Hi everyone, I am a homebrewer and I'm starting to outgrow my set up, specifically the chilling system. Right now I'm using an autosiphon (and I'm sure you can see why I'm wanting to switch) and am looking to upgrade to some type of automated system with a pump. Can anyone suggest a good *cheap* pump to pull the wort through my chiller? Thanks
I don't know about cheap, but this is the best pump for home brewing. http://www.ebay.com/itm/March-pump-...666?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item53f8c5710a Keep in mind the 3/4" mpt inlet - center inlet March pumps have superior flow rate and prime better. The outlet side is 1/2" mpt.
minor technicality, you always want to push wort through the chiller, not pull. March, chugger & little giants are the three pumps you'll generally talked about on a hb level. the little giants i don't think are supposedly graded for high temp usage, but i'm not 100% sure.
You can get a cheap quarter horse sump pump from Harbor Freight or Home depot for about $50. You can connect this to a garden hose fitting and a gargen hose. You'll want respective connections for both sides of your chiller and garden hose on the other side to channel this away from your wort. After you get down to about 100F you can use the same sump pump in a tupperware full of ice water. Now you can get down to about 60F on a hot summer day.
How would you use it to push instead of pull? The way I was thinking of using this is to attach a pump to a hose and wand that I would use to pull the wort from the kettle through a copper chilling system in my sink sitting in ice water then into my fermenter. I'm using an auto siphon now and that's what I'm looking to replace..
Nope, that won't work...you're going to need to put a valve on your kettle and drain via gravity to the pump below the kettle. The pump then pushes the wort through the output and through a chiller. As I mentioned in that BM I sent, these magnetic drive pumps that brewers use do not self-prime, meaning that they cannot pull liquid into them. Liquid needs to flood the pump and evacuate the air. Then, the impeller pushes it out the other side.
Not necessarily. If your current kettle is big enough, you can use a hole saw or step bit to drill the appropriate sized hole for one of these weldless bulkhead kits: http://www.bargainfittings.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=46 Then, you add a ball valve and some tubing to gravity drain to your pump.
Here's a cheap valve http://www.williamsbrewing.com/KETTLEVALVE--P2374.aspx We run 18-20 gallons at a time through our plate chiller from the kettle, using this valve and gravity.
