Automated Stirstick

Yeah I saw that, but concerned that she never posted the final product in action. Plus that is too professional looking compared to the one I posted. Something about all those silicon spatulas sticking out of the rod, simple mesmerizing.

 

For the win, would rather clean that one vs the one I posted. Would prob have used clear piece of plexiglass vs wood for easier cleanup and viewing what is going on

 

I can third this. Prechiller didnt work very well, while recirculating ice water worked very well. This is what I do if I brew lagers in the summer. I mostly just brew them in the spring.

 

I use a paddle and my drill to get 10 gallons from about 150 to pitching temp in 5 or 10 minutes. Ive never had hot side aeration issues because its a stainless shaft with some kind of plastic aeration wand so i cant use it from the get go. But in my experience its easy to get down to 150

 

I hand hold it and my biggest concern using it is that my drill is dirty because i use it for work and the wort creates a vortex so i should look into rigging up a dedicated drill. the trigger would be as simple as a spring clamp. Would be nice to not have to stand there for 5 minutes. Still amazing how fast it chills because if i let run without stirring it takes close to an hour

 

I used to use a pre-chiller and had exactly the same frustration. I can tell you ditching the pre-chiller and going with recirculating ice water using a cheap pond pump made a huge difference. When I use the ice water pump, I get down to lager pitching temps in about 20 minutes or less, in the PA summer. I think others here can also attest to pre-chillers being not particularly efficient and the difference with recirculation.

 

Too late to edit, so I'll add here: Going back through the thread, I see that the ice water recirculation pump idea has already been discussed.

Curious though what you mean about "sanitizing" the pump. When you recirculate ice water through an immersion chiller, the pump doesn't need to be sanitized. Or are you using the pump to do a whirlpool?

If the latter, I would highly recommend trying it as an ice water recirculator, and forget about whirlpooling (unless you want to whirlpool for hop flavor/aroma purposes).

 

Here's a pic of my pump, with specs printed on it. I don't know if your 216 Gallons Per Hour is fast enough. Someone else hopefully will know. Mine has a male garden hose end connector (can't see it in picture). My immersion chiller and utility sink also have garden hose end connectors. I would not recommend keeping your pre-chiller in line between the pump and your wort chiller... it basically will just be adding resistance to the flow.

Here are the connectors on the chiller.

 

I’ll echo just about all of what vikeman said. Prechillers are useless. You need to recirculate ice water. After a couple different pond pumps from Home Depot wouldn’t cut it, I bought the following that was about the same price and much more power:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0009XB7M8?psc=1&ref=yo_pop_mb_pd_title
It also has a garden hose fitting. You still want to keep all hoses as short as possible to lower resistance. I also put the reservoir (5 gallon bucket) at the same level as my kettle so it doesn’t have to pump vertically as much. With your water temps probably much colder than mine, you probably won’t have to switch to it until later. I switch at around 100-110, which is when the needle on my kettle theremometer starts to crawl. You’ll need less ice too.

 

Yeah. But out of pocket health care costs are quite reasonable.

 

Well also, are both prices in U.S. dollars? If the Canadian price is in Canadian dollars, that's more like $44 vs. $69, which is still a big difference, but not quite so dramatic.