Lynxpilot
Active Member
Any reason I couldn't pump hot wort after boil into the fermenter that is equipped with glycol chiller and do the wort chill in the fermenter?
It might be more effective to get the wort to the lowest temperature possible before it goes into fermenter and then use the glycol chiller to get it to yeast pitch temp. Instead of having the glycol chiller doing everything
so does the compressor really work "harder" or is it just on
I have 2 plate chillers:If the water you use to chill your wort isn't cool enough (year round) there are ways to get it to be cool enough. I recall seeing someone (a brewery IIRC) that had a trash barrel filled with ice water that he set a large IC into that he ran the water to chill his wort through. It would then go into the wort chiller (don't recall the type for the wort) and get it to the desired temperature even when the ground water was warmer.
IMO, that would be better than abusing a glycol chiller. It will also use less power to get the job done. IF you already have an efficient wort chiller (plate or CFC) then you'll have less of a battle to chill the wort. IME, plate chillers (when sized properly) are hard to beat for chilling wort fast.
I guess I'm just lucky that my chill/ground water is cool enough (even in the summer) where I can hit pitch temp in less than 10 minutes. For the batch I brewed on Monday I think the total time to chill almost 8 gallons of wort was about 5-6 minutes. That hit about 68F at the end. The only reason it was that warm was I ran hot wort through the chiller for a few seconds (at full rate) before adding the chill water and reducing the wort flow rate.I have 2 plate chillers:
1: to chill tap water with glycol as cooling medium
2: to chill Wort using the chilled water as the cooling medium, I talked to the nanufactuer of the glycol chiller and he said it should be fine doing that.
Thanks a million for the detailed reply, guess ill cool it to tap temps and then throw it in the fermenter.A normal refrigeration circuit maintains a temperature rise of only 10-20 degrees Fahrenheit. This is referred to as the Superheat (refrigerant temperature rise across the cold heat exchanger). So, if the heat exchanger is cooling HOT fluid it will most certainly overwhelm the refrigeration circuit unless it was designed for that duty. Chillers are not designed for direct batch cooling, they are designed for roughly 10-20 rise on the water loop.
Why is excessive heat a problem? Consider the refrigeration compressor which is a hermetically sealed motor & pump often referred to as a "tin can" compressor. It uses cold return gas to keep the motor cool. This is called a "Suction Cooled" refrigerant compressor.
Ill say it again because it is important... It uses cold return gas to keep the motor cool. With high return temperature the motor will start to heat up inside the tin can.
Most thermal overloads activate at 130F +/-, the motor will cycle on overload if you are lucky, and fail prematurely when exposed to high superheat conditions.
And that is only the cold side of your refrigerant circuit. Cooling a 5 gallon batch or wort from boil down to 100F (10 minutes) would be near 2.5 TONS of heat load, your 110V glycol chiller is most likely a 1/2 ton unit.... it simply cannot reject that much heat fast enough.
Head pressure will spike due to the heat it cannot reject, this in turn will increase pressure to your capillary tube "expansion valve", the cap tube is a fixed length and operating at higher pressure = higher temperature (see motor cooling above, you get where I am going)
IMO... You'd do better with some frozen pop bottles at the ready, drop them into your glycol tank and turn off the refrigeration unit (allow the pump to circulate and take the BTUs from the frozen bottles.
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