recirculation with plate chiller

[malador]

I'm thinking about using a plate chiller and trub filter to do a herms like set up. Any thoughts, experiences, and/or comments are appreciated.

www.brewershardware.com/FILTER1.html

 

[jCOSbrew]

The plate chiller is a heat exchanger. The longer the chiller, the more similar the temp of the liquids will be, the more plates, the higher the flow rate of the fluid.

If the chiller is large enough and/or the wort flow rate slow enough then the wort output temp should be the same temp as the HLT water.

My experience is limited to chilling wort into fermenter. In this application I am dropping the wort temp from 200 to <70 deg F in a single pass with high pressure hose water and wort flow rate of approximately 1 gallon per minute. At this wort flow rate (>1 gal/min) you could increase or decrease the kettle temp pretty quickly.

I do BIAB so the bag is my filter for recirculation during the mash and I use hop bags during the boil.

 

[reinstone]

I'd advise against that. Maybe get a counterflow. The plate chiller will clog much too east and it is real hard to filter while recirc.

 

[malador]

I'd advise against that. Maybe get a counterflow. The plate chiller will clog much too east and it is real hard to filter while recirc.

Do you think a 0.5mm piece of grain would get stuck in the plate chiller? The pump I'm using is turned way down during recirculation, I'm pretty sure it could handle the addition restriction of a stainer.

 

[wolfman_48442]

I have a 'normal' herms, but I also use my BrewersHardware filter on the mash tun outlet while recirculating and sparging to keep any grain bits that get through the false bottom out of the herms coil and kettle. It works perfectly for this.
I switch it over to the boil kettle when I'm ready to chill. I've never tried to recirculate the boil through it; 1 pass through it, the chiller, and on to the fermenter.
DONT use a plate chiller to recirculate wort that may have some grain bits (unfiltered). They tend to be darn near impossible to remove short of baking them to ash in the oven.

 

[reinstone]

its more about the hop matter? I cant say for sure what will plug it and what won't. All in all the chilling capacity of your chiller is a reflection of your water temp. If push came to shove I would buy a counterflow and recirc or an immersion and recirc and use the extra $ to buy a sump. Use the sump to push ice water through the chiller and back to the vessel from which you are getting the ice water. Dont start using the pump until you are pretty close to the ground water temp.

Im sure you will hear that plate chillers are great......and they are,....in a perfect world.....I like fool proof myself, I just changed methods. See my post "divorcing my plate chiller" To me the problem is too much to fix-and too costly.

Check out Mr. Malty on the web and read what he has to say about this-that man knows his shist (favorite rock).

 

[mattd2]

Do you think a 0.5mm piece of grain would get stuck in the plate chiller? The pump I'm using is turned way down during recirculation, I'm pretty sure it could handle the addition restriction of a stainer.

Doing some research on the recomended filter size for filtering before a plate HEx, from what I remember everything said 0.5mm filter before the HEx. Based on that you might be alright but (again IIRC) these were for plate and frames which could be taken apart for a good clean out.

 

[malador]

They tend to be darn near impossible to remove short of baking them to ash in the oven.

Thanks for letting me know about the baking trick. That makes me a lot more willing to give this a try.

*Edit* I sent an email to dudadiesel to see what they say about passing 0.5mm bits of grain.

 

[malador]

Dudadiesel responds fast! Here is what they said

''The space between plates is roughly 2mm, so technically 1 mm can pass
through, but 0.5mm or less would be best. If too much debris passes through,
it's likely to clog."

 

[reinstone]

In my opinion, a plate chiller offers no advantage over an immersion with wirlpool or counter flow. If you already have the plate chiller the filter may work. That was an option I explored-however, those filters also clog up!!!!!just trying to help-good luck-look for the threads on the trub filter clogging. Cheers

 

[mattd2]

Dudadiesel responds fast! Here is what they said

''The space between plates is roughly 2mm, so technically 1 mm can pass
through, but 0.5mm or less would be best. If too much debris passes through,
it's likely to clog."

This gives me confindence to get a 1mm y-strainer. hopfully it is open enough to not clog with the small stuff but takes out the big stuff that would clog the plate chiller. I will be using this for chilling only though. Good luck with you quest, I have seen at least a couple of people using CFC in the same methodology you describe so it can be done... theorectically

 

[reinstone]

This gives me confindence to get a 1mm y-strainer. hopfully it is open enough to not clog with the small stuff but takes out the big stuff that would clog the plate chiller. I will be using this for chilling only though. Good luck with you quest, I have seen at least a couple of people using CFC in the same methodology you describe so it can be done... theorectically

theoretically-not practically-plate chillers are impossible

 

[reinstone]

why not the counter flow? you eliminate your issues completely with a counter flow

 

[reinstone]

im an idiot- you can quote that-thought you were talking about recirculating after boil-youll be fine if its just a mash- next time dont hesitate to remind me Im off base-cheers- post how it works for ya.

 

[jCOSbrew]

FYI, it is common practice when using a plate chiller to recirculate during the boil to sanitize the plate chiller. I rely on the grain bag (BIAB) and hop bags to filer out the grains and most of the hop material.

 

[Barnesie]

Just an FYI - I switched from an immersion chiller to a plate chiller and I would never go back. I was looking at over an hour to get wort to the 90 degree range and with the plate chiller I can be chilled to about 65 degrees in the fermenters in about 10 minutes time.

By accident, I ran 11 gallons of hot wort through the 30 plate dudadiesal without whirlpooling at full blast and didn't have anything close to a clog or restriction. The recipe had over 8 ounces of pellet hops, so the chiller was inundated with particulates and saw no effective reduction in flow.

Of course, this was by accident and I didn't mean to do it (felt like a bonehead) - so I spent a good three days gently cleaning the gunk back out.

I think it's much easier to fill one of your pots with sanitizer and recirc through your pump/chiller rather then use hot wort to sanitize.

 

[Paulgs3]

Just an FYI - I switched from an immersion chiller to a plate chiller and I would never go back. I was looking at over an hour to get wort to the 90 degree range and with the plate chiller I can be chilled to about 65 degrees in the fermenters in about 10 minutes time.

By accident, I ran 11 gallons of hot wort through the 30 plate dudadiesal without whirlpooling at full blast and didn't have anything close to a clog or restriction. The recipe had over 8 ounces of pellet hops, so the chiller was inundated with particulates and saw no effective reduction in flow.

Of course, this was by accident and I didn't mean to do it (felt like a bonehead) - so I spent a good three days gently cleaning the gunk back out.

I think it's much easier to fill one of your pots with sanitizer and recirc through your pump/chiller rather then use hot wort to sanitize.

Oppisite expirence.

I used my thrumeter (?? Blichmann flow thermometer) with my CFC for the first time and a slow pump I was getting right at 75-80 degrees (which during summer is the temp of my water). So I completely stopped re-circing and go directly into carboy. My cold break has been absolutely wonderful, and I run everything through (trub and all except maybe 2-300ml left in the bottom of my kettle. I flush and then air compress to ensure cleanliness of the CFC. I have yeast in my carboy within 20 minutes of flameout.

I had a plate chiller on my mind for ages, but since I discovered I can chill 10 gals in 10 minutes I don't see a need.

 

[Barnesie]

Oppisite expirence.

How is this the opposite experience? What am I missing?

 

[fafrd]

Dudadiesel responds fast! Here is what they said

''The space between plates is roughly 2mm, so technically 1 mm can pass
through, but 0.5mm or less would be best. If too much debris passes through,
it's likely to clog."

Resurrecting an old thread - maladar, did you ever give this a try (using your DudaDiesal plate chiller in the mash recirculation path)? If so, what were the results? Did you end up adding a screen in the path to keep particles >0.5mm out of the plate chiller? Any other tricks you used?

I've been trading emails with Bran at DudaDiesal all day and he is under the impression that this should work fine (as long a large particles are strained/filtered out prior to going into the plate chiller).

I'm thinking about doing the same thing but am very curious in the experience of others who have already given this approach a try...

thanks,

-fafrd

 

[malador]

Resurrecting an old thread - maladar, did you ever give this a try (using your DudaDiesal plate chiller in the mash recirculation path)? If so, what were the results? Did you end up adding a screen in the path to keep particles >0.5mm out of the plate chiller? Any other tricks you used?

I've been trading emails with Bran at DudaDiesal all day and he is under the impression that this should work fine (as long a large particles are strained/filtered out prior to going into the plate chiller).

I'm thinking about doing the same thing but am very curious in the experience of others who have already given this approach a try...

thanks,

-fafrd

I have tried it, and it works well. I'm using a strainer, (link is below) and it seems to catch anything large enough to matter. The only down side I've seen so far is cost. you need a strainer and two pumps instead of one. You can also use the strainer/chiller combo to warm the strike water for the next batch, and it keeps most the hops mess out of your carboys.

One a side note, i really like the chiller from dudadiesel. Plus, as you I'm sure already figured out, they are very helpful and quick to respond to questions.

http://www.brewershardware.com/filter1.html

 

[malador]

Resurrecting an old thread - maladar, did you ever give this a try (using your DudaDiesal plate chiller in the mash recirculation path)? If so, what were the results? Did you end up adding a screen in the path to keep particles >0.5mm out of the plate chiller? Any other tricks you used?

I've been trading emails with Bran at DudaDiesal all day and he is under the impression that this should work fine (as long a large particles are strained/filtered out prior to going into the plate chiller).

I'm thinking about doing the same thing but am very curious in the experience of others who have already given this approach a try...

thanks,

-fafrd

Update.

I tried doing a 5 gallon batch yesterday with a pound of pellet hops. It didn't go well. The pellets clogged the stainer really fast. Once I was able to pump all the wort into a hops sack everything was fine. But FYI if you use pellot hops I would put them in a sack from the start. When I back flushed the strainer nothing came out, so the strainer did its job just fine.