Plate Chiller Question

[auto]

Today was so nice, garden hose to Chirron Plate Chiller, Boiling Wort into Plate Chiller, Boiling Wort down to 64 degrees in 6 minutes.:rockin:

Now for the issue, living in Dallas, there is only about 3 months out of the year that this works. I have the plate chiller, spare March Pump, and anything needed for an ice bath.

What I am missing to pumping in ice water through the March into the plate chiller. Tried and it and it did not work, did not seem to have enough power.

 

[HarkinBanks]

Time to build a pre-chiller with some cheap copper coil from HD or your old IC chiller if you have one. Drop the coil into a bucket of ice water and run your garden hose water into the pre-chiller, then out to the shirron. Should work well in the summer.

 

[auto]

Time to build a pre-chiller with some cheap copper coil from HD or your old IC chiller if you have one. Drop the coil into a bucket of ice water and run your garden hose water into the pre-chiller, then out to the shirron. Should work well in the summer.

I knew I was missing something easy, I was hoping to get buy without any additional purchases, but I should have known better.

 

[cmuench]

Or better yet, pack up and move to Minnesota!! Even in the summer I don't have a problem with my plate chiller!

I love Dallas, used to live there part time...

 

[BrewMoreBeers]

i use an eight dollar small pond pump from Lowes to pump the ice water through my plate chiller and a March 809 to pump the wort through. It works great, uses a lot less water than just running the cold water from the hose and I can throttle the ice water or the wort flow rates to get the final temp I need. I consistently chill to pitching temps in about 5 minutes.

get a small pond pump, some tubing and a cheap brass valve (no need for a SS valve as this end will never touch the wort).

This set up also makes cleaning easy. I made a jumper to connect the wort to the water ports and then I drop my pond pump in PBW to flush and clean the chiller. I let it run each way (back-flush then forward) for about fifteen minutes each while I clean other stuff up and then I flush it with StarSan to get the PBW out. Also because Blichman recommends flushing with StarSan as the acid helps keep things cleaner.