Just ordered up a new 14 gallon ss kettle with false bottom and brewmometer. Now I’ll have two 8.5 gallon boil kettles and one 14 gallon tun big enough to no sparge. Will make double header brew days much more fun. Yee haw!
Next step will be a pump and recirculation immersion chiller. Maybe after summer vacation I can find the money for that
Nice! Im curious though, why get a recirculating immersion chiller instead of a plate chiller? I just got a march pump and used it last weekend and it saved my back a LOT of lifting. Soon as i get a spigot on my brewkettle brewdays will be a breeze!
I was told by folks on here that the ic is the way to go
I agree with the plate chiller. The Terminator is the best piece of equipment I own.
i just picked up a new 50’ 1/2’ ic chiller with whirlpool and pump. sadly i can’t use it until i get back from france and belgium though. i picked mine up because of the greater surface area contact the wort has with the chilling coils. maybe it’s better, maybe it’s not.
Just to verify there are a few different types of chillers.
Immersion Chiller - Just a long coil of hose
Recirculating Chillers - Generally a long length of pipe with a large diameter of pope around it so that wart goes one way and cool water goes the oppisite.
Plate Chiller - A big sandwich of metal plates that push wort one way and cool water the other.
As far as i know. plate chillers are a better option for chilling wart because they push a much thinner volume of wort up against the cool water, allowing said volume of wort to become cooler faster compared to the thicker volumes of wart pushed through a immersion chillers pipe.
From a lot of what i have read, Plate chillers are just plain better. I dont know if money is an issue, but you can buy a therminantor for 200 bucks, and it will last you a lifetime.
Can you link me what recirculating chiller you are looking at so i can check it out?
Kind of like this. Mrmalty.com
Some folks claim ten minutes from boil to pitch temp
http://morebeer.com/products/wort-chiller-superchiller-recirculation.html
http://www.mrmalty.com/chiller.php
like I said, don’t know if it’s any better, but it’s the tool I wanted to try. I also have read a good bit about plate chillers and cleaning issues. anyway, just the direction I went.
cheers
yeav ive also ready about some of the issues with plate chillers holding hop gunk in them, thats why i bought a stainless steel hopspider from stainlessbrewing to put my hops in while boiling. when the boils over i can just pull all of it out and nothings going in my plate chiller:) also in regards to said cleaning issues, since the wart will be boiled when it first hits the plate chiller, anything in it will be eradicated:)
FedEx snuck in today. I now have a monster mash tun, woo hoo.
Now to finish a D-rest on two lagers, then drop to 35 and keg to make room for a brew day. Can’t wait.
Nice to be able to start boil number one and mash number two at the same time!
First no sparge worked just fine. 9 gallons and 11 pounds MO, I had 5.2 ph at ten minutes and started my boil with 7 gallons of 1.040!
the boiling wort sanitization only works if you recirc for a bit with no water running. Remember if your plate chiller is working the wort should be below ‘safe’ temps by the time it’s 10% of the way through the chiller.
I don’t think that plate chillers are inherently better than IC’s on the home scale. Pro scale I think plate becomes the only choice just because it’s impractical to have a IC that big.
The advantages to IC include dropping the temp of the entire mass of wort quicker thus reducing isomerization and volatilization of flame out hops.
the third type is counter flow by the way.
I love my IC. Gets me to pitching temps in 15-20 minutes depending upon the season. I’ve recommended these guys to a few buddies now. They always seem to be the cheapest and I’ve had zero problems with mine. Not sure of your set-up but the garden hose fittings are key for me.
Dave
Just to be an OCD engineer, a plate chiller is a type of counter flow chiller, at least the ones I know. The plates can give high area in a small package.
Was just perusing the rest of this topic and found this below. Maybe this will cement your decision to go with an IC…
http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=15661.0
Dave
Never apologize for being an engineer! that’s absolutely true.
dr. tom once described a old school chiller at a brewery that I can’t recall just now that was essentially a sheet of copper that the wort sheeted down with counterflow cold on the opposing side.
That image stuck in my head and I sort of want to build something like that. It seems very willy wonka to me
That is SO going in my imaginary brew pub. thanks hopfen.
+1. Awesome - never seen one before.
Yup. With 50ft of 1/2" copper and 35F water pumped (with a pond pump) from a barrel I keep in a walk-in cooler, I can drop 10gal from boiling to 60F in about 9 minutes. To get a lager to 48F takes 12 min.
I don’t bother recirculating, I stir gently with a spoon until it’s under 100F, then stir more vigorously to get aeration started.
