best way to cool wort

Do you truly need to cool your wort in 10 minute ?
I use one gallon frozen tap water added to the wort.

 

For lagers in the summer, I cool the wort till around 75 and then hook up a pond pump that is submerged in ice water. I tried the pre-chiller and it didnt work that well for what I wanted.

 

Kegs also work well. The foot of the keg usually has a little bit of a break in the foot that you can prop the end of the copper tubing around. I highly recommend a buddy-system here. One person holds, one person puts their ass behind it.

 

I use a plate chiller and a pump. The plate chiller has a ball valve on the 'out' side of the wort. Slow moving wort with fast moving water really helps the transfer of heat. I recently added a sump pump to recirculate the water and I also started freezing a 6 gallon bucket of water for each brewday to save money on ice.

 

I agree with everyone else on the pre-chiller. Scurvy is on the money that this is an easy build. Coiling the copper around a paint can or corny keg works for the overall shape, but the 90 degree bends are tougher. Do yourself a favor and get a cheap tube bender. made all the difference for me. Only about $6 @ Harbour Freight or the like. Another thing I ran into was the copper pipe. They had 2 different types, one with orange end caps and one without. Get the one without. The caps are for lines that are meant for potable fresh water liines. Since the wort won't be going inside the copper the other is fine. I think the 'water line' copper may be a bit thicker but not much. IMO a smaller 20ft section of coil should be sufficient for a pre-chiller. Hope this helps.

Cheap tube bender
http://www.harborfreight.com/tubing-bender-3755.html

 

I've added frozen, sanitized bottles many times. Works great.

I've also used my bottling bucket filled with ice water and hooked it to my ic. Then I raise the bottling bucket up and let the ice water flow through the ic. This will usually bring the wort down to temp.

 

In FL I had the same issue when I started doing full boils. My solution was to get a fountain pump and hook that up to my immersion chiller instead of hooking it up to my tap. I buy 2 bags of ice on boiling day, and fill up a big cooler with tap water. I'll run the pump until it's around 95F, then I dump all the ice in along with some frozen water bottles. Get's it down to 65 in about 5 minutes after that. I don't recirculate the water, the heated water goes in the sink. My cooler is big enough to hold enough. It took a couple times to get the water level right for adding the ice, if there is too much water the ice won't cool it enough to make a difference.

 

For all the guys who are having issues with the prechiller water getting cold enough prior to entering the wort chiller, turn your water faucet so you lower the flow rate. I had the same issue with the dual chiller set up, I fixed it for free by only cracking my spigot open a bit and allowing a slower flow of water.

 

I do pretty much the same thing except I have a large bucket I use with the pump to get the wort down to 100 F before using my ice bath. I hold a thermocouple on the water out line and use tap water to replace what is coming out of the immersion chiller line until the water coming out is close to ground water temp then I begin recirculating, this helps avoid wasting ice.

I used to use a pre chiller but not I just stick both in the wort. I feel like this works better. Sometimes I pick my kettle up and stick it in a bucket of water for good measure, at the beginning of cooling I sometimes spray the sides to help cool too.

My next step is going to be getting a pump to create a whirlpool. the immersion chillers make it challenging to create a good whirlpool.

 

Fastest for me is to use the immersion chiller and recirculate/whirlpool the wort using the Chugger pump.. In the winter it can get 10 gallons down from boiling to 65F in 14 minutes. Summer, not so much as the tap water can get into the high 70s here. Then I use the pond pump to circulate ice water once the wort has been chilled as low as it can go with the tap water.

 

There was recently a study linked here I believe that determined more trub in the carboy actually helps lower esters and increase clarity. Assuming your whirlpooling with the goal of leaving as much trub as possible in the kettle this info may change your desire. Unless you want a whirlpool to get it cooler faster.

 

I actually want to whirlpool with the goal of cooling faster. Though esters arent always a bad thing, interesting to consider. Thanks for the tip.