Best Type of Wort Chiller for 5 Gal

This is what I share with those interested in buying or making a chiller.

http://www.mrmalty.com/chiller.php

I made mine with 1/2" tubing from our local hardware shop. I wrapped it around a coffee can to form it. You can find a lot of DIY online.

 

It depends on a few factors. Water temp, speed, efficiency of chiller, ect...

 

Mine was purchased but is similar. Works fine. The next one I'll build tho.

 

Depending on the temperature of your tapwater, it may make sense to buy a pump and circulate icewater through an immersion chiller. The way most people do it is to run ordinary tapwater through the chiller to get the wort down to a bit below 100 (even warm tapwater should be able to do that), and then switch over to a pump pushing icewater through the chiller. I do this during the summer in NYC, but in the winter the tapwater is cold enough on its own. I am thinking the water in North Carolina will be considerably warmer.

 

Is one hour too long to chill your full 5 gallons of wort? That's about what it's been taking me using sink/ice bath.

 

It do the pump in an ice water bath for lagers, as it is hard to get down to 45F with the tap water at only a few degrees colder. This set up also is useful in the summer when the tap water is at 77F, and can't get down to ale pitching temps.

 

This time of year I can chill 11 gallons down to 65 F in <14 minutes.

 

I think JimSmetana is saying he just immerses the pot in the ice bath, no chiller involved.

An hour is on the long side, but there's no hard-and-fast line. I think there are very likely other areas of your process that are more important to improve. For instance, fermentation temperature probably matters much more than how quickly you chill your wort. (Though I don't brew a lot of hoppy beers, it may be different for those.)

 

It depends on how long it takes it to get below 170 degrees. Any idea how fast you get below 170?

Edit: 140degrees not 170

 

if your goal is to get to 70 degrees, you would be doing very well with a simple copper coil and your tap water. if you are the kind that likes to tweak every last bit of your brewery and you don't mind spending the money, then a counterflow plate chiller is a good idea.

in the realm if home breweries, there are many areas where an upgrade can make a dramatic difference. i have never heard of anyone stating that their beer was all that better once they upgraded to a counterflow, pump and ice bath or anything beyond the familiar copper coil.
if your goal is to get wort to 45, then yes, you must include some sort of additional cold capacity beyond tap water. keep in mind that many many small and not small brewers are using a counterflow plate chiller. it works and you can capture the run off for the next boil... or laundry.

for a first wort chiller, it is really hard to recommend anything beyond 50' of 1/2" coil or something similar. thats my opinion anyway.
Cheers.

edit; my holding tank is at 40 or less these days. i never timed it, but i can get to 70 in about 10 minutes. and i only have 50' of 1/4". if an upgrade gets me to 7 minutes, so what?

 

No I have no idea. I was thinking a wort chiller would be my next investment. The only issue is connecting to my funky kitchen faucet. That ain't happening. Probably not safe to carry 5.5 g of wort down the stairs to the basement faucet. Maybe a chiller with a pump to run ice water?

 

Agreed on carrying 5.5 gallons of nearly-boiling wort down stairs. Just thinking about it makes me cringe.

A chiller with a pump could work fine, I think, but I wouldn't start with icewater. That would be a big waste of ice. You could start with ordinary tap water, and if you could dump the outflow somewhere other than the sink that would be good (at first it will come out very hot). Then when it gets down to a little under 100, switch to icewater. (Just stop the pump and dump the ice into the sink or whatever vessel your pump is in.) At that point, you can just dump the "wastewater" back into the icewater bath that your pump is sitting in, it won't be very hot.

[EDITED to make clear what I am envisioning: You could start with a pump sitting in your sink, which you have filled with tapwater (no ice). You run the water into your chiller and then out into another drain, if you have one. (Or save some of the hot water for cleaning, some people do that.) This means you will have to run tapwater into the sink for a while to replace the water that is being dumped elsewhere. Once the wort temperature falls to below 100, then dump a bunch of ice in the sink (or whatever). At that point, it probably makes sense to dump the "wastewater" back into the sink to save water.

I should say, I would STOP THE PUMP anytime you are making any changes, because the last thing you want is to lose control of the situation and splash some non-sterilized water into the wort. Make sure everything is situated properly before running the pump. No harm in letting the chiller just sit for a minute or two at any point, but be advised the first water to come out after that may be scalding.]

 

if you are half way handy, an inline T under your sink is maybe $15 and not very difficuly. the cold line to the facuet is likely a s/s braided connection. you will need to build a garden hose bib in between the male copper and female s/s braided line. just be sure to know the size of each connection. rmember too that Lowes or HD will alwys refund anything unused. you can also use a copper saddle valve with a compression fitting. real easy, but kind of half assed.
Cheers.

 

Very handy and that may be a way to go unless my wife says WTF. I hate wasting water but is that worse than buying a big bag of ice every time I brew? dunno. Once it finally effing warms up here in Chicago I can hook up a chiller to the outside hose bib and water the flowers. Until then...

 

For the OP: I believe you have correctly listed your alternatives in the degree of effectiveness. Because I am a simple person, I use a simple wort chiller. Once you start pumping hot wort through copper tubing the degree of difficulty goes up. You will be needing a food grade pump and think long and hard at how you will be sanitizing the inside of your tubing. All of this is done regularly, but expect to spend some time on the learning curve.

For Jim: The technique described by mindbender is what I do (with one exception). I do not attach the chiller's water inlet to the faucet. Instead I use small cooler (anything will work) with a submersible pump (Amazon ~20 bucks) that sits under the faucet. I let the kitchen faucet feed the cooler (and pump), the pump feeds the wort chiller through vinyl tubing. The tubing can be the cheap stuff from Home Depot, connected by hose clamps. There are no threaded fittings in my system. The chiller's return line just vents into the sink drain. Total time to assembly is about 5 minutes and no degree in plumbing required.

Once the temp starts to drop to 130'ish, I add ice to the cooler. Once the return line has a temp lower than my main inlet water temp, I go closed system (just recirculate to the cooler), adding ice as needed. Usually 5 pounds of frozen water does the job. I'm told rock salt will melt the ice quicker resulting in a more efficient transfer of heat. But simple people like me have a hard time understanding that.

Caveat: I live in the Florida Keys, and on the coldest day of the year my water inlet temp is in the high 60s. I don't like to talk about the inlet temp in the summertime.

 

i just added 25 feet of line ($3?) to the discharge end of the chiller. the water now fills the basement washing machine. being on a well, we do need to be aware.

if you recycle the perfectly good water, it is not a waste but rather a clever efficiency. you'll be doing laundry anyway and the water will wait until you need to use it. your better half certainly would not find fault with that. homebrewing is all about solutions to problems. invent a problem to solve if you must.
Cheers.

 

I posted this picture sometime before, but here is it again. Along the lines of the above suggestion.



I have both hot and cold water connections. Haven't yet used the hot for anything, but it's there if I ever need it. I use the cold for wort chilling when it's too cold outside to hook up outdoor hoses to the chiller. All part obtained at local Lowe's.

 

I'm always impressed by how crafty people on this site - especially this forum - are. I suppose it fits right along with the do-it-yourself nature of home brewing, but I am just not inclined to build my own chiller or kegerator or brew kettles.