In the summer, brewing outside can be fun... But how do you cool that thing down?! With some engineering and a few simple tricks, here's a cheap way to get that cold break in August Step one: get a kiddie pool Step 2 Make sure you have an immersion chiller Step 3: have access to a water hose, preferably outside. Step 4: get some ice. At least five bags. More if doing a lager or pilsner. Sometimes the groundwater is too warm to chill that beer! I take my water hose and wrap it around my brew kettle BEFORE filling up the pool. There's a reason for that... Have the ice on standby during the boil. I fill it up about halfway through the boil or 15 min if you're doing a whirlpool. ADD THE ICE RIGHT BEFORE using immersion chiller. If it doesn't cool down fast enough for you, sit the kettle in the pool that you fitted the hose for. If you want to add more ice, buy more. This is essentially a makeshift immersion chiller in case you haven't seen where I'm going with it. It's cooling down the water coming out of the hose. Works great for me in the summer months. That cold break is essential, especially if you're doing a lager or pilsner. This is a cheap hack that works very well in my area of Virginia.
I use a pre-chiller. Essentially a small immersion chiller that I place in a bucket of salted ice (if you made hand-cranked ice cream as a kid before home ice cream makers were a thing, you know what I'm talking about), then connect that to some more hose that leads to my immersion chiller. I keep a spray bottle of water in the fridge as well, and spray down the sides of the kettle while this takes place. Stir counter to the direction of the water flow, so it's sorta a whirlpool as well.. I keep the bag of the hop spider between the brew kettle wall and the chiller, once I start to drain into the fermentor, I rest the bag on top of the chiller so that it drains. Works for me. Just make sure to clean the pre-chiller well afterwards to prevent corrosion. I try to save all the water I use for chilling to use for cleaning. FWIW, I made my own immersion chiller and pre-chiller. Immersion chiller was 50' of 3/8" copper refrigerator tubing wrapped around a thin bucket, pre-cooler was 20' of 3/8" copper tubing wrapped around a tall pot.
I do something pretty similar but that second immersion chiller you are effectively creating is a cool idea. I have a cheap above ground pool cover pump that I immerse in a cooler of ice water. I chill the wort to about 95 degrees from my house water then turn off the spigot and attach the immersion chiller to the pump and recirculate the water from the cooler. I was able to get a lager down to 52 degrees before transferring to the fermenter on Sunday when it was about 85 outside.
You guys are so smart. I have an immersion chiller and a spare cooler and a submersible pump and what do I do, coil the silicone inlet hose for the IC in the ice water cooler and put my outlet/hot water in the cooler and try and recycle the water to cut on usage. Let’s just say the ice last 10 seconds lol.
I do something similar but use the hose and ground water to get it down to the low 80's. I then switch over to the cooler water to get down to mid to high sixties. That last part goes pretty fast and I've not "run out" of cold water yet.
Here is my hack. The first few gallons of water that run through the chiller are really hot and then then the temperature drop slows considerably. I try to dump the first few gallons into the clothes washer and run a hot cycle with the already hot water. Cheers
My only hack seems like common sense to me, so I presume everyone does this. After starting the water running thru the chiller and feeling it turn hot at the outflow end, I'll wait until it becomes lukewarm and then slow down the rate of flow so that it gets hot again. (I have well water, so it's kind of cool but I've never measured its temp.) I'm saving water, by slowing the flow but it also seems more efficient to me and does the job more quickly. I haven't paid close attention but it seems like I get the wort to around 70F in 30 minutes.
