best way to cool wort

You could purchase a second wort chiller, and run it inline with the current one. The second would be submerged in a bucket of ice water.

 

Yes, pre-chiller heat exchanger...some people use pond pumps also.

 

Is there a way you could run the water through ice. Say if your hose line was long enough to run through the ice before entering your copper tubing. Should cool down further.

 

I use tap water in an immersion chiller to get the wort around 100F in the summer. I then hook the chiller to this with 6' of water hose. http://m.homedepot.com/p/Superior-P...1&ci_sku=204589831&ci_gpa=pla&ci_src=17588969

I put 3 bags of ice in my cooler mash tun and circulate that water through the chiller and back into the cooler. It's the only thing I use the sump pump for.

 

Immersion chillers are a pretty easy and relatively inexpensive DIY project. Bend it around a form (I used my CO2 tank) and be careful not to kink while bending.

 

I would rather put the pot in an ice bucket with water that I could stir around the outside of pot. That's the way I cooled wort before I got a chiller.

 

Are you certain the entire volume is 78°F?

The temperature of the very top layer will be x-degrees warmer than the very bottom layer.
The temperature of a well mixed volume will be lower than the temperature of the top layer.

Noting wrong pitching yeast into L70s wort if you have a way of cooling the fermentor to the desired temperature before active fermentation gets underway.

 

If you don't mind making some adjustments to your recipe, you could over-boil a bit and add ice to the wort to top off after you have cooled it as much as practical with the chiller. That's a quick and dirty trick I used with extract brewing when I first started.

I also chilled my brew kettle in a large tub of ice water, too, before I got my immersion chiller. If you take the worst of the heat away with the immersion chiller first, either technique should get you to a good pitching temperature.

 

Get a plate chiller.

My inlet water temp is in the high 80s, so I consider myself an expert in this area. I struggled with an IC, used lots of ice with a submersible pump, and it still took forever. Then I got the plate chiller. It still takes ice to complete the job, but what used to take 45 minutes is now a 15 minute job.

 

You didn't mention this as something you are already doing, but gently whirlpooling it with a sanitized spoon or cordless drill with sanitized paddle attachment while the chiller is doing its thing also helps.

 

I would be concerned the water flow is too fast for the cold water to cool through a hose. Though, I use very thick walled hoses so a thin hose may be just fine.

I do the double IC, 60' coil in the wort and a 25' coil in ice water which helps drastically. One of these days I'll upgrade to a plate chiller and pump, as those really are beasts when it comes to chilling wort.

 

I do it all the time. It works.

 

Ha. You are a chef AND home brewer!!? Good luck maintaining control of home brewing as a hobby. I am pre-diagnosing you with Homebrewing Attention Surplus Disorder. Sorry. There is no cure. You are doomed to making fantastic fresh beer and having great food ingredients and techniques at your disposal.

 

I do the immersion chiller with another in a bucket of iced salt water. The salt allows the water to get to temps below freezing allowing me to cool the wort even faster. I can do ten gallon batches from 170 to 70 in about 20 minutes.

 

We used to salt the ice to get the beer colder in the Alabama heat. Works well enough that light beer becomes a "beersicle" when you want a really cold one.