Immersion vs. Plate chiller

[bcmaui]

I enjoy the simplicity of the immersion chiller and I while I am waiting for things to cool down I go out and water the garden.

I'm from boiling to under 80F in less than 25 minutes (and out of the DMS danger below 130F in less than 5 minutes) with a recirc going on using our high temp ground water. If I had 55F tap water as many of you on the mainland have, it would go even faster.

[saltydawg]

saltydawg - I must be missing something - why would recircing risk blocking the plate chiller any more than just running the boiling wort through the chiller and straight into your fermenter ?

I mean, you will get break material going through the chiller either way since its cooling it down - or are you suggesting a whirlpool and wait a while step before running it out the kettle ? If so how do you avoid dms before starting to chill.

Another reason I would want to recirc cool is so that I know what temp i'm gonna end up at before running straight (not via chiller) into my fermenter. So I would be at pitching temps in the kettle and dont have to guess how much more the chiller will cool it if I had it in series.whilst draining into the fermenter.

I've also read that chilling on the way to the fermenter will result in getting substantial amounts of break into the fermenter since cold break is occuring in the chiller and not in the kettle (as it would be using an immersion) .

I must be missing something here since most posts I have read recently on plate chillers dont mention anything about recircing. Anyone know a good reason ? would it really block the chiller or is there another reason ?

Yep, I was thinking that a recirc would pull trub and hop material into a plate chiller. Cold break shouldn't plug it up though. The way to avoid this is a whirlpool and rest after the boil, before cooling. You WILL NOT get DMS in the wort if you do a 90 minute boil as almost all the DMS precursor, SMM, will be boiled off. Many pro brewers do a prolonged whilpool without DMS problems. Including Matt Bryndlson at Firestone Walker.(CYBI, episode for the Union Jack Clone, is one reference off the top of my head)

I am trying to remember where I read a process that sounded pretty compelling. It's similar to the process used at a local brewery in my neighborhood. It goes something like this. Boil, whirlpool, let settle, cool thru your plate chiller to your HLT, or other settling / clarifier tank,(no hops/trub) making another whirlpool as you pump thru the chiller, settle out cold break, then nice cool, clear wort in the fermenter. I might be missing a couple details, but thats the general idea.

My local brewery uses an old keg for the second whirlpool, and draws about 2/3 way up off the bottom. IIRC. A lot of cold break stays in the keg.

Could work, right? Sounds like a lot of trouble with dirty plate chillers would be avoided too.

What d'yall think???

[craigevo]

I think the intermediate clarifying vessel is a good idea. especially if it s a HLT which is already guaranteed to be sanitised from steam earlier. I have another suggestion..

I just got an email back from blichmanns about this. I was asking why a plate chiller would be more likely to block whilst recircing vs just gravity fed to a fermenter. The answer was that the recircing basically involved the cold break being passed through the chiller for more time - since your also recirculating the cold break.

This seems a reasonable answer. But leads me to move on and wonder if you can do a two step chill without blocking. This might be a good compromise and achieve most of the goals ?

So, assuming you can pass 10 gallons through with cold break and it wont block, then why not just do that. Recirc the 10 gals back o the kettle. your wort temp is now below DMS temp worries. Do a whirlpool, presumably a lot of the cold break just generated by this initial chill is now sinking to the bottom of the kettle. Whilst waiting for, say, 15 mins for the whirlpool to do its thing, just run some of the hot water generated from the initial chill backflowing through the chiller to clean it out Then your second chill, just use gravity and go through the chiller and into the fermenter. I'm not sure how much cold break will come out during the first chill versus the second chill ?

For me, I normally only do 5 gallon batches, so I can therfore recirc my 5 gallons twice and be even colder when I start the whirlpool and thus get even more cold break out. Probably down to 100F. Has most of the cold break already come out into solution by now ? or not yet ?

[Smelletor]

It seems like you're creating a lot of work for yourself - but that's cool if that's what you're after.

I just recently switched over to a plate chiller, and just as quickly switched back to my immersion chiller and made it JZ-style. I had the same idea of: running the hot wort through the chiller and recircing into the kettle for a whirlpool. Best of both worlds right? It didn't work in my experience. I didn't get a high enough flow rate back into the kettle to whirlpool and it took longer than immersion w/o whirlpool. However, I was using 3/8" tubing (although not much of it), and I feel like I was getting a bit of clogging in my plate chiller. So take that for what it's worth.

I decided that for me it wasn't worth it to worry about sanitation inside the plate chiller and getting it to whirlpool properly when the JZ style chiller does it at least as fast and is IMO easier to deal with.

[robert4136]

i was having good results chilling 10-12 gallons of wort recirculating through a therminator. The wort flow is
BoilKettle->Pump->Therminator->BoilKettle. The first few times i tried this it worked comparably to a 50' immersion chiller.

However, on my last two brews i have noticed that the bottom of the kettle chills as normal while the top half remains hot and does not really cool down. I don't really understand why this stratification of temperature is occurring with recirculation especially since i have had successes with this method before.

Has anyone ever noticed had this problem

Rob

[whiteManCanHop]

However, on my last two brews i have noticed that the bottom of the kettle chills as normal while the top half remains hot and does not really cool down. I don't really understand why this stratification of temperature is occurring with recirculation especially since i have had successes with this method before.

Has anyone ever noticed had this problem

Rob

Where is your wort return? If you are returning to the middle or bottom of your kettle I can see this as the problem.

[robert4136]

the return is in the middle and it makes sense that stratification of temperatures would occur but i have had success with the same setup before. I will probably end up doing another hot water test to see whats going on.