Plate Chiller ?

[DC]

Hi all, I am looking to upgrade from my current CFC/IC chillers to a plate chiller and was wondering is there any great difference in plate chillers? I have been looking at the ones below that MrLard sells and was wondering which one do I buy

Mr Lards Plate Chillers
http://www.homebrewbuilder.co.uk/cooling.html



Cheers DC

[Aleman]

Another option that isn't there is my 20 Plate 185KW chiller that I got from Mr Lard Ok so it's more expensive than those options, but it Just Works

[mrlard]

there is a rumor going around of a 50 plate 200KW aswell

[Nofolkandchance]

I went from a 10mm bore counterflow chiller to a Blichmann Therminator hooked up to a solar project pump. End result is the same, cooled wort, but difference is black and white in terms of time to do the job

[DC]

Hi guys, thanks for the replies regarding plate chillers, so from the replies I take it the only difference is the length of time it takes to cool the wort? At the moment my CFC is doing an adequate job of cooling the wort but it just seems to take an age to flow through the CFC and into the FV. So If I can get away with buying say a 30 plate 65Kw chiller which according Mrlards website can cool 21L of wort down to room temp in around 10 mins, I am assuming that’s cooling/running off into an FV? Then I guess that would be the cheapest option (then I can look at saving the rest of my pennies for a new Shiny HLT).

I also have another question regarding plate chillers and them getting blocked with break material and hops etc. At the minute I am using a stainless inline Y filter fitted to my boiler tap to filter the wort before it gets to the CFC would the Y filter be suitable for use with a plate chiller for stopping the material reaching the plate chiller

Cheers DC

[Fil]

wont a plate chiller offer more resistance than a clean bore cfc and therefore be slower?? or need a more powerful pump.

[Nofolkandchance]

Hi guys, thanks for the replies regarding plate chillers, so from the replies I take it the only difference is the length of time it takes to cool the wort? At the moment my CFC is doing an adequate job of cooling the wort but it just seems to take an age to flow through the CFC and into the FV. So If I can get away with buying say a 30 plate 65Kw chiller which according Mrlards website can cool 21L of wort down to room temp in around 10 mins, I am assuming that’s cooling/running off into an FV? Then I guess that would be the cheapest option (then I can look at saving the rest of my pennies for a new Shiny HLT).

I also have another question regarding plate chillers and them getting blocked with break material and hops etc. At the minute I am using a stainless inline Y filter fitted to my boiler tap to filter the wort before it gets to the CFC would the Y filter be suitable for use with a plate chiller for stopping the material reaching the plate chiller

Cheers DC

Yep you'll need to think about the filter options. Mr Lard has that covered as well. I use this however from Angel Home Brew. http://www.angelhomebrew.co.uk/en/acces ... ainer.html with my Blichmann. Works like a dream

[Matt12398]

I bought mr lard's 30 plate 125 kW chiller. I've not used it yet but my brother has the same/very similar one (from another supplier as mr lard didn't stock them at the time) and it worked really well with it's first use at the weekend. Ground water temps are still quite high so we couldn't run it too quickly. The Y filter did a good job after recirculating the wort for some time through a decent hop filter as before we did that we managed to clog the Y filter.

If I had the choice again I'd still buy the same one.

[barneey]

IMHO if your blocking the "y" filter I would upgrade the mesh / screen on the primary filter. I would only use the "y" as the very last defence against any rouge seeds.

[barneey]

Yep you'll need to think about the filter options. Mr Lard has that covered as well. I use this however from Angel Home Brew. http://www.angelhomebrew.co.uk/en/acces ... ainer.html with my Blichmann. Works like a dream

While were at it don't forget the malt miller

[Matt12398]

IMHO if your blocking the "y" filter I would upgrade the mesh / screen on the primary filter. I would only use the "y" as the very last defence against any rouge seeds.

The primary gave crystal clear wort after a few seconds of recirculating. It was just the initial burst.

[barneey]

But does that mean it gave crystal clear wort after going through the "nearly blocked" Y, as it would seem strange to block the Y in the first place - just my opinion but I would double check the primary filter / beef up the primary defence - the flip side to that is you might block the primary filter completely whilst recirc.

[Matt12398]

No it completely blocked the Y. We back flushed it and sanitised it. In the mean time we recirculated the wort in the boiler through the hop filter and back into the kettle. This made the wort coming out of the boiler crystal clear so we then ran it through the plate chiller with no problems.

Perhaps a one off initial blockage but the recirculating before putting through the chiller fixed it.

[DC]

Hi all, I use a memory mesh tube for my hop filter so there should be no problems on the main filter side of things So the Y strainer is just double filtering really, cant see alot getting past those 2 filters

Memory mesh hop filter (normally weighed down with 1/2" copper pipe pieces)


Cheers DC

[Nofolkandchance]

Yep you'll need to think about the filter options. Mr Lard has that covered as well. I use this however from Angel Home Brew. http://www.angelhomebrew.co.uk/en/acces ... ainer.html with my Blichmann. Works like a dream

While were at it don't forget the malt miller

Niyyyce plug

Didn't realise I was being asked to be JBK's marketing manager but for clarity, I bought mine from AngelHB, and I'm extremely happy with it, and, it appears its similar to the one the op uses. MM only appears to have a "hop strainer" made from copper pipe so maybe not suitable with a plate chiller