double immersion chiller

[sallad]

this thought came up again while reading other posts, and i think it deserves its own thread...

i've been thinking about a sortof double immersion chiller... water goes from hose to copper tubing that is in an ice bath to more copper tubing that is in the wort.

i don't even have a regular one yet, but this thought keeps coming to me when i think of making one.... any thoughts?

[croc4]

I have had similair thoughts on this, Idon't like the idea of wasting water using the normal chiller.
But I have not put anything down on paper yet as to the details.

I was thinking of an open tank / tube, a small pump at the bottom of the tank would then connect to one end of the chiller.
Fill the tank with ice and a little chilled water to get the pump going. The water returned from the chiller (hot) would then empty at the top of the tank, flow down through the ice and get re-circulated.

Not sure if this is completly feasable or how much ice one would need.
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[jsmurphy]

I've heard it's not worth buying or building a second chiller. I'm basically doing the same method but with a garden hose coiled in a cold water bath. I only add ice to the bath to get the wort down that last 20* or so.

[vendejp]

cant you just essentially connect 2 chillers together? water from faucet to 1st wort chiller in sink with ice all around it, then goes through a tube to the second chiller in the wort, then back to the other side of a double kitchen sink to the drain.

ive been thinking about this as well because im going to just make a chiller from copper pipe and tube, but in the summer, my tap water isnt that cold and im not sure how effective it would be.

[jsmurphy]

Originally posted by vendejp
cant you just essentially connect 2 chillers together? .

That's basically what I'm talking about, but I use a garden hose instead of a second copper chiller.

See the attached illustration. Scroll down a bit...

http://www.byo.com/feature/13.html

[kevin]

I've made my own immersion with 50ft of 3/8 copper tubing and wrapped it around a can like a coffe can twice doing a double layer. I then timed how long it takes to cool boiling water and it was 11 minutes to 80 degrees. I usually have it in my worts for about 12-15 minutes while gently stirring the worts to circulate it around the coils.

[ray m]

I can vouch from experience, everyone, that this idea is an absolute waste of time. I started doing this after reading something out of BYO on this very idea. So, I bought two 20 foot rolls of copper tubing, etc., etc. and made two wort chillers---one for the wort, one for the ice bath in the sink. When in use, I merely connected the two chillers together. The water went through the chiller in the sink o' ice first, then into the chiller in my wort.

I have tried this 4 times, and the chiller submerged in the sink full of ice does absolutely nothing to cool down the water any further. Maybe it's because of the radiator effect---the chiller takes heat out, not cold.

So what I did the last time I brewed is just used the one chiller in my wort, cooled it as far as it would down to (@ 83* in mid summer here in northern KY), which it reached in 15 min. or so. Then, I took the ice that I would have otherwise used for the other chiller and dumped the entire contents in a huge toy bucket filled with water. I then moved my brewpot (7.5 gallon capacity) into this ice bath and the wort went down to 68* in another 10 minutes. Hope this helped you guys out and, most importantly, saved you guys time, $ and frustration.

Ray

[michaewa]

Wanted to second Ray's comment.

I tried the double chiller - I used a long bit of garden hose submerged in a big tub of ice and not a second copper coil - but it did nothing above what just the wort chiller alone would do.

I would think a second wort chiller would be a waste of $$, especially since it would only be good a few months of the year. Maybe the $$ would be better spent on a counterflow chiller.

I have found the ice-bath method works very well to finish off what my immersion chiller won't, even with a full 5+ gallons of wort.

[Dave A]

I just did this, I have a faucet that can't be hooked up to a chiller so I got creative. An old 5 gal bucket serves as a tank for water/ice, an old pump from a fish tank pushes water through 3/8" hose to a coil of 3/8" copper (~25') back to plastic hose for the trip back to the bucket. I ran it with just 1 gal of water for about 3 minutes and it dropped the temp of 2 gal of wort to ~145 degrees, then I dumped out the (now hot) water and added about 5 lbs of ice and in another 5-10 minutes the wort was down to 92 degrees. 3 more lbs of ice and a few minutes later I had 74 degree wort, 10-15 minutes total. With a little more experimentation I think I can bring the time down a bit, and a bigger pump would help too!

[Beerconnoisseur]

Instead of going for double chillers, just use one wort chiller. If you still have problems, you can use an ice filter, as I describe in this thread. (http://www.realbeer.com/discussions/showthread.php?s=&threadid=950) It will help cool down the wort the last 20-30 degrees.

Hope this helps everyone. :)

[jsmurphy]

Brewed last night and my chiller took the wort down to 75* in 8 minutes.

[michaewa]

Do you know what the water temp going in was? Did you use the garden hose in ice bath?

When I did it that way I noticed no difference, but alas it gets mighty hot in Kansas in August.

[jsmurphy]

I always brew at night when the wife , kids & dogs are sleeping. Brewing is "me time", and I need no distractions. I started cooling at 12:30am. I didn't think to measure the water temp going in, but the air temp outside was probably 70*. (I'm in So. Cal.)

I just ran straight from the hose, no ice bath. I placed the boil pot in the sink filled with tap water, turned on the garden hose and that's it. Just for the heck of it, I threw a couple of chunks of ice in the sink water after 5 minutes, when the temp was about 90*. It may have dropped anyway without the ice.

[ray m]

I am such an idiot.....but JS gave me an idea that I should have logically thought of way before now. Referring to my previous post about submerging the kettle in ice water AFTER the wort chiller did as much as it could do, I will do the ice bath thing DURING wort chilling, but won't put the kettle into the ice until 10 min. or so have gone by. Thanks, JS! This should cut in half the time it takes for me to cool down my summertime worts.

If this doesn't work, I'll try the Beerconn' method.

[jsmurphy]

ray, I didn't use the double chiller method. After I read you guy's comments I said screw it, and just used a water bath in the sink. So thanks for your comments... Next time I will measure the water temp going into the chiller.

[ray m]

I know, JS...you must have sneaked in and read my original post before I had a chance to delete it & change it---which I wrote after reading Mich's question, but before I saw you snuck your answer in. I need to learn to read & type faster!:)