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Author Topic: Wort chiller ideas?  (Read 1968 times)

Offline Pi

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Wort chiller ideas?
« on: July 25, 2011, 12:21:08 pm »
Just brewed a Pils this weekend. I ran my chill water through an imersion chiller sitting in a cooler of ice water, then through my counterflow. Cant seem to get much below 68f.
Now I just had a new air conditioner put in my house and had them save the old AC supply line (about 25' of looks like 5/8" copper tubing. I was wondering if anyone has had any experience building a counterflow wort chiller using ethyl-glycol. maybe like using one of those wine chillers you see at the liquor stores. What do you think???
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Offline Jimmy K

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Re: Wort chiller ideas?
« Reply #1 on: July 25, 2011, 01:24:09 pm »
I tried a new one yesterday. Instead of running the chill water through tubing in icewater - I bought a cheap aquarium pump, connected tubing and fittings and pumped the icewater itself through the chiller. Only problem is that a cheap aquarium pump doesn't generate much head pressure so it can't pump the ice water up very high.

I'm thinking of trying a new version where I fill my HLT tank with ice water and use that as chill water with gravity as my friend.
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Offline Pi

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Re: Wort chiller ideas?
« Reply #2 on: July 26, 2011, 06:27:52 am »
I have a RIMS system and could pump ice water from my HLT thru the chiller. What kind of chill temp are you getting?
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Offline Jimmy K

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Re: Wort chiller ideas?
« Reply #3 on: July 26, 2011, 06:43:40 am »
I've only used it once and under less than ideal circumstances (I homebrewed at the Delaware State Fair on Sunday). I didn't have a thermometer on the outlet, but I can tell you the chill water was ice cold going in and blazing hot coming out. I ran the hot water back into the cooler of ice because I didn't have anywhere else to send it, so that melted a lot of the ice. But there was still some ice in the cooler at the end. In my HLT plan, I plan to send the hot exhaust water outside through a hose and keep filling the HLT tank with room temp tap water. That should help conserve ice. I'm sure the pumps on your RIMS are better too and that should help.

Check the chilling out on this too.
http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/pages/community/pimp-my-system/show?title=lonnie-mcallisters-brutus-ten
Delmarva United Homebrewers - President by inverse coup - former president ousted himself.
AHA Member since 2006
BJCP Certified: B0958