Pages: 1
chiller type????
alright, I currently have a immersion chiller and prechiller set up I built and it takes about 20 minutes in the winter and 30-40 minutes in the summer to chill 10 gallons. Chilling is by far my leasat favorite part... It's not even the time as much as the stirring... standing and stirring for a half hour just plain anoys me!!
Moral of the story is I'm going to upgrade. I've been leaning towards the shirron plate chiller. The price is reasonable and after reading every post and review I could on the internet it seems that for the most part the only people that say it's easy to clog and hard to sanitize are those who DONT own one. All the people (i only found about 5 posts on various boards) love them. The only change I would make is to use hop bags to make sure none of the pellet material gets out, a small sacrifice. I've heard it's safe to boil and even bake in the oven to sanitize.
But, I can't say I'm totally sold. I was wondering if anyone on here uses a counterflow? How good is it? How fast is it? how easy to clean? Cost of buying one? cost of building one?
either way it's a lot of money, just want to make sure I make the best choice.
Here you go........ get out some of that moldy money!!!!
http://www.brew-magic.com/chillwiz.html
When I finally get around to building a better break seperation setup in my kettle, I'll probably go to a plate chiller, and use my IC for a prechiller in the summer time.
I'm not sure what kind it would be called, but I was thinking of maing my own. I figure 20-30 feet of copper tubing, coiled and submerged in a bath of ice water. Then I would find someway to move the wort through the submerged copper tubing, which should cool it off considerably......is that like an immersion type? Can it be cooled too much, and if it is, can it just be reheated again?....
ricka182 wrote:
I'm not sure what kind it would be called, but I was thinking of maing my own. I figure 20-30 feet of copper tubing, coiled and submerged in a bath of ice water. Then I would find someway to move the wort through the submerged copper tubing, which should cool it off considerably......is that like an immersion type? Can it be cooled too much, and if it is, can it just be reheated again?....
I was considering something like that once. Its basically like a counterflow type system without the counter flow. (i.e hot wort movinf through a cold copper coil for heat exchage.) As long as the flow rate isn't too fast you should be fine. But if you were going to get the copper you'd be better off building an IC. (cold water moving through copper coil that is immersed in the hot wort). The reason for this is that its far easier to clean the outside of a copper coil than it is to clean the inside of one every session.
If you over chill you can always reheat or just wait for the temp to requilibrate to pitching temps. Its better to overchill than underchill, I would say.
I thought of an IC, but figured it's a huge waste of water....but then again, cleaning all that would be a PITA......hmmmmm, thinking...dangerous, I know, but thinking.....
I wrestled with what to go with myself. I ended up making an IC, I was wrestling with the wasting water idea, but my thought is to collect that warm water in a bucket to use when I clean up. 
That's a good idea, and now I remember somone, probably you, mentioned that in another thread. My thinking is how much water would have to be run though to cool it down enough? And my brew buddy sometimes waits all night to clean the equipment, so the water winds up cold anyway......
I have one of those "party tubs" that are large enough to hold a whole keg with ice.
I divert the outflow from my IC into that tub. At the start of chilling I dump in some PBW and start collecting hot water in there. I toss in all the equipment I used during the session. In the end I use a pitcher to clean out the kettles and mash tuns. I have very little waste this way.
Also you don't want the flow to be outragious either. I have a slow flow in the beginning. You want to have enough contact time to get as much each out of the wort. As things get cooler, I speed up the flow a bit, but its still not full blast.
There is a shady balance with an IC between water usage and chilling speed. You have to decide which is more important too you.
In the absence of a plate chiller I was planning to get a cheap submersible pump. After I chill with the tap water down to about 130-140, I would switch it over to a bucket filled with ice and a little water. Drop the submersible in the ice water and have that hooked to the IC in a closed loop to drive the chill down the rest of the way... hopefully to 60F.
Pages: 1