big dissapointment with whirlpool chiller

[rainybrewer]

Is there a specific reason people seem to drop their chillers into the boiling wort for 15 minutes instead of sanitizing them by dunking them into a batch of star-san for a minute? It would seem that a bucket of star-san at ~60 F would mean a big mass of copper at ~60 F, which dropped into the kettle at flame out would help drop the temperature a lot faster than a chiller with copper at 212 F.

Or am I missing something that would suggest this is a bad idea? Thankfully we've got cold ground water here in Seattle, so it's not the biggest of issues, but doing it this way I can drop down to 100 very, very quickly.

I just hook up my hoses, have a bucket of star san at the ready, drop it in there, turn off the heat, turn on the water, drop in the chiller, and watch my temperature plummet.

[jamilz]

A couple of thoughts. What diameter copper are you using? I use 50' of 1/2" OD for 6 gallons of wort.

I think someone mentioned cold going in at the bottom? The cold water should go in at the top of the coil, so you have the maximum temp differential (of course, it isn't that important if you have a good whirlpool).

If you have a weak flow from the pump, you're not going to get very fast cooling. You want to shoot that wort across the coils as fast as possible.

It is all about contacting hot wort with cold metal. The more you do that, the faster it cools. If you fail at moving the wort across the metal or getting the metal cool, then you'll see poor results.

[Brichards700]

One of our brew club guys actually has a 60 gallon system (just shy of 2 barrels) and he has been using a therminator and pitching warm (our ground water is 74F). He recently hooked up 2 therminators in series and got great results with that.

Here is a page with pictures trying it out on a small batch.

I also wonder how the planispiral chillers would do on large batches. Gonna build one one of these days...

man I love my therminator, It saves me a lot of time and effort, accept for the cleaning part

[slanted & enchanted]

jamil, i'm using 50 feet of 1/2" OD. i think with some more adjustments i'll be making excellent time chilling. i have the march pump everyone else has, it was just acting a little wonky the other day. and as a bonus, i think today is going to be sub 90 degrees! ground water temp should be dropping soon. you know, indiana is so damn hot i think i might move somewhere cooler, like maybe death valley. it has been primarily in the 90's for 5 months straight.

that last batch i made was your brown recipe. and i just kegged the robust porter from your show and it tasted great coming out of the fermenter. i built a cold room with a window ac unit (but just to keep at 65-68, see my weather rant) and i think it's making a world of difference. fermentation is the key...

[DannyW]

FWIW, I found my pump worked a lot better with no tube or screen or filter or anything on the inside of the pot. Just a hole.

[BDawg]

FWIW, I tried this this weekend, but my hopstopper cloggedup (IPA with about 8oz of pellets, no flowers). I'm going to abandon the hopstopper. It doesn't hold the siphon any more anyway, so I end up siphoning out of the kettle no matter what.

[Junket]

I used my newly constructed whirlpool chiller for the first time last week, and I had some problems too. The whirlpool just didn't go around quickly enough, and the waste water from my chiller was cool to the touch. Previously, I would stir the wort continuously with a big spoon, and the waste water from the chiller would be really hot. My new chiller was no match for the old manual method, apparently.

When I cleaned out my pump, I noticed that the quick disconnects (which I was using for the first time) were all clogged up with hops. I remember reading somewhere that many brewers cut the little plastic "X" out of their QD's to prevent this. So maybe that's the solution.

Any thoughts on whether crimping the end of the copper wort outflow tube might help the whirlpool speed? It would fan out the wort into a fanlike pattern, but would it slow things down?

[TimCA]

I just looked at my notes from the last brew day, batch #40. It is the firs AG brew day that went perfect from beginning to end....
Any how it is my 4 brew with the recerc wort chiller, I to use a converted keg and I go from about 210 to 80 in about 30 min. I use 1/2 in tubing for the recerc part. as time goes on the quick connects get clogged so the volume slows. I used the thermonator (for sale) before and although very fast it stressed me out...
Tim