The pros and cons of wort chillers?

[Hecticart]

My second batch is bottled and ready to drink and I’m looking for a do it yourself beer project to keep me occupied till I start the next batch.

I’m thinking about building a wort chiller. I can get the supplies for cost and would have fun tinkering with the thing.

I found the article on AllAboutBeer.com (http://www.allaboutbeer.com/homebrew/equip/chiller.html)
on how to make one and was wondering what people thought about them, if there’s a better way to build one, etcetera and so on.

Thanks!
HecticArt

PS
The beer turned out pretty good (it was a Christmas Ale), decent carbonation but not much of a head. Pretty decent flavor too, but I haven’t decided if it has a bready flavor or a little bit of a yeasty flavor to it. I used a Belgian yeast but could have done a little better job straining it when I racked it to the secondary.

[Vienna Lager]

It is worth the time and effort to build one. Your chill time will drop from about 45 min in a cool water tub to about 12-15 min for a 5 gal batch.

Regarding the bready/yeasty taste; Let the bottles sit in the basement for a couple of weeks and try it then ( if you can wait that long) and that might settle the beer down.

[danno]

there are no cons of having a wort chiller. they are, imo, a complete neccesity if you want to brew good beer. (ok, the one con that pops to mind is that they require work to clean. but that's the only one...)

if you're a tinkerer, and would like to do full volume boils, and maybe plan on progressing to all grain, then consider building a counterflow chiller. you can either do the easy Phil's chiller, where the fittings are made, or you can go to the hardware store and put together everything yourself.

(if you're at all interested, I've built several CFC's, and can tell you the in's and out's and issues to avoid...)

[ontap78]

Alright Danno, I'd be interested in just how a counter flow wort chiller works and why it would be the cat's ass for me to ditch my old wort chiller. I know it takes a while to chill down a full wort boil with a wort chiller as I've been all-graining it for a couple years. I guess I've never seen anybody use one and I'm out here in the sticks and I know of nobody else who brews (except of coarse the fine people at the August Schell Brewery) around here.Please explain it as plain and simple as you can. Just because I won a silver at the state fair, it doesn't mean I'm not thick headed:D .

[danno]

here's a link (http://www.realbeer.com/discussions/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2835) to a thread I posted here about 18 months ago, how I made the first two CFC's. I've since refined (and cut the cost) of my process, but I can't seem to find any pics at the moment. I'll have to find the camera and take a coupla pics of my current setup...

(or, ontap, you're more than welcome to hitch up the wagon to the oxen and bring the family up highway 169 to the big city for a look-see in person... :D )

[Hecticart]

Danno, now THAT is a project! What's the advantage of the counter flow chiller vs. the . . . . flow chiller? I've been running cool water over my carboy & it takes way too many hours to dissipate the heat, hence chiller time. I'm thinking 15 minutes is like making the jump to light speed and going any faster I would need to convert a Delorian into a time machine! There must be some other advantages for a CFC.

I’m (as you can tell) still pretty new to the brew process and thirsty for knowledge.

No short term plans for an all grain brew, but I can picture getting around to it.

Thanks for the info.

[corkybstewart]

When I used an immersion chiller it took 30 minutes to completely cool a 5 gallon batch, and at least an hour to clean all the trub and hops debris off of it. I use my cfc and cool 10 gallons in 10 minutes or less if I put it in a bucket of ice water. Cleaning it is easier too. I turn off the water(so my cleaning water doesn't cool off) and run 5 gallons of boiling water from my hot liquor tank. Then I pump Star-san through it and put it away till next time. I bought mine through morebeer.com, but it might be something easily doable at home if you wanted to build it yourself. It's expensive, but if you brew often it's worth it.

[bruin_ale]

An hour to clean an immersion chiller??? Takes me about 2 minutes with a hose. I agree on the time to cool though, my immersion takes forever and as soon as I get my hands on a pump, I'll be going to CFC.

[HogieWan]

Originally posted by bruin_ale
. . . as soon as I get my hands on a pump, I'll be going to CFC.

I just got one of these (http://wortwizard.com/) - I'm going to try it with water and see how it goes. I'll start a thread about it when I do my experiment.

[HogieWan]

Originally posted by Hecticart
There must be some other advantages for a CFC.

Cold Break. Protein get thermally shocked out of solution and fall to the bottom. These protiens cause chill haze, and I have found they drag on the flavor.

When you chill with an immersion, All of the wort cools at the same rate. With a CFC, the wort in the kettle stays hot (above the temp that bacteria could live). As each bit passes through the chiller it drops in temp from near boiling to pitching temp in seconds. Bacteria don't have a chance and the proteins come loose.

Chilling with an immerision leaves the whole wort open through bacteria friendly tempetures until you transfer to a sealed carboy.

[ontap78]

I once heard that beer flavor benefits from exposure to copper.Be it while heating water, boiling the wort or chilling the wort. Since an immersion chiller is in the boil for at least 15 minutes for sanitation, wouldn't that be a bigger benefit than the small amount of time it's in a CFC?

[corkybstewart]

As for cleaning the immersion chiller, 2 minutes with a hose gets most of the visble chunks off, but I was always having to scrub trub off between the coils. It probably really didn't take an hour, but after 6 hours of brewing even 30 minutes to make sure it was really clean was too long. I also didn't like dropping the thing into boiling wort since it stopped the boil for several minutes until it reached equilibrium. I had a pot lid that the chiller connected to so that the wort would be covered during the cooling process, but cooling was slow and uneven unless I opened the lid and stirred, which defeated the purpose of covering the wort. All in all there is no way to go but the cfc.

[ontap78]

I think your problem is the hops sticking to the chiller. I always use a nylon hop bag to keep things tidy. After I chill my wort I just take out my immersion chiller and hose it off with the exhaust water coming out of my chiller. Take 30 seconds. Trub doesn't stick to the chiller. Maybe Irish moss a little bit but that to comes right off.My advice to you is use a hop bag you'll wonder why you never did before. All this brew talk is making me antsy to brew and I just made a Porter last weekend.:D

[corkybstewart]

With my converted keg kettles the immersion chiller would not have worked-too big to get through the opening but too small to cool 10 gallons quick enough. Parts of it are now a sparge arm, racking arms in the hot liquor tank and brew kettles, and other assorted pieces of brewing equipment. In the summer down here I use well water through my cfc-its about 56 degrees. In the winter I can use water from the kitchen faucet. As I said before, I can easily chill 10 gallons in 10 minutes down to 70 degrees. And by flowing the boiling water through it while I,m cleaning other stuff I save time there also.

[HogieWan]

Originally posted by ontap78
I once heard that beer flavor benefits from exposure to copper.

I've heard it's a wive's tale, and I'd rather the benefits of the cold break. Also - ALL of the beer passes through the copper hot (at the beginning) in a CFC as opposed to just part of the wort that sits right next to the immersion chiller.

[corkybstewart]

That's one of my points. The surface area of an immersion chiller that is in contact with the wort is minimal compared to that of the cfc. You can have cooled wort in the middle of the kettle but still have very hot wort in other parts. If it's really hot outside, I can put my cfc in an ice bath and still get the wort chilled fast.

[brewmonkey]

Something that has not been mentioned (unless I missed it) is that cooling time is directly tied to DMS formation in the finished beer. The longer it takes the cool the wort the more likely your chances of DMS-P forming which off course will then turn into DMS. Nothing better then a nice pint of creamed corn!

Counter flow chillers (heat exchangers) are hands down the best option when it comes to rapid cooling. You effectively increase the surface are of the coolant that the wort will be coming into contact with.

You can also set this up as a 2 stage gig using your old immersion chiller so that it is not going to waste.

Using a cooler large enough to fit your old chiller drop it in and then add ice, water and some salt. Connect your water supply to the "in" on the immersion chiller and then connect the out side with a jumper to the "in" of the counter flow chiller before pumping your wort through. This will not only cool your wort that much quicker you will save a ton of water in the process. With the right setup you should see cooling times drop to about 15-20 minutes depending on batch sizes.

If you can monitor the outside temp of the counter flow you can adjust the water flow so that you are coming out at a pitchable temp. You have just created the "poor mans" 2 stage chiller. Some brewhouses have them set up as part of the glycol loop and can knockout 15bbls in 20 minutes flat.

[corkybstewart]

I keep my cfc in an old plastic fermenter. That keeps it from rolling around, and keeps the fittings vertical. I can fill the fermenter directly with ice and water and skip the "primary chiller." I am interested in knowing what other people do to keep their cfc's clean inside.

[HogieWan]

Originally posted by brewmonkey
You can also set this up as a 2 stage gig using your old immersion chiller so that it is not going to waste.

I'm actually looking for an immersion chiller for this reason. LA tap water is not cold enough to do the job quickly.

[Hecticart]

HogieWan, you're my only hope. . . . !

Man, I love this website. It's like boot camp for brewers. You guys are going to have me in shape in no time at all.

Ontap78 has the right idea. My last batch needs to sit a little longer before it's ready and I don't have enough empties, but I'm going to have to get back in the kitchen soon!

Looks like I'm off the the beer mart to get some "new glass".

[ontap78]

Lucky for me August Schell still sells beer in returnable bottles. I have a cheap source for bottles- $1.40 deposit on a case. I must have at least a dozen cases laying around here.

[Hecticart]

Lucky for me I haven’t looked for pre-emptied bottles.
Half the fun is restoring full bottles to their naturally empty state.

I'm willing to go that extra mile for the love of the craft!
It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it.

I was thinking about some of the posts; the pros, the cons of the 2 basic chiller types and had an idea I wanted to bounce off of the group.

Immersion chillers are slower because they have less contact with the hot wort, but easier to build, use, and clean.

CFC's are faster because they have much more contact with the hot wort, but are trickier to build, use, and clean.

So what happens if your IC has 2 or 3 times the surface contact with the hot wort?

What I'm thinking, is that w/ a 3/8" line you can't run your cold water at full pressure anyway, so why not build 2 or 3 individual coils and run them off of a splitter valve and increase the volume of cold water? My first guess is that it would cut a 30 minute cooling time in half.

It could be worth the experiment.

I can get the parts for next to nothing, coils are easy to bend, and I don’t have the rig for all grain brews yet anyway.

Any thoughts?

[Grog]

I have a 50' 1/2" dia. immersion chiller that can cool 10 gallons of wort to 70°F in less than 30 minutes and if I use my old 40' chiller in an ice bath (as mentioned above), I can usually cut the time to less than 15 minutes depending on how fast I stir. The thing that keeps me from building a CFC is I can't see inside the thing and the verdi gris (sp?) thing freaks me out.

[HogieWan]

Originally posted by Grog
verdi gris (sp?) thing freaks me out.

explain

[toneyc]

Originally posted by HogieWan
explain

I've sorta wondered about that, too. Verdigris is a green or greenish blue poisonous pigment resulting from the action of acetic acid on copper and consisting of one or more basic copper acetates (Merriam-Webster). I'm not sure if it is oxidation, but it forms on copper, brass, and bronze sort of like rust forms on iron. So I am wondering if this stuff forms on the inside of the CFC and how would you clean it out?

:)
Toney.

[fretlessman71]

I've seen it before - picture an old penny that you found in the gutter or under a damp box. Same stuff? Would CLR get rid of it?

(Of course, how'd you know, with all those twists and turns...)

[jstrausss]

Originally posted by HogieWan
I just got one of these (http://wortwizard.com/) - I'm going to try it with water and see how it goes. I'll start a thread about it when I do my experiment.



Definately let us know how this thing works out. It looks pretty cool. Something that I can certainly use.

[HogieWan]

Originally posted by fretlessman71
Would CLR get rid of it?

Vinegar works wonders on copper - especially when hot.

[ontap78]

Originally posted by fretlessman71
I've seen it before - picture an old penny that you found in the gutter or under a damp box. Same stuff? Would CLR get rid of it?

(Of course, how'd you know, with all those twists and turns...) If it's in your wort chiller it's called verdi gris, if it's on an antique it's called "a nice patina".:D

[corkybstewart]

I'm not a chemist so bear with me. Vinegar is acetic acid, verdi gris is copper acetate, are the compounds related? When you say hot vinegar works well on copper, what does it do? Does it clean it and make it shiny and new looking? I use vinegar in my dishwasher regularly but I understand that chemical reaction. I'm reluctant to run an acid through my expensive cfc without knowing if it will hasten the oxidation(verdi gris),wreck the soldered joints, etc.

[HogieWan]

I was told it was the only safe way to get it clean enough. I bought an all-copper cfc off ebay and wanted to make sure it was clean. It came out all prettied up.

[corkybstewart]

I'll give it a try. Tomorrow is my last day of work at my summer job so I'll have lots of time to brew next week, and the weather has finally cooled of. I may give the ole chiller a vinegar douche this weekend so it;ll be fresh next week.

[Doug95624]

Cork,

I know this is an older post, but curious how the douche worked?? I've often wondered about the same, and curious to know what effect the cleaning had on your chiller..

[corkybstewart]

It made it damn shiny and new looking on the outside, so I'm sure it cleaned up the inside as well. I have to clean the HLT pretty often with vinegar so I'll run it thru the CFC at the same time.

[Doug95624]

Very cool. I'll have to give that a try. Any recommended ratio of vinegar to water? Does hot vs. warm water make a difference?

[corkybstewart]

I think I used about a gallon of vinegar in 5 gallons of water, the ratio I use in my dishwasher to get the calcium crud off of glasses and silverware once a month. And my water was near boiling. It probably works cooler, but I just poured it into my HLT after brewing. But don't forget to flush with some clean hot water afterwards, there's no telling what damage the vinegar will do just sitting in there.

[Halgarmeister]

One note on the vinegar, use WHITE vinegar, not the other types.

[Doug95624]

Very good. Thanks guys, I'll make sure to try this out this week. Just did my annual "big clean" on all my equipment (my deep scrub), so the timing for this is perfect...

[toneyc]

Its a new hit CD from Roger Waters: These are the Pros and Cons of Wort Chillers.

:)
Toney.

[Doug95624]

Tried the Corky douche last weekend, and man it really stripped away a bunch of junk from the inside of my Hot Liquor coil and my Countflow Chiller. I kept getting flakes of crap coming out of each of them. I started by brew day a few hours early (to account for the extra pre-cleaning), but ended up running several hours over. I kept having to flush the things out (over and over) to get all the flaking to stop. Have been using my system for about 2 1/2 years without any major cleaning to the insides of these pieces (mainly because the manufacturer didn't really specify anything). I think I'm gonna try the Corky douche quarterly from now on...

[HogieWan]

wow, corky. your name has been placed on a brewing process. however, your name is followed directly by "douche"

[gone_fishing]

Hmmmm...talked about bittersweet! LOL

[Halgarmeister]

At least it's not the name of a beer, that could get ugly in a hurry! :eek: LOL

[corkybstewart]

I like Corky douche better than "that douche Corky".

[HogieWan]

Originally posted by corkybstewart
I like Corky douche better than "that douche Corky".

Thanks - I needed that this early on a Monday

[corkybstewart]

I know what you mean Hogie. Normally I don't mind Monday's but we had a birthday bash Saturday, about 20 people over. Our air conditioner died, luckily it was only about 92 with 30 mph winds, then yesterday the water heater died. I took an ice water "douche " this morning, it's tax day, got to do payroll today, etc.

[HogieWan]

RDWAHAHB :D

[corkybstewart]

Things are looking up. My AC guy just called me, he fixed the AC and the water heater, and he works for homebrew. Now if I could just convince tthe IRS to accept homebrew instead of dollars.

[Hecticart]

OK! I had a shitty year and a half. I've been away from my Mad Scientist Brew at Home Kit for far too long. I've finally dusted it off and FINALLY built my wort chiller!

It ain't pretty, but I built the double coil version that I had talked about way back when. I tested it on 3 gallons of boiling water and cooled it to 62 F in 10 minutes flat. I'm assuming that wort will take a smidge longer, but I hadn't even placed ice around my brew pot.

I've got 2 25' copper coils at 3/8" dia., one large and one small that sits in the center. The whole thing cost me about $80 and an hour of build time.

I'll post pictures later if anybody is interested.

[corkybstewart]

Get out there and give it a real world test, then let us know how it works, with pictures of course.

[Mill Rat]

Originally posted by corkybstewart
Get out there and give it a real world test, then let us know how it works, with pictures of course. Send samples, too. That's the only real way to know for certain.

[darylM]

Originally posted by Mill Rat
Send samples, too. That's the only real way to know for certain.

we may need additional samples to have a statistically significant determination.

[Hecticart]

Alright, I kicked the tires on the double chiller the nigh of the 23rd.

I brewed, I boiled, I chilled. It took roughly 2 and a half gallons of boiling wort from a steady boil to 73 F in just about 6 minutes.

It ran so fast I almost didn't have enough time to react.

I've got 3 pictures to share.
Like I said, it ain't pretty ( I should have taken more time winding the coils) but what the hell, it seems to work well, and clean-up was a snap.

Pic #1
The large coil, the small coil, and the faucet splitter (which was the hardest part to make - getting from a faucet thread to step down to 3/8" with Home Depot parts was a drag.)

[Hecticart]

Pic 2 -
The coils nested together.

[Hecticart]

Pic 3 -

Chiller in action.

Again - it ain't pretty. . . . .

[corkybstewart]

Looks a lot better than my first one. I operate under the premise that irregularly spaced coils create a better cooling environment. It's total BS but that's my story.
Good job, now you can do full boils.

[Hecticart]

Thanks man.

I didn't take any fluid dynamics classes, but I think I read something about that coil theory on the Wikipedia. . . . . it has to be true!

I think I'll be brewing more. Each time it gets a little easier and faster.

I'm feeling adventurous.