Whirlpool Immersion Chiller

[brew]

Yes very nice shiny copper is always pretty!

[Chris Craig]

Very nice!

[DandyMason]

That looks awesome, Im liking the idea of these whirlpool immersion chillers.... might have to look into something like this

[fakr]

I keep juggling ideas around about how to efficiently cool down wort without going through a ton of water.  I currently use a CFC which works great but like tinkering and making things more efficient.  
With a few new additions to the brewery, I've decided to take a 2 phase approach to cooling wort.  First cooling to create cold break, and the second to cool to pitching temp.

I'm installing a 50' SS coil inside my HLT, hard plumbed to 2 ball valves on the outside of the kettle. Same idea as the electric brewery's HLT.  It's a big HERMS coil, but I'm going to fill the HLT with cold water at the end of the boil and pump boiling wort through the herms coil to cool it down and create the cold break.  (I will be recirculating the cold kettle water from bottom to top)

So this first step is basically an inversed whirlpool immersion chiller which I forsee cooling the wort down below 100F quite quickly.  

I'm going to test the above in the coming couple of weeks with water to get solid temps and times.


Thought I'd post this here, as it's immersion related.

[Chris Craig]

Interesting idea.  So, you fill the HLT with cold tap water, and recirculate the wort through it and back into the kettle?

If you have roughly the same volume in both kettles, then I'd say you could probably cool the wort to about 150-160F this way quickly.  To get down to 120F or so will likely take you considerably longer.  What is your target temp for this first phase of cooling?

[Chris Craig]

Interesting idea.  So, you fill the HLT with cold tap water, and recirculate the wort through it and back into the kettle?

If you have roughly the same volume in both kettles, then I'd say you could probably cool the wort to about 150-160F this way quickly.  To get down to 120F or so will likely take you considerably longer.  What is your target temp for this first phase of cooling?

DUH.  100F as per your post.  I'm skeptical, but it's an interesting idea.  I think you're going to need a way to keep the HLT water cold.  Ice.

[fakr]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but lets say I have 20GAL @ 200F and 20GAL @ 50F, they should both finally equal out @ 125F each correct?  The first 20-30F heat transfer should be quite quick, but then drop off and take some time to complete the rest, which I'll confirm with a test.

Yeah, I could either throw ice in the HLT, or instead of recirculating the water out the ball valve and back in the top, I could connect the ball valve to the drain and fresh cold water in through the top....

Anyway, something to try.  if it doesn't work that great, then I'll discard the idea...but I got a feeling it will work pretty good.  The heat transfer is going to be pretty good through a 50' coil.

[JohnQ]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but lets say I have 20GAL @ 200F and 20GAL @ 50F, they should both finally equal out @ 125F each correct?  The first 20-30F heat transfer should be quite quick, but then drop off and take some time to complete the rest, which I'll confirm with a test.

Yeah, I could either throw ice in the HLT, or instead of recirculating the water out the ball valve and back in the top, I could connect the ball valve to the drain and fresh cold water in through the top....

Anyway, something to try.  if it doesn't work that great, then I'll discard the idea...but I got a feeling it will work pretty good.  The heat transfer is going to be pretty good through a 50' coil.

Dump until wort is down to 150, then divert back to kettle. You should average to 100 and end up with a preheat in the HLT for cleaning water.

JQ

[JohnQ]

Dump until wort is down to 150, then divert back to kettle. You should average to 100 and end up with a preheat in the HLT for cleaning water.

JQ

Or better yet, Dump to a capture container until 150, which should give you some very hot water in the capture container which can be used as preheated cleaning water, then divert to HLT for rinse water.

JQ

[fakr]

That's kind of what I figured John.  

Anyways, I'll test and post numbers in the next couple of weeks.

[fakr]

or get real crazy and recirculate through the HERMS AND CFC, then back into the kettle until kettle temp is under 100F.  I bet that wouldn't take very long.

I'll start with the HERMS and escalate from there if it's not good enough.

[Chris Craig]

That's a good idea John.  I hadn't thought of dumping the used hot water for fresh tap water.  That would definitely help with the speed of chilling.

[Chris Craig]

I finally put this to use on the weekend.  I made 10 gallons of my pale ale, so I had a full kettle to try it on.  Kyle was right.  There was some stratification.  The temperature at the top of the kettle was about 10 degrees higher than near the bottom, but that didn't make much difference.  It only took another minute before even the top was below 120F.

Having the whirlpool arm at the bottom of the kettle was a problem for a different reason.  Because the return was so close to the pickup, I never did get a whirlpool in the kettle.  Either that, or the greatbreweh.com pump that I have is just not powerful enough to create the whirlpool.  So, what I'm going to do is shorten the return arm so that it returns just under the surface of a 5 gallon batch of wort (about half way up).  

I'll have to wait a couple of weeks to see what impact this design has had on the hop profile.  I may have a sample at the AGM.

[fakr]

Great info Chris.  Keep us posted!

[jeffsmith]

Having the whirlpool arm at the bottom of the kettle was a problem for a different reason.  Because the return was so close to the pickup, I never did get a whirlpool in the kettle.  Either that, or the greatbreweh.com pump that I have is just not powerful enough to create the whirlpool.  So, what I'm going to do is shorten the return arm so that it returns just under the surface of a 5 gallon batch of wort (about half way up).  

I found the same when I was using my greatbreweh pump and whirlpool IC. When the return was low in the kettle, the pump didn't have enough pressure output to create the whirlpool. I raised the return to about 1" below the surface and got a great, strong whirlpool.