Prechiller for immersion coil

[seanhagerty]

Jamil has a pretty cool set up, check here. His set up doesnt look real complicated but does look to work pretty well. He talks about dropping temps 100 F in a min or two.

[colplink]

I chill a bit differently than most, mainly because of the Texas ground water is so warm... Here, a CFC would get you down to around 80-85 in about an hour at best...

http://users.ev1.net/%7Ecolplink/pholkstudios/brewing.htm

With this setup, I can get pretty low if I want.

[Dan ~D~]

Living in Tampa, FL, I also have to chill a bit like Colplink. Instead recirculating in a tap water bath to initially knock the temperature down, I first pass the hot wort from the kettle through my CFC then a copper coil/immersion chiller placed in a ice water bath in my HLT. With the enough ice I can easily get 5 gallons down in the 50's in approx 10-15 minutes. However, with little stirring of the ice water bath and only ~1 bag of ice, I get my wort down in the high 60's. This is with tap water that seems to maintain at either end of the 70's throughout the year.

I do like Colplink's concept of initial recirculation... it may offer a slower cooling period but it seems nice to leave allot of that cold break behind.

[beer_bear]

I use a double chilling set-up. It works well for me. I can get 5 gallons down in about 10 min. I used a third chiller the other day and it went even faster. It was a sick cold break. My buddy had a chiller for a 10 gallon batch that we hooked up after mine. Both of mine were in an ice bath then fed that water to his chiller. You could literally watch the temp drop. It was about 5 min from boil to pitch. We fucked up though and dropped it down to 55F. If I had the $ I'd do the same set-up for my 5 gallon batch.

[brewsters millionths]

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

can you chuck the chill water back in the well?

[bub]

you could but it is bad karma and mojo to put stuff IN your well... just too risky.
BUB

[jaydub]

Dang, zombie thread! I got an email that someone had replied to a thread and was thinking - immersion chiller....when did I write about that?

Last year as it turns out.

My strategy these days (or at least in summer when the ground water is warm) is to chill down with tap water, then switch to a 7 gallon bucket of ice water as the water source. I just siphon it through the immersion chiller and it seems to do the trick.