Beer Forum

Hi all:
My house water temp is running in the 60's this fall, and my cooler gets the wort down to 80F pretty quick, but I'm resorting to dunking the 50 pound full kettle into an ice bath to get down to pitching temps (which I was trying to get away from with the immersion coil). Has anyone had experience with making a second coil and running your cooling water through it before it goes into the kettle? I've still got about 25' of copper 3/8 tubing left over from my chiller construction.

-JW

Hey JW,

I used to use two immersion chillers: one in the wort and one acting as a pre-chiller in ice water. This worked better than just tap water running through the chiller. The key is to keep stirring the wort without splashing it. I just bought the Shirron Plate Chiller and it rocks. I still pre-chill my water before it goes through the plate chiller and I can chill 5 gallons down to 72 degrees in just a few minutes.

BigBadBrad wrote:Hey JW,

I used to use two immersion chillers: one in the wort and one acting as a pre-chiller in ice water. This worked better than just tap water running through the chiller. The key is to keep stirring the wort without splashing it. I just bought the Shirron Plate Chiller and it rocks. I still pre-chill my water before it goes through the plate chiller and I can chill 5 gallons down to 72 degrees in just a few minutes.

I do pretty much to same thing. Use your extra copper to make a second coil. Drop it into a bucket or whatever you have handy and make an ice bath around it. I usually don't hook into the prechiller till I get to about 90deg. I can drop the wort to 90 really fast so no need to run through ice before that.

Travis

(edit for spelling)

I've tried a prechiller with minimal results.

Get a $40 submersible pump from Northern Tool. Put 2 gallons of water in a 7 gallon bucket. Submerge the pump in the water...then fill the bucket with ice.

Use your garden hose to take your wort from boiling to 115. ....then hook up your recuirculation pump to take you the rest of the way.

IM chiller here. In the summer I use an ice batch IM chiller combo. It works for me, although I do want to make a pre chiller one day in my spare time.

Anybody have any pictures of what they have so I can copy it? I work better with pretty pictures.

Thanks,

Rob

If you are looking to make your pre-chiller more effective you can try using salt water and ice. You should be able to get that bucket to around 0 F. Just be sure to keep the water running through the coil so it doesn't freeze on you.

When I switched to a CFC a couple of years back, I started using my old IC as the pre-chiller. I'm on well water, so the pre-chiller helps keep the water usage down too.

Cheers,
Dr Scott