I was like “I want to do that” until I read heated up the propane tank with another propane burner :
Does seem like fun though, I will have to combine fishin’ and brewin’. ;D
I’ll soon be brewing in hot texas heat so we’ll be in the same boat. Little chance for combining ice fishing and brewing, that is. : :
ETA: my first pieces of texas brewing equipment will be, in this order:
a freezer/regulator setup for keeping fermentation temps cool enough and
1.a. a secondary wort chiller so I can run the cooling water for my primary wort chiller through an ice bath in order to get the wort to the right temps before pitching (I will build this myself, btw)
kegging equipment and a keg fridge
a propane burner setup and a bigger brew pot so I can expand beyond 3.5 to 4 gallon batch size and start doing 5+ gallons of all-grain
a clever setup using pipes, tubing, angle iron, and a welder to make the badest-ass-est brewing setup evah ;D
I just go with it, since I get the feeling my landlord would pitch a fit if I started a boil out on my patio. Yet another reason to move out of that place.
i use an electric kettle outside or in the garage. it is not the smell that drove me outside, it was the evaporation and subsequent condensation on the stove top that i could not get cleaned off easily.
You are better off buying a sub-pump and recirculating ice-water through the wort-chiller. Once you hit the ambient tap-water temp you switch over which may be as high as 90 and as low as 64 depending on the season. Less wasteful and much more efficient.
basically you have a tub of ice water with the afore mentioned submersible pump in. When you have exhausted your tap waters ability to chill the water you switch the input to the IC to the pump and pump ice water through. By returning the heated water to the pool you get a recirc going on.
This is just an example where I used frozen PET bottles to see how it would work instead of ice. Ice performs much better- but swapping 20oz bottles would work better than the 1&2 liter bottles. I used male and female barbed garden-hose threaded connects that I found at Lowes and soldered them onto the IC. Then I screwed male and female garden-hose quick connects onto these allowing me to switch the sub pump hoses easily and quickly. Sub pump does not have a float.
OK so basically I would need to hook that setup onto the wort chiller I already have. The copper and tubing works I am not worried about. I am good at working with that type of hardware and could figure it out without issue. The only issue is the pump… what kind of pump do you need? What is a “sub-pump” and would the employees at home depot have no issue finding what I need if that’s what I asked for?
Sorry to bump a dead post, but do you really need this much pump for this? I’ll be setting this up soon as chilling my wort is one of the longest and most wasteful parts of brew day for me, but I was hoping to get away with a tiny aquarium pump (closer to 10 dollars) We do this with the rotovap in my lab, and a relatively low flow of water is all that is necessary. In fact, I thought I read somewhere that the slower your IC flow, the greater your cooling efficiency. Thoughts?
are you after more water efficiency or more time efficiency? it’s a trade off. The way I look at it though I am not sure how much trade off it really is. When I have my water going full blast, as long as I keep stirring the wort the whole time the outlet water is more or less the same temp as the wort which means that I could not be chilling any more efficiently by going slower. I am putting as much energy as possible into that water on it’s way through the coil and giving each unit of water more time with the wort will not change that.
For what it’s worth, with tap water I use ~15-21 gallons of water to chill 6 gallons of wort from a boil to ~80f and do it in about 15 minutes. Then I let the fridge take it the rest of the way. I am thinking about getting a little sump pump and trying the ice water recirc once I get to 80 to see if I can get to lager pitching temps. although it is also temping to try Euge’s method of frozen water bottles first. seems far more efficient.
I’ll further add that after much chilling and experimentation the best option is to sanitize the frozen PET bottles (the smaller the better) and place them directly in the wort.
I’m f’ing done with complicated cumbersome processes. After using an IC this Sunday I placed 12 sanitized 16oz frozen water bottles in 10 gallons of 85F wort. No stirring. It dropped to 62F in about 30 minutes and the bottles were still half ice.
No pump. No ice to buy or make. No bucket or cooler to place it in. No switching anything over. No mess. And less waste of water.
How efficient is that? Been doing it for all of 2012 with nary an infection. If one trusts Starsan for the fermenter and other equipment it certainly works well on the frozen bottles.
Euge brings up a point I’ve often thought about but never done anything about. When trying to chill my wort, I usually stir, but in the process, it feels like I am subjecting myself to HSA and increasing the haze of my beer down the road. Does everyone stir their wort post-boil? Does no-one stir their wort post-boil? Does the cold break just fall out of solution once I get it in the fermenter?
I was serious about saying “no ice to make” because freezing up the bottles is a different beast altogether than making 20+ pounds of free ice. It can be quite the pain in the rear whereas after I’m done washing and drying the bottles I just pop them in the deep freeze and forget about them until the next brew session.
I have not had a problem with HSA. I stir every time. It’s no different than using an IC with whirlpool return. don’t spash too much but I really don’t think it’s an issue. I get brilliantly clear beers using only irish moss and time.
After I get it down as low as I am going to with the IC I pull the chiller and gt the wort moving as a mass then let it settle and much of the cold break drops to the bottom of the kettle where I can leave it behind by slowly opening the valve into the fermenter.
