Immersion Coil Wort Chiller Ideas

[barneey]

Mmmm, +1 to the idea, if I can get the temp down to say < 40c in 10mins full bore cold water (should be easy do-able) I have my small chiller sitting around not doing very much at the moment as well. Chilling time + water conservation could be solved?

[Blackaddler]

I have a beer chiller, and as the temp of the summer wort drops to about 30oc i switch from mains
water to recirculate the beer chiller water around my IC.

That's pretty much what I do in summer, with my Maxi 310. I switch it on an hour or two before I need it, and once the wort has cooled to about 30C, I swap from pumping rain water from a water butt, to recirculating the ice bath water with the Maxi recirc pump.

30C is a good point to swap, as efficiency starts to drops off a cliff about then.

Chillers aren't designed for use with liquids over 40C anyway, and damage could be done to the chiller. It'd probably warm up the ice bath enough to make inefficient, anyway.

[Kev888]

Hmm, possibly the IC is still on for my next setup, then. I may also revive a previous plan:

I've a couple of water butts to collect rainwater from the brew-shed roof, but past experiments have shown that in summer this isn't cool enough. However, if I use them to drop the wort to below 40c and then swap to coolant from the beer chiller (or a previously chilled reservoir) that could work out well.

Yet another item on the infinate 'to do' list..

Cheers
Kev

[nigelsch]

Barneey, Yep defo saves water; I think its the lower end that uses more water as the temp differnetial
is not the greatest on mains water in the summer.

Blackaddler, interesting that you have noticed the 30oc point aswell. 30->20oc
takes ages on mains summer water and if I switch over to my cooler over 30oc then
I notice this heats the reservoir too much; although I only switch on my cooler for
about 30mins.

I could probably increase the size of my IC but I didnt want to dick about with the coil
again due to "copper hardening". What I did instead was to make a "copper fan", made from
opened and flattened 15mm tube shaped into a fan and inserted onto a length of 6mm
stainless steal thread (which u can get from screwfix). I then use an ice cream motor to
slowly circulate the wort over the coil while its chilling. This also helps decrease the coiling
time and has the advantage that it all goes into the wort 30mins prior to chilling with no
external pumps or opening the HLT lid during cooling (im funny about contamination while
also wanting to keep things simple).

For me the chiller was a practical use. Originally I brought it to chill the beer & i didnt like
that approach for a number of reasons, additional cleaning and the fact my actual beer was
sitting at 20oc+. Hence I moved to a beer fridge and had a chilling sitting around doing nowt.

Great hobby, brewing +making stuff what more could a fella ask for!

[Blackaddler]

An automatic stirrer is something that's been on my "to do" list or some time.

[darkonnis]

Yep for an immersion chiller (bearing in mind the tap water at the moment is cold) it works very well, much better than any single IC I`ve used in the past, but its thrown up another unexpected problem of the easiest way of cleaning the thing, whereas a normal IC I would bathe it in a cleaning solution then 15min boil time etc, with this being nearly 450mm diameter I dont really have a big enough pot to hold the required amount of cleaning solution unless I make a trough of some sort. 2 steps forward 1 step back me thinks.

Might come in useful later for somthing or at least for a back up, or the way copper prices are still rising a little investment

To clean, I just hang mine on something (mine was smaller so the washign line did the job) and blasted it off wit hthe hose. Then got in with soap and a sponge the nthe hose again. Took about 3 minutes all in.