AttenuatingCircumstances
Active Member
This weekend I made my first legal Alabama brew and used my new heat exchanger for the first time. I have the Midwest model that is comparable to the Therminator. I was able to get the temperature down to about 90 degrees fairly quickly and I probably could have done a little better had I had the cool water IN flowing at 100% the entire time. I slowly increased the flow just to make sure that I didn't have any leaks. My water was also a good bit warmer than it should have been considering that it was about 85-90 degrees that day. So anyways, I put my plastic fermenter into an ice bath and cooled it the rest of the way down before pitching my yeast. My question is, can I put the heat exchanger into an ice bath in order to cool the wort down or will that present a problem? I plan on turning the exchanger upright and keeping the fittings out of the ice bath with the lower portion of the exchanger submerged. Does anyone see any problem with this method? Temperatures get up to 100+ degrees here during the summer so my cooling water is not as cool as it should be and I want to find an alternate solution to buying a pump to use with chilled water.