New Chiller (First One)

[Aaron1983]

Well, this is my first attempt at creating a chiller for my wort. It basically recirculates the wort in my fermenter until the temperature comes down. It's made with 10 feet of 3/8 copper tubing, a drill pump, a few lenghts of vinyl hose, a bucket, and some clamps. Simply fill the white bucket up with ice water, hook up the pump inlet to the spigot on the fermenter, connect the chiller outlet to the top of the fermenting bucket, and start the drill.

During testing, I managed to get my wort from 180 degrees, to about 84 in about 20 minutes. The only other thing I had to do was change out the ice-water about two times. A bag of ice will pretty much suffice for cooling about five gallons.

 

[Veng]

I use a similar idea and was pondering pumping glycol through yet another hole in the bru frig (freezer actually) to a well chilled reservoir. anyone try anything like this? My thoughts at this point are that I'd need a large volume of coolant
and to make absolutely certain nothing leaked near my immersion chiller.
Also , very interested in peltier coolers
Great picture BTW.

 

[WBC]

Build a good counterflow chiller and your problems are over.

No ice to buy.

Quickly cools wort in minutes.

Uses tap water as the coolant.

You can adjust how cool you want the wort (varies with groundwater temperature).

Can be used without a pump

 

[joejaz]

Build a good counterflow chiller and your problems are over.

No ice to buy.

Quickly cools wort in minutes.

Uses tap water as the colant.

You can adjust how cool you want the wort (varies with groundwater temperature).

Can be used without a pump

WBC, I see you were brewing for 36 years. I'm kinda curious how you got into it. I can't belive there was a lot of information or equipment available at the time (pre internet). In those days, everyone was drinking BUD, no microbreweries and the only ale you could get was Ballantine ( at least on the east coast).

 

[Aaron1983]

Build a good counterflow chiller and your problems are over.

No ice to buy.

Quickly cools wort in minutes.

Uses tap water as the colant.

You can adjust how cool you want the wort (varies with groundwater temperature).

Can be used without a pump

That will probably be my next project. This one I used works well too, I have a deep sink that I just hold the bucket under a stream of cold water and turn on my drill. This last batch I just placed in the primary a few days ago went from 140 to 78 in about 10 minutes.

 

[WBC]

WBC, I see you were brewing for 36 years. I'm kinda curious how you got into it. I can't belive there was a lot of information or equipment available at the time (pre internet). In those days, everyone was drinking BUD, no microbreweries and the only ale you could get was Ballantine ( at least on the east coast).

There was a wine/brewing supply near me and they had kits and so I just tried one and that did it. The first beer was not great but was drinkable. I knew the temperature was the problem and so I used a trash can and put water in it and ice as needed then the beer came out OK. I was doing partial mash right at the beginning and so the beer was good. I was bottling at first and used champagne bottles as they held more beer and was less work to fill them. They were the kind that had regular beer caps. I had to use a bench capper to cap them as the bottle necks would not allow the aluminum hand tapper to fit below the cap. I took some to work and passed it around and the boss had some too but I guess everyone got too wild and so the boss asked me not to do that again although he thought the beer was very good.

Later on I bought corny kegs and was still doing partial mash. I had 1 refrigerator and so ther was not much room for fermentors, kegs and supplies plus I was serving from it too using an ice bucket with a stainless coil like a picnic cooler jockey box which was a PITA but it worked.

I stopped brewing for a while as I had other things in life that prevented me from enjoying the hobby but finally when I started up again I went all grain as I knew it was my calling.

I now use a freezer and a refrigerator with Ranco controllers on both. I always brew 12 gallon batches and plan to build a cooler room which is in the works. The reason for this is that electricity is expensive and the insulation on refrigerators is not very thick and so they are very inefficient. I need more room for lagering and fermenting.

 

[RegionalChaos]

Build a good counterflow chiller and your problems are over.

No ice to buy.

Quickly cools wort in minutes.

Uses tap water as the coolant.

You can adjust how cool you want the wort (varies with groundwater temperature).

Can be used without a pump

How do you use it without a pump?

My boil kettle doesn't have a ball valve at the bottom, so I have to pour (I'm only boiling 3 gallons at a time still). I'm thinking of making an immersion chiller, and I'd like it to be able to scale up to 10 gallon batches. I saw the thread on building a counterflow chiller, so that could be an option, but I don't see how to use it without a pump and other equipment. An immersion chiller makes sense though, since I can just drop it in..

 

[Bobby_M]

Build a good counterflow chiller and your problems are over.

No ice to buy.

Quickly cools wort in minutes.

Uses tap water as the coolant.

You can adjust how cool you want the wort (varies with groundwater temperature).

Can be used without a pump

Just to add my perspective, I think the above can be misleading.

The no ice, use tap water thing only works when your tap water temperature is less than 5 degree below the desired wort output temp. For example, it must be at least as cool as 65F if you want 70F wort out. Any higher than that, and you'll need to use ice anyway. Even up in the Northeast, I get 85F out of the tap in the late summer.

It can be used without a pump but I guess I should clarify that people use pumps for two different applications with CFCs... You can pump icewater in as the coolant (but you can also gravity drain it in, which I've done). You can pump wort through it or use gravity for that also. I prefer pumping when the coolant water can handle the high flow and still perform adequate cooling.

 

[Bobby_M]

How do you use it without a pump?

My boil kettle doesn't have a ball valve at the bottom, so I have to pour (I'm only boiling 3 gallons at a time still). I'm thinking of making an immersion chiller, and I'd like it to be able to scale up to 10 gallon batches. I saw the thread on building a counterflow chiller, so that could be an option, but I don't see how to use it without a pump and other equipment. An immersion chiller makes sense though, since I can just drop it in..

Some people have used a copper or stainless racking can to siphon wort through external chillers, but you'll need to get the kettle up nice and high to get it to flow well.

 

[Veng]

Wow, quite a lot of experience in this group!
My inspiration for pumping coolant is the stink eye
I get from my chief financial officer (wife)
when I use too much water. Plus, I love my gadgets.
Great seeing and hearing how others are solving issues.