiller it was taking about 20 minutes to get my wort down to 70F, which was putting a strain on my holding tank (and my well pump).

I've since moved to a plate chiller and can now get 5.5 gallons of wort down to 66F in about 4 minutes, saving 16 minutes off of the time I need to let my water run for.

-Dan

what size was your immersion chiller?  I am also on a well, 200 ft.  I use a 1/2 in ID 50 ft chiller with recirculation arm and am at 50 - 55 in about 8 mins.

Instantly cold. 60 F.