My first counter flow wort chiller

[Richard]

Probably need to keep an open vessel for chucking more snow in as it melts, and yeah - there'd be overflow. Interesting idea, though. So long as you could keep the temperature of the water in the cool vessel low enough whilst you ran the thing it should work pretty well.

[Dean]

I think you'd be very disappointed with a coil-in-snowbank for reasons already mentioned as well as the possibility of no snow on brew day. If you had a 50 gallon drum full of water and added a few gallons of enviro-friendly RV antifreeze, on the coldest day it would be a slushy gel (and below freezing) ...throw your coil and as much hose as you can in that and you may be on to something.

[Richard]

Great idea on the barrel & antifreeze... could just leave it in the cold and it'd provide all kinds of thermal mass to mop up after boil.

Now I definitely want one

[fakr]

One thing to keep in mind with this setup guys, is if the water in the resevoir is too cold (close to zero), the wort will be way too cold to pitch as well...but if the water warms up over the span of cooling the wort, perhaps the final temp of the wort will be very close to pitching temp.   ex. first half too cold, second half too warm.

[brew]

so is pitching too cold a bad thing?

[Gil Breau]

Yeast wont wake up if its cold.

Longer time to ferment = more chance of infection.

[brew]

Ah I see - yes I had put one of my batches in the fridge to cool it down to below 70, didn't get back home until that evening and it was getting below 50 - I took it out and pitched, took 24h for the yeast to start, and for an S-04 batch it didn't get out the blow off tube - which was nice... but it only really added a day or so to the ferment...

[Richard]

Actually unless you're *really* cold that shouldn't be a major issue. It's recommended to pitch below fermentation temperature (albeit not quite as much as to retard the yeast), as that minimises the production of all kinds of off-flavours or precursors to same. It's certainly true that you want the yeasties to get down to work and outcompete any bacteria, but you should be concerned for pitching rate and temperature at pitching, both of which have goldilocks zones.

[Dean]

there's no way a DIY chiller is going to get it that cold

[Kyle]

at least not in our warm winters, look what you can do where I'm from:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkFeTduJUDI

note that was boiling water

[Richard]

*begin pedantic mode*That's at least partially because there is zero humidity and the fact it was boiling probably helped it freeze because it split the water up into itty bitty pieces with almost no heat capacity each*end pedantic mode*

I figure if it was room temperature it would have hit the ground.

Still... very cool ( ).

[daniel.chisholm]

Got all the parts and was back home at 8pm.  by almost 9:30pm I was done.  I couldn't believe how easy it actually was.  Very excited to try it.

One little piece of information I'm missing though...how the hell do you use it?!   What water source are you using?what hookup are you using form your kettle to the small copper tube that carries the wort?  hoses?  clamps?  quick disconnects?  

CFC's are fun to build, eh?  Did you unwind your copper to be straight-ish in order to thread it into the hose, or did you thread the hose on with the copper in its curled state?

In my brewery I have standardized on having all pieces of "equipment" (eg kettle outlet, pump inlet and outlet, chiller ends, etc) to present a 3/8" male flare fitting.  All of my hoses (braid reinforced PVC) have female 3/8" swivel connectors.  In this way I can connect any piece of equipment to any other piece of equipment.

The easiest way I found to terminate the 3/8" copper tubing was to take a 3/8" male flare coupling (a brass fitting with a 3/8" male flare at each end) and drill out one end with a 3/8" drill.  Then solder this over the end of the copper tube.

[fakr]

Hey Daniel,

I straightened out the copper and ran it through the rubber hose.  it was quite easy as I had drained a good amount of carwash and water through the hose first.  I think it would be killer hard to try and wind hose around coiled copper pipe.
I used a keg to re wind the copper and rubber hose.

funny you mention the disconnects, I just ordered a bunch of cam lock disconnects so all my equipment will be consistent.

[brew]

I straightened out my copper as well - used the el cheapo $12.99 hose from Home depot. I like copper unions, and use 1/2" where i can... they are pretty cheap at Home Depot as well - not quite as nice as the quick disconnects, but the unions are local and they are cheaper... for my water supply I used the PVC quick connectors (Kents) - they just slide on and slide off the 1/2" copper - I found them a little more convenient than the screw on hose ends...