Prechilling the IC

[fratermus]

I find that in the summer it's difficult to get below 80F with groundwater through an Immersion Chiller.

I just bought a pond pump from amazon, and will try using the IC down to about 90F, then swap over to recirculating icewater with the pump down to 65F.

I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[smurfe]

It will work. This is how I do it. I chill normally with the hose pipe hooked uptill around 80-90 F. I then dump a couple bags of ice in a bucket and add a couple gallons of water. I have a small pond pump in the bucket that I hook up to the chiller input. The return goes back into the bucket. As the ice melts I add more ice. I had thought about using some salt in the ice water like when making ice cream to make it even colder but decided not to as I am sure it would corrode the pump and possibly my chiller. Using this set up I can get the wort down to 65 within a half hour, many times quicker and it is pretty warm here in south Louisiana. Edited by: smurfe

 

[Wade E]

Is this an immersion chiller or a counter flow chiller?

 

[fratermus]

Smurfe, thanks for the report; that's exactly what I had planned. Here near Dallas, so it's pretty warm here too.

I also thought about the rocksalt approach but was concerned by the corrosion aspect and the possibility that the superchilled copper might freeze beer around it, decreasing efficiency.

The pump was free-for-me off amazon as I had a gift certificate.
Edited by: fratermus

 

[smurfe]

Is this an immersion chiller or a counter flow chiller?

Wade, we are talking about immersion chillers.

 

[fratermus]

Got the pump in the mail from amazon last night and set it up for a test run. Seems to be fine for the purpose. I'm hosting a how-to-brew party at my house for coworkers on the 3rd and will test-drive it then.

 

[smurfe]

Sounds great. A how to brew party sounds like a blast.Look forward to hearing the results. Only suggestion I can give is to make sure to drop your temp as done normally before running ice water through the chiller unless you have a whole lot of ice. Maybe equivalent to a couple bags at the most.Last time I used mine I got a bit anxious and switched to ice water when the wort temp was like 120F It melted the ice pretty quick. I didn't have a whole lot if ice though. Also, the ice came from our bar ice machine which is a thinner walled ice than the bagged stuff.

 

[fratermus]

Yeah, my groundwater-powered IC drops temps rapidly down to about 90F where it becomes diminishing returns. So I was thinking switch to the pump at 90F and then start the recirc. I'm going to dump the contents of my icemaker on the pump first to see what kind of drop I get. I'd like to get into the low 70s with the ice from my icemaker plus whatever frozen 2L bottles I have stashed. Maybe that's an unreasonable request, but I'll know soon enough.

 

[fratermus]

Reporting back after the first run.

I dropped the temps to 95F with the groundwater then started the icewater recirc. Wort temp dropped to 68F before I stopped the process as I was using a yeast that likes heat (a belgian farmhouse strain).

Looks like the prechill is a winner.

 

[smurfe]

Fantastic! How long did it take to drop the temp to where you stopped once you started the ice chill? Normally takes me 20-30 minutes to get mine dropped to 65 or so.

 

[fratermus]

I don't think it was 20mins but maybe it was. I didn't have a timer put on that part. I was timing the whole AG batch because of a thread on newslt.beer.homebrewing (?) so I was watching that rather than the prechill component.

I think it took the same amount of time to go IC + prechill to 68F than it normally takes to go IC only to 85F-90F, because the overall time was the same or slightly faster.

 

[smurfe]

fantastic. How much ice did you end up using? Was the contents of your ice maker enough? I normally have to get a couple bags of ice. What did you end up brewing? You do all grain huh? Nice to have another all grain brewer here. I have the stuff for an all grain IPA here I really need to get done. I am out of keg space though.

 

[fratermus]

It was a little over 100F outside in the shade (my digital thermo was nearby) so I chickened out and bought a coupla bags of ice. about 2/3rds of it was left by time I finished. I will do the icemaker route next time as the ice consumption was not as bad as I thought.

This was largely an experimental batch: I was brewing in the keggle the first time, prechilling the first time, and running a new yeast (the wyeast farmhouse limited edition stuff).

90% 2row, 10% malted wheat and lightly hopped. Most of my batches are relatively low-grav, this one was 1.040. This weekend I'm going to rack half of it onto blackberries and let the rest sit in secondary for another week or so.

I dunno if we we are allowed to post URLs here, but a quick/dirty description of my brewing this year is up at:
http://www.mousetrap.net/~mouse/brewing/batch.html

 

[smurfe]

That sounds like my kind of brew. I have been drinking pretty well Ordinary Bitter's lately exclusively. I just love a good session beer.