Wort Chiller Help

Yeah, that would feasible.

Fill some large tubs with water, and use a pond/sump pump to push the water through a hose into your wort chiller. Double it up and use ice water and it'll help.

Will say though, that it would be better to have a pre chiller if you plan to do that and want to do it with the least amount of water and ice as possible.

 

My brew site has access to water, but tap water is so hot I use the method you describe. A submersible pump (Amazon) in a picnic cooler (or bucket) circulates tap water through the chiller until it gets to about 130. Of course you are diverting the return water from your input bucket because it's really hot. With the wort around 130, I load up the cooler with frozen water and circulate until I reach the target temp. This return water is vented also, until it reaches the point where it is below inlet tap water temp (just stick your hand in the chiller return line to measure). At this point you have a closed circulation circuit and no more water is wasted.

This sounds complicated, but it is all intuitive. I would estimate you'll need about 15 gallons (?) and 5 lbs of ice to chill a 5 gallon batch. My experience with a pre-chiller showed little improvement over just having a large cooler (or bucket) full of ice slurry.

A couple of points: Ice early doesn't help much. My hot tap water (80+) will return above 160 early in the process. Save your ice slurry for later when tap water is less effective. You don't really need a powerful pump . . . the goal is to transfer heat versus pump a large quantity of water. Cheap vinyl tubing works just fine (it never touches the wort). If wasting water bothers you I suppose you could capture and re-cycle in the garden.

 

I'm having a hard time seeing what your brew setup looks like if you're not near water. You need at least 6 gal to get through brew day.

If I had to try to pull this of without fresh water, what would I do? I would stick with the sump/pond pump and either be willing to dedicate about #30-50 of ice to the project, or I would have two large bins full of water. The initial one I would just run off to cut the heat of the wort temp. If you can get it down to 100F by the time you hit the bottom of the first bin you're golden. You'll need about #15-20 of ice to recirculate in the second bin. It makes sense to me....Get me?

Tips:

The first 10 gallons of hot run off water should be stored in Homer buckets. This is excellent for cleaning later.

Cottage cheese containers, (and the like from a supermarkets) make excellent ice cubes if you rinse them out and fill them with water. It's less work than trays of ice. I'm not willing to spring for $5 bags of ice. I'm stubborn like that.
Lots of supermarkets are willing to give you a dozen if you ask nice and buy something else.

Have extra ice on hand. Too much is forgivable. Too little and you're sunk.

 

You don't have any type of hose connection outside?

 

I would suggest placing it in an ice bath on top of using a chiller. You will easily go through 25+ Gallons of ice water to cool it so unless you have 5 separate buckets to use, I would combine methods and possibly re-collect the water after it has gone through the chiller and use it again if it is not warm.

 

Get a hose adapter for your sink and just run a hose from your kitchen to your garage. That's what I do in the winter.

 

Frost-free hose bibs are code in much of the northern parts of the country - no frozen pipes. About $10 at your local Home Depot clone, if you don't already have them. And don't leave the hose out when you're done (I use a dedicated RV hose for brewing, so this is part of my normal routine, even during the summer).

Not saying it's impossible, but I'd be disinclined to brew without a ready supply of running water.

 

Pssst. It's summer in Massachusetts.

 

I do this in the winter. Just FYI - to chill 5 gallons with a 50ft immersion chiller, I have to use about 25 gallons of water and 28lbs of ice. My rig is just an RV water pump with a rubbermaid garbage can and some hoses.

If it's cold enough, I don't need to buy ice though because the water left in the garbage can freezes solid and I just add some water to it.

You'll want to collect about the first 3-4 gallons when you start chilling because it will be very hot and melt a lot of the ice if you recirculate it. It also is very nice to have some hot water for clean up.

Also, make sure all your hoses and your chiller are emptied before storing them (if you store them outside). You risk splitting them open if they freeze hard and it's a PITA to get the water flowing if they're all blocked up with ice.

 

If you're brewing outside in the winter in Massacusetts, just time your brewday for when there is snow on the ground. No ice bath necessary, just plunk it into a snowbank and stir. Pile up new snow around the kettle when it melts.

 

I have a pond pump to force ice water through the chiller, get it down to <100F first. Then switch to the pond pump. If there is snow on the ground that is what I use instead of buying ice.

If you don't have water, you can use snow for the ice bath all the way.

 

This requires you to constantly tend the kettle while it's chilling or, if you just leave it there unattended, you just end up insulating the damn thing when it makes air pockets in the snow around the kettle. Plus, at the end of a long brew day, it's a much bigger pain in the ass then it seemed like it would be when you thought of it.

Using a pump and recirculating requires a little more to set up initially, but the time and back savings are worth it imho.