Plate chiller?

[sirgiovanni]

We washed the mash tun out and filled it back up with ice water. It read under the lower value of 45 for the run which was ran through a therminator. I pumped 10 gallons over 20 minutes and still finished at around 76F. I'm adding a pump with variable speed to the next run to play with different speeds and will probably stir the ice or add a little salt or something. Idk, I just know it's better than my old coil into the hot wort but I'm still not achieving the rates advertised.

[john mills]

Using a Blichmann Therminator and pump with 15 gallons boiling wort. I would use city water to knock down temp to 120 degrees, then would use about 20 gallons of 43 degree water pushed by a sump pump through the chiller to get the wort to 67-68 degrees.
Flow rate of initial knockdown:
Wort: full recirc, city water: 10 gal/min
Flow rate of pumps after knock down:
Wort: 1 gal/ min. Sump pump: just over 1 gal/ min

[Dutch]

Another thought - use city water all by itself to get down as far as possible before you use the ice and second immersion unit. To get from say 85F to your final temp say 68 F with the added ice/immersion coil should do the trick. If you use the ice process from the beginning you may be just melting ice to get down to ambient due to the delta T limits of the heat exchanger.

[msjulian]

When I was helping Chris Alvey and Randy brew we were getting the temps down to 65 in the middle of the summer by using a pre-chiller coil in a bucket of ice water to chill the tap water before the plate chiller. A few times we got it a little cooler then we were shooting for. I don't know what the flow rates were but we were chilling 10 gallons of wort in a pretty short time. They sure made me a believer in the process.

I have not had to use it to date as I have been able to hit close enough to 70 for my ales. My lagers I let sit over night in the fridge and rack off to a fresh carboy and then pitch so I am usually pitching @ 45 -50 the next morning.

[msjulian]

Just took a reading and my water is 75deg coming out of the tap after running it for 5 min. I think my next brew I am going to have to chill the ground water some how.

[Chris Norrick]

If I don't feel like getting the immersion chiller out I just coil my RV hose in my grain bucket and fill with water and frozen 2liter bottles. Knocked it down to 73 last Sunday. This time of year I have to ferment in a chest freezer (no basement) so that was close enough plus a little time before pitch.


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