Beer Forum

I spent some time last night making a wort chiller, not unlike this one Look Here, It work a bloody treat, from 212 deg f (100 c) to 122 (50 c ) in 4 minutes, then another 10 mins to get to 86f (30 c), which happens to be the temp of the water coming out of my garden hose, my next test will be to run the cooling water through some ice to get it down to 10 c and see how long it takes to get there.......oh a hint for the aussies or kiwis wanting to build this turn the direction of the wort outlet going back into the kettle......

I'm really glad it worked out for you.

I finally remembered to time my results. For a 6.5 US gallon batch of 1.068 wort, the temp went from 212F to below 140F in less than two minutes. (140F is kind of the magical mark, as no DMS is created below that temp.)

It had dropped to 112F in just slightly over 3 minutes. I had originally thought it was about a minute to drop 100F. I'm not sure if that was because I was using the T with more flow or just my imagination. Currently I'm just using a bent hunk of copper and it still works great.

Once I get down to tap water temp, I fill a bucket with a few trays of ice cubes and a couple inches of water. I then pump this through the chiller coil and back into the bucket. I can get the wort down to lager temps (and a huge amount of cold break) using this method.

The last time I tried it, I went in the house for a couple minutes and when I got back it was down to 40F. Good thing I like to pitch cold.

last night i made a few changes and tried some ice, but unfortunatly my march pump cant get fast enough flow to get the ice water through the coil at a good speed, so the next thing is to find a high flow pump......maybe a pond pump, i also took the t peice off and replaced with a single arm, it seems to whirlpool better

How about a prechiller for the tap water? Just put another copper coil in a bucket with ice water and run your water through that before the IM chiller in the pot.

Travis

yeah that is my othe roption but i need to get it from 30 deg c to under 10 deg c to make it effeciant, and my heat exchange coil is to short to make it work, i can make the surface area larger, but then as a heating unit it will be to effeciant, and maybe again my pump wont handle the area it needs to move, but i am thinking of making a drop in HE coil to go inthere inside some ice slurry

That's one thing I like about brewing this time of year. My tap water is already pretty dang cold. I'm doing extract, but I brought 3.5 gallons at 213 down to 70 in about 6 minutes. I just got a second chiller to submerge in an ice bath, but so far haven't needed it. When I go to full boils, I'm sure it'll be more useful.

Are you using 1/2" ? I find 3/8" doesn't support it's won wieght.

imusing 1/2 " i have some 3/4 here but its to big i think