I will keep this short(ish): In the warmer months I use too much water to cool down my wort. 200 gallons last month. Saw in zymurgy where they were using an extra cooler filled with ice water and using a pump to recirculate that water through their immersion chiller, adding ice as needed. I plan on using my hot liquor tank filled with ice water, but my question is this: what kind of pump do I need to be able to hook it up to my immersion chiller??? It hooks up to my water hose and I have a sink adapter. I would like specs or links if you could just steer me in the right direction. I'm assuming I would need some fittings and hose as well? Anyone engineer something like this??? Thanks
You should look into using a plate heat exchanger and a march pump. There are plenty of turn key set ups available. A plate heat exchanger is much more efficient than a copper coil and uses a lot less water. You can re-use the chill water too. I put the hose end in the washing machine and it is filled with luke warm water for a load of laundry. Plenty of threads about heat exchangers on this forum so do a search. Cheers
Here's the pump I use to move ice water through an immersion chiller. Works really fast. I cool with ground water until the temperature drop slows noticeably, then switch over to ice water.
And that has only that little black hose on the right that pumps out the water, correct? How do you connect it to your immersion chiller???
What you're seeing there is the power cord. What you can't see, because it's hidden behind that little tower, is the pump's outlet, a male garden hose connector. A short garden hose runs between that and a male garden hose connector at the inlet of the immersion chiller. The chiller's outlet connects to another short garden hose that dumps the water back into the ice water reservoir (a utility sink). ETA: the male garden hose connector on the pump is not actually part of the pump, but an adapter that came along with it.
Think of this as an investment in your brewing. You are saving money when you invest money. Your wife wants you to save money, doesn't she? There is a logic here. It's how many of us ended up with 11 Corney kegs and a 15 gallon kettle. Go with the ice water. But do discharge into the washing machine. It really does save a lot of water. Cheers
You don't need a fancy pump . . . a cheap submersible pump from Amazon will do the trick (< 20 bucks), something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Zoronk-Fount...d=1&keywords=B08JSR7Y6K&qid=1619039666&sr=8-1 And you're not trying to move the maximum capacity of water as the longer the cooled water is in the chiller the greater the heat transfer. So pick out a pump with a relatively low output. Same when initially using ground water, slow it down for a greater transfer of heat to minimize waste. I've been using the same simple (i.e. cheap) pump for years. A plate exchanger is a little faster than an immersible chiller, but either can get the job done. After using ground water to 120'ish, I find ~5 gals of icy water will do the trick. My total water use for a 5 gal brew day is under 50 gallons. To make your connection go to Lowe's or HD or Amazon and look for "garden hose repair kit" . . . this will give you a barb fitting with either a male or female threaded end. Use inexpensive vinyl tubing, it'll take some fooling around to get the right diameter but we all go through that.
I gotta tell ya, I live in East Tennessee so not that far from Virginia and in the summer months even cooling the wort down as low as ground water will take it, recirculating the ice bath water through the chiller melts it extremely fast and in my experience 2-4 BIG bags of ice didn’t make it very long. I found that if I coil my garden hose up in the ice cooler prechiller and slow the flow down with a clamp it drops a lot faster. I have since acquired a extra submersible chiller so I linked it to my bigger one and I put one in a ice bath cooler and the other in the wort. I might add that if you clamp the water line to slow the flow do it on the supply side not the discharge and watch for water leaks. It will leak up the chiller and back down into your wort. You’ll have a lot lower gravity before you know it. Ask me how I know lol.
So far as reusing the water, I collect it in buckets and use for cleaning the mashtun and boil kettle, as well watering the garden/flowers in the summer.
Yeah I kind of do something like that already. I fill a kiddie pool with ice water and coil my water hose in it. I let it sit for the last 20 min of the boil or during the whirlpool, essentially turning it into a giant immersion chiller. I'll just do both now
A zillion thank yous. After using the water hose for 10 min to cool after flameout, I went to this method. 2 bags of ice and 5 gallons of ice went from 120 to 65 in about 35-40min. My wife is pleased. Can't believe I didn't do this years ago. A 3/4 male adapter with 3/8barb works for this pump
Grasping (or grokking, for you Robert A. Heinlein fans) this principle has improved not only the speed at which my wort is chilled, but it also reduced the amount of water needed to chill it
While not the same, Anvil has a spiffy little cooling kit for their fermentors. It has a little pump with it. I am sure this would be too slow for a kettle chiller, but might help and is cheap is IMHO. I bought one thinking I could do lagers with it... Now it is solely used to chill some of my worts/musts where I did not use my chiller. I use a but cooler filled with ice and just let it go until morning. https://www.anvilbrewing.com/-p/anv-cs-7.5gal.htm
I do the same in the summer. Use it for the garden. I'll get it to about 80-90 degrees, then take to cellar and let it sit for a couple hours in ice. Gets it down to about 70. Pitch and stir. Had no problems.
You could also just run the pump for about 20 seconds to fill the chiller back up with cold water and start it when needed.
