[anapsid]

So I have an immersion wort chiller, and I've noticed a problem...my tap water does not really get colder then 76 degrees F.  Anything I can toy with to make this colder?  Its really not that cold...and its messing with my chilling....

[saintpierre]

Besides pre cooling the tap with ice or something, not really.


Sent from Fermentationland.

[HoosierBrew]

I haven't bought a pump yet to try the closed loop/ice water thing.  But for years what I've done in summertime is to take a frozen, sanitized water bottle (or 2) and add it to the kettle once the temp has cooled as far as it will.  You need to stir the wort steadily to avoid temp stratification. But it lets me cool the last few degrees I need to reach pitching temps in summer. Pretty low tech.

[jeffy]

With my current system I use tap water until the temp gets down to about 90F and then pump ice water through the chiller.
Before I had pumps I used to gravity feed the wort through a counter flow chiller and then through a 20 foot length of copper tubing in ice water, then into the fermenters.

[AmandaK]

You can do the closed loop/ice water/pond pump thing.

I just chill it as far as I can, stick it in the fermentation chamber and pitch when it reaches the correct temperature.

[mabrungard]

From an engineering and physics perspective, removing most of the heat content from the wort with the tap water chilling system followed by a separate chilling event using ice or other super-cooled method is most efficient.  Pre-chilling your water and using it to cool the very hot wort justs wastes the extra 'coldness'.  The thing that matters is the temperature differential between the hot wort and the cooling water.  Once most of the heat is removed and the wort temperature has dropped to the luke-warm level, then its time to employ the ice-chilled water.

[zanderson]

I just wanted to add another note on this.  In the culinary world - they use blast chillers and ice wands to bring the temp of soups and stocks down below the temperature danger zone.  I bet if you sanitized one of these ice wands it would help chill down very quickly aided by a wort chiller.  (They are also knows as cooling paddles or rapid cooling paddles.  San Jamar is one manufacturer of them.)

-Zac
Elgin, IL

P.S. In culinary school we always used the ice wands in conjunction with an ice bath.

[cornershot]

A friend of mine is a chef and uses the ice paddle to cool soup. I believe it would take too long on it's own but employed below 100 degrees F in conjunction with a chiller it might work very well. But just the same, frozen, sanitized 2 liter soda bottles are far cheaper and work just as well.