recirculating plate chiller help

[jaw005]

Looking to go from my 25' immersion chiller to a plate chiller.
I am planning on going up to 10 gallon batches now and would like to set up a recirculating plate chiller without spending a fortune.
I see plate chillers at $100, pumps at $150, plus hosing and connections.

I use a 15.5 gallon keggle as my brew kettle with a ball valve.

Looking for any help on how to set this up and what i need to purchase and what would be a good deal on the items.

Thank you

 

[day_trippr]

I do 10 gallon batches and use a DudaDiesel b3-23a 30 plate PC, with 1/2" NPT on the wort ports and 3/4" GHT m/f on the water ports. $135 now. I put male camlocks on the wort ports and GHT QDs on the water ports so it's pretty quickly set up on brew days.

For pumps I use a pair of March 815PL models; they've been uber reliable over the years, never have a problem with them. But you could save a little money while gaining a stainless steel pump head by going with Chuggers (they didn't exist when I bought my pumps).

I do not recirculate wort through the PC; I sanitize it while I'm pre-boiling my strike water, then leave it out of the loop until it's time to chill the wort. At that time I hook it up and run the wort one-shot through the chiller to the carboys.

I also use a 400 micron 6"d x 18"h hop spider to avoid loading up the PC channels more than what's unavoidable. I back-flush the PC and recirculate hot PBW-clone each brew day, and occasionally I'll bake it for a few hours @450°F then flush out any ash...

Cheers!