Cleaning SS Immersion Chiller

I’ve soaked my new SS immersion chiller in PBW this morning for about 10 minutes and then some Starsan. There is still a little bit of green colored stuff coming off of it in certain spots. What is this? Any suggestions besides elbow grease?

Which chiller did you end up getting?

Silver Serpent.

Its hard to tell what the green stuff is without analysis. But most stainless comes from China so probably its fine.

Just can’t get this stuff off. SH#T!!! Picture below. Really not sure what to do as I have everything staged to brew today and don’t want to use this chiller. If I scrub hard w. a paper towel crud still comes off. Trying another Starsan soak now.

I did boil test it for a few minutes today and didn’t see anything funky in the water. Should I use this?

Where you see the “rust” now showed up after the first PBW soak. Prior to those rust lines, you could see a line there, perhaps that is where they welded each coil?

You really don’t need to soak your chiller in PBW or Star-san.  When it’s brand new, you might want to use some soapy water.  After that, just rinse it with hot water, stick it in your kettle 15 minutes from flame out, and give it another hot water rinse afterwards.

If you ordered it from Northern Brewer, they have excellent customer service so you shouldn’t have an issue getting a refund or an exchange.

Sorry, I don’t know what that stuff is.

I don’t either. Another test boil for 10 minutes and nothing is coming off but it’s still visible.

Anyone else have thoughts on this? May just use an ice bath. A little nervous to use it.

Seriously, why are you so worried?  It’s clean and will be sanitized in boiling wort.  I doubt any flavors will make it into your finished beer.

Primarily from my OCD!

Man, really, no worries on this chiller. All good.

What I do is immediately after each brew day I thoroughly clean the kettle and immersion chiller, but then once clean with soapy water, i then boil some water in the kettle, with the IC back in there to boil off anything else.

IF needed, I then let water sit a day or two in kettle with the PBW and water, but not usually needed on my IC. But guess you could let it sit there too. But then another thorough cleaning / rinsing / boiling session is what i do, perhaps over-kill but that stuff takes while to clean off.

Try being OCD about worrying less?
Really - wet heat is the best sanitizer. If you can’t scrub it off and it won’t boil off, it’s not going anywhere.

Not to throw cold water on this discussion (euuw, bad pun) but, why would you want a SS wort chiller in the first place!  Copper is TWENTY FIVE times more efficient at heat transfer than stainless steel!  To do the same job you would need a 25 times bigger SS chiller than a copper one.  SS is lousy at heat transfer.  That’s why they clad the bottoms of SS pots and kettles with copper or aluminum.

As someone who had a Heat Transfer course, let me say what is going on in the real application.

The conductive heat transfer is for solid-solid-solid applications. not our case.

We have liquid-solid-liquid. The heat transfer of the liquid to solid is really low. Especially if we don’t stir the wort, then stratification happens and you have hot liquid next to the metal so the Delta T suffers.

Sometimes we use a gas-solid-liquid system, so in that case the gas to metal interface is where the big resistance is.

I ran some numbers a couple years back, and even though you have a material like SS which is 1/25 the the conductive heat transfer, the big resistors in series were the liquids, and the SS overall heat transfer coefficient was 88% of the copper chiller. There was a video online from a homebrew shop that showed the SS chiller time to temp was 84% of the copper chiller they baselined against. That is close enough for me (they weren’t stirring).

There copper or aluminum in a clad pot bottom is to spread the heat and reduce the scorching that can happen with thick foods. It does not increase the heat transfer, just spreads the heat. How can 2 layers of SS and one layer of copper be better at heat transfer than one layer of SS?

Material selection depends on other factors: cost, mass, appearance (shiny!), corrosion resistance and so on.
Cars used to have copper radiators, now aluminum due to the lower cost and mass of aluminum, even though the conductive heat transfer is about 1/2 for the aluminum.

If you aren’t convinced yet, look at the following link. The Example is for a gas-solid-gas system, you might as well use plastic to save money.

hopfen,
Yes, you are right.  I was thinking heat conduction in metals not heat transfer.

just upgrade my smaller copper wort chiller with this one. http://jadedbrewing.com/collections/frontpage/products/the-hydra

Lots of area on those. Let us know how much it speeds the chilling.

sure will. here’s what they report: “This chiller is faster than most plate chillers and will chill a 5 gallon batch from boiling to 68 degrees in just 3 minutes using only 18 gallons of 58 degree tap water.”

needed to replace mine anyway, so new toy to try out.

I get a similar discoloration/buildup in my kettle, around the welded fittings and on the bottom, where the kettle rests on the burner.

Basically - I get stuck-on deposits (and perhaps a bit of rust) where the stainless is not completely smooth (like the weld line on your IC tubes).

I wash with PBW after every brew to remove trub, hop matter, etc. Every once in awhile, I’ll also run a wash of Barkeeper’s Friend (primarily Oxalic Acid) to keep the surface shiny and free of deposits/discoloration.

A quick soak in Barkeeper’s Friend, coupled with a little elbow grease, should take care of it.

NOTE: make sure to use the Bleach-Free Barkeeper’s Friend