I'm curious if anyone has had success with a pre-chiller. I live in the Seattle area and generally have no issues using a therminator. I can get 12 gallons of wort to pitching temp in about 15 minutes. I would like to get into lager brewing so I need a pre-chiller. Preferably one where I can hook up the out of the pre chiller directly to the water in of the therminator. There's several on the market from
Austin Homebrew Supply,
Reber Brewer,
More Beer and others...
My goal is to use a pre-chiller so I can chill to lager pitching temps (less than 50 degrees F) in as little time as possible.
Thanks
Mike
Hey Mike,
In my experience, pre-chillers basically suck. I brew hybrids all the time and lager beers occasionally... while from Seattle (Bothell, really), I now live in the Central Valley of California, where it is hot as hell. My process, in a nutshell:
1. Pre-chill fermentation freezer to 35˚F. This is easy since I'm usually kegging a couple cold-crashed batches the day of or before brew day.
2. Chill wort with IC (my preferred chiller after trying multiple things over the years) to as low as it'll go- last Monday it was 68˚.
3. Rack to carboys, cover carboys with sanitized foil (I always do this for the first 24 hours of fermentation anyways), place carboys in fermentation freezer.
4. Once the lid on the freezer is closed, turn temp regulator to whatever your fermentation temp is, or 5˚ below (I do this for lagers).
5. Let the wort hang out in the freezer for 3-6 hours, checking the temp every hour or so.
6. Once wort reaches pitching temp, pitch yeast starter, set regulator to ideal temp, tape insulated probe to side of carboy, then leave the freezer open for 5-10 minutes to warm up just a tad so as not to continue cooling the wort.
This may not necessarily be the response you were looking for, but it works remarkably well. During the hotter summer months, I use this process for every beer I make since I like to pitch even ale at 64˚ and my groundwater runs about 68˚.
Cheers!
Edit: I meant to say that I used a nice pre-chiller setup for about 4 months (10+ batches) and it had no noticeable impact. I later learned this was because for the water in the pre-chiller to get cold enough, it has to be run pretty slow; however, the best chilling occurs when the water is run through the IC super fast. After chatting with some water physics experts, I realized it was a waste of time and money.