Inline chillers

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shish

Inline chillers

Post by shish » Tue Jul 18, 2006 10:17 pm

sorry guys, another question...

i have a Cornelius Maxi 310 inline chiller, it's chilled the water jacket down to -8C and the compressor is still running... is the thermostat bolloxed?

Frothy

Post by Frothy » Wed Jul 19, 2006 2:50 am

inline chiller as in a flash chiller like the pubs use?
If so you realise that the water in the chiller is frozen into a solid block of ice before the thermostat will turn the chiller off, this takes usually about 4 hours or more to achieve. Also take care not to overfill it, I soaked mine but fortunately it dried out ok. Take the overflow bung out and fill until water starts to come out, then replace the bung and turn it on.

Matt
P.S. - Geoff refurbs these things for a living should you need a more informed opinion
http://www.beer-coolers.co.uk/

shish

Post by shish » Wed Jul 19, 2006 7:45 pm

yes its a pub styleee job

in that case i might rip out the thermostat and replace it with some homemade digital affair. It's too noisy and uses too much juice to have running that much.

shish

Post by shish » Thu Jul 27, 2006 11:23 pm

well tonight i fitted a new electronic thermostat to my chiller... works great and i can dial in whatever temp i want now and have the recirc pump running even when the compressor is off B)

The control unit was £27 from ebay and has more settable options than you can shake a stick at :blink:

Image

Frothy

Post by Frothy » Fri Jul 28, 2006 8:18 am

Neat - that looks like the temp controller I had my eye on from cole-palmer :) So what temp you looking at setting your cooler at? Like I said mine takes about 4-5hours to generate a a full ice bank but I don't know what temp that actually is chilling to? I recently spoke to Geoff at DTS because mines not been cooling as well as I'd like it to and he recommended leaving it on overnight the night before.

Matt

shish

Post by shish » Fri Jul 28, 2006 2:02 pm

thanks guys...

the controller is actually designed for a supermarket display chiller cabinate, it has two probes. One for the thermostat temp and the other for the evaporator temp. It also has two control outputs. The compressor and fan are wired together on the chiller output and the recirc pump on the 'evaporator fan' output

I attached the evap probe to the chiller coils and the stat probe to the beer coils.

having the setpoint at 0C works really well.

But setting it below zero makes no real difference to the water around the beer coils. I've just had it set to -5 for about 2 hours, all that happend was the beer coil temp was 0C and the chiller coils were -9 and iced.

I need to mix in some anti-freeze, which should help as it means the coils wont ice up and should chill the beer coils below freezing.

shish

Post by shish » Fri Jul 28, 2006 4:37 pm

AFAIK the colder the beer the less foam

my keg is just stored at room temp

Frothy

Post by Frothy » Sat Jul 29, 2006 3:06 pm

When the beer cooler broke in the pub I used to work in - it was literally impossible to pull a pint of lager without 1/2 a glass of head.

Matt

Frothy

Post by Frothy » Sat Jul 29, 2006 6:52 pm

Nice Freebie. YEah the agitator just recirculated the water in the water jacket. This jacket should be frozen into ice and the beer simply passes through the stainless coils and is chilled on its way through. The only difference with the xtra cold coolers that have recently risen to fame is that the coils which the beer passes through are large enough to hold the whole pint in the ice. Geoff does spares if you need any. To fill it with water just fill it until the water comes out of the overflow and then replace the overflow bung.

Matt

Frothy

Post by Frothy » Sat Jul 29, 2006 9:08 pm

I'm confused. I believe the agitator just agitates the water bath.

Matt

shish

Post by shish » Sat Jul 29, 2006 9:23 pm

DAAB, the recirc pump will suck in through an impeller built into the white bottom part (just above the 'propeller') it will push it through the pipe that you have labelled outlet and will run back into the tank through (what you have labelled) inlet.

It literally just sucks cold water from the jacket and pumps it through the pipe, it's basically a chilled water supply used for chilled taps and/or chilling the beer lines right to the tap.

The copper coils will be the chiller coils, the beer coils will be stainless steel, there's no pump for the beer

in your case you should have at least one beer in/out and a recirc in/out

shame i didn't take any pics of my coils when i fitted my temp probes :rolleyes:

shish

Post by shish » Sun Jul 30, 2006 5:34 pm

right, added 2 litres of antifreeze to the water jacket and it set it to -5, which it reached no problem... no icing, the condensation on the recirc pipes froze B)

set to -10 and it got down to -9 and then within about 30 seconds it turned into slush (just like a slush puppie drink!)

so i'll stick with -5, i dont think i'm going to need it colder than that!

DAAB, if your chiller has no beer coils then it should still work perfectly as a chiller for lagering, though you will need to rig up a thermostat like i've done.

shish

Post by shish » Sun Jul 30, 2006 7:47 pm

:blink: what a spaz... of course if it's below freezing it'll freeze the beer in the beer coil :bonk

shish

Post by shish » Sun Jul 30, 2006 9:34 pm

without the recirc pump the water around the beer coil would warm up, so it keeps the water jacket at an even temperature

with or without the pump the beer would still freeze in the coils if the water jacket is below freezing. Well in fact the 5% or so alcohol in lager should mean it freezes at about -2.

shish

Post by shish » Sun Jul 30, 2006 11:28 pm

a chilled beer tap, sure you must have seen them... the taps in pubs that have real condensation on them

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