Help me figure out what I need to do for chilling

[bpgreen]

Long post follows. If your eyes start glazing over, feel free to move on.

I've been brewing for about 9 years, but I've only made a handful of all-grain batches and those were all small volume batches.

Most of the brews I've done have been stovetop partial mashes, so I've just used an ice slurry in the sink to cool.

I recently bought the Mash and Boil, so even with a partial mash, I can't do the ice slurry in the sink thing.

For my first batch, I'm just doing a no-chill approach. But there are times when that isn't practical.

So

I live in a desert and I want to conserve water. I could probably use 2-3 times as much water as I do without increasing my water bill, but that's not the point. The point is that water is a limited resource here and it should be conserved when possible.

I have an immersion chiller. It isn't great, but it's there. Its connections are the same that garden hoses use. But I'm now brewing in the kitchen and am nowhere near any garden hose connections.

I've got a pump that I used with the immersion chiller, but I think I lost some connecting pieces.

I recently bought a plate chiller (just because it was on sale).

I sent an email to my LHBS, and they said I should get a pump to move the wort through the chiller because gravity feed won't do a good job chilling it, but that I can use a garden hose or recirculating pump for the water.

This seems counterintuitive to me. It seems to me that using a pump for the wort would be counter productive. If I want to maximize the chilling, I would slow the flow, not speed it up.

I've never used a plate chiller, so I may be off base, but I'm thinking that I can use the pump I have now to recirculate the water (or I can connect to a garden hose faucet) and gravity feed the wort (changing the flow rate with the valve) to get the right chill.

Thoughts?

[John Sand]

A couple, though I haven't used either a mash and boil or a plate chiller. You might do partial boils and top off with ice, boiled and frozen ahead of time. You might run chilled glycol or water through your plate chiller or immersion chiller. Keep us posted.

[mashani]

You might do partial boils and top off with ice

This is what I've been doing for 5 gallon batches up until now. I'm often brewing them as a more concentrated 3 gallon batch with the hops adjusted to account for the higher gravity wort, and then topping up post boil with 2 gallons of nearly frozen water.

I did that because I had small equipment (pre-mash & boil) and also because using a wort chiller that requires the lid to be taken off the pot is asking for a brett infection in my house. Even 5 minutes with the lid off below 140 or so is too many minutes. I have a chiller, which I do use sometimes, but more often I hop stand, let it chill a bit while it does it, and then top up with the ice water.

I may very well try the same thing in the Mash & Boil at some point. It should work fine as long as it's going to be something that turns into a 1.04-1.05ish beer for sure.

Bigger beers are tougher as it gets into the sketchy efficiency territory too much above that, unless you are doing them with partial mash / late extract additions.

With the M&B you could technically do both this and a chill with the chiller. You probably want to start with the plate chiller from a boil, let it rip for 5 minutes to make sure any nasties are murdered, and then dump in the water, and continue chilling. It should then only take a few minutes of time running through the plate chiller to get it to pitching temps, and use way less water overall.

Sounds mad, but it would work. Big macro brewers are known to do similar things for some beers to save hot side equipment energy/volume/water costs.

[Dawg LB Steve]

Use your wort pump to pump wort thru the plate chiller, water thru your immersion chiller in a bucket of ice then to your plate chiller. Save a bucket full if discharge water for cleanup, it will already be pretty hot.

Sent from my XT830C using Tapatalk

[LouieMacGoo]

Several people that I know from my HBC have either built or bought counter flow wort chillers. You pump wort through in one direction and cold water in the other and you can chill the wort in less than half the time of an immersion wort chiller.

One of the guys actually has 2 pumps, one for his wort and one for the counter flow chiller. What he does is fill a cooler with ice, water and salt and has his old immersion chiller submerged in it then recirculates that chilled water using the pump through the counter flow. He says he can get his wort chilled down to lager pitching temp within 10 to 15 minutes and his wort chilling system is basically a closed system.

Here's a video of a guy that built his own counterflow that he uses with his Mash and Boil.

[RickBeer]

Capture water in large trash barrels with covers and use for landscaping.

[mashani]

Capture water in large trash barrels with covers and use for landscaping.

FYI: Based on my experiences in his local, he might only be getting 18 inches of rain a year, so that's probably not going to work so hot. He might only get any sort of measurable precipitation 50 or so days out of the whole year, usually in minuscule amounts. Only place with more is up in the mountains.

[John Sand]

Rick might mean to capture the chill water after using and save for later watering.

[berryman]

Rick might mean to capture the chill water after using and save for later watering.

What I am thinking he meant also. I am somewhat having the same problem on cooling down my Mash&Boil also but have more water around here then I know what to do with most of the time. I know what Brian is saying and have been out in that area and would be good to conserve. Wonder how much less water can be used with a Plate chiller or a counter flow compared to a more higher efficiency immersion chiller like the Hydro? I am thinking a plate chiller would use less but don't know, but I want to stick with a immersion chiller because would be easier to clean the way I am doing it now.

[bpgreen]

Thanks fo the ideas. I'll try to clarify a few things.

We get almost all of our precipitation during the winter as snow. I also do most of my brewing in the winter (or at least in the cooler months). But we get more than 18 inches. I just googled it and our average annual precipitation is 21 inches.

Part of the reason I bought the Mash & Boil is so I could brew indoors. This also means that there's no hose connection close enough to use. There's one in the basement, but it's kind of being used by the washing machine, and it's also in the basement. There are also two outside, but they're not really usable in the winter. And I also want to brew indoors. If I brew indoors, I can't readily get the Mash & Boil outside to

I've been doing partial volume boils and partial mashes, topping off with ice and refrigerated water to cool, then cooling it more with an ice slurry until it's cool enough to pour into the fermenter and topping off with more refrigerated water until it reaches pitching temperatures. But I want to brew full volume all-grain batches now that I have the Mash & Boil.

I was going to say that capturing water for reuse is not legal in Utah, but I googled it and apparently that's no longer the case. Water rights in the west are really odd, but basically, you don't buy the water, you buy the right to use it and you only buy the right to use it once.

But a law was passed in 2010 allowing up to 2 containers (neither to exceed 100 gallons) to be used to store water. So I could store up to 200 gallons (up to 2500 if I got a special permit).

My lawn is predominately native grasses, so I rarely water it (I really do try to conserve water). I do water my hops occasionally.

So I guess I could capture the water and use it for my hops, but if I use the spigot in the basement, I'd then have to get the water upstairs and outside. If I use one of the spigots outside, I'd be limited to brewing during warmer weather and could just run the hose to the hop plant(s). But that would require me to brew outside and only when it's warm enough to use water outside.

I don't currently have a wort pump. I'm trying to avoid buying one and that's part of what I'm trying to ask. Is it really necessary to use a wort pump to pump the wort through the plate chiller? I would think gravity flow would do the trick (and maybe even better because I could control how wide I open the spigot). How does pumping the wort through improve cooling? I saw a youtube video of a guy using a plate chiller and he was using a hose for the water and gravity for the wort, adjusting the flow to get the output temperature he wanted.

Should I maybe consider just scrapping the plate chiller and going back to my immersion chiller? No matter which chiller I use, I'll still need a way to get water running through it. That's kind of a given.

But why can't I use gravity to run the wort through the plate chiller?

[mashani]

You can in theory gravity feed your plate chiller, but my understanding it it's a big PITA, as in the height required to get a good flow means lifting up your brewing vessel a lot higher then you are going to want it at to brew and sparge with the basket.

You would want some kind of cart that has a built in lift of some sort, so after sparging you could take the basket off and then raise the whole thing up high. I'd not want to lift that thing full of 5 gallons of boiling wort. That is just asking for well... bad things... to happen.

Everybody that I've read about that has attempted this has decided it was a real PITA or too dangerous and got a pump.

[dbrowning]

Part of the reason I bought the Mash & Boil is so I could brew indoors. This also means that there's no hose connection close enough to use.


A hose adaptor for your sink ... $4 - $6 at Lowes

[RickBeer]

Yes, I meant using barrels to capture the runoff from the hose. Can't imagine the water police would care about how many barrels you used for that purpose, nor would they know.

Re: a hose adapter, some kitchen sinks (like mine) have a wand with an aerator that is NOT intended to be removed and would not work. That said, I could plumb a connector into the cold water line if I wanted to, but I'm sure it would be cumbersome to run the hose from under the sink.

Googling plate chillers without pumps yields many people saying it doesn't work very good.

[bpgreen]

I've got a water filter on my faucet, so an adapter wouldn't work. I suppose I could do some plumbing work and add a connecter for a hose, but I don't really want to go to that much trouble.

So a pump recirculating ice water is really my best option. If I have to get a wort pump, I guess I'll go that route.

[bpgreen]

Thanks for all of the feedback here. I thought I'd provide an update.

I went to the LHBS today to discuss options. They told me that I'd probably be best using the immersion chiller and that my two best options would be to move my brewing to the basement and use a wye connector on the cold water for the washing machine (this would also probably involve bringing my induction burner down there as well) or get an adapter for the hose that connects to the swamp cooler pump (it's a really thin plastic hose). They also said they didn't have an adapter that would work for that and Home Depot or Lowes would be my best bet.

While there, I also picked up a 50 lb bag of grain. I was going to just bring back about 40 lbs or so (I've got a big bucket that originally held 45 lbs of wheat), but realized that if I brought the whole bag home, I'd probably have room for the rest of it in the bucket after one all-grain batch, so I brought the whole bag home with me.

While I was at Home Depot trying to figure out whether one of the hose repair kits would work on the flimsy plastic hose for the pump (I had something like that working for a while, but it started leaking, probably because the hose is so thin), I noticed a "light duty" 1/2 inch garden hose. I went back out to my car and measured the ID of the hose I had. 1/2 inch.

Brewing in the kitchen is much more convenient than brewing in the basement would be.

So I picked up the 50 foot light duty hose (about $10). I don't need nearly that much length, but I can cut it to the length I need, since I only need the connector on one end. I'll use a clamp on the other end (probably not needed, but I'll feel better if it's clamped on). So for my next brew, I'll use my immersion chiller and recirculate ice water in the sink.