Why does no one make immersion wort chiller’s greater than 1/2 inch diameter? It would seem that greater flowrate with increased diameter would be a big plus. Am I not thinking about the physics correctly, or is it just expense?
Less surface area.
Surface area to volume goes down with increased diameter. 50 ft. of 1/2" tube would chill better (use less water) than 25 ft. of 1" tube even though they both have the same amount of metal. Higher flow rate is not a good thing.
Check out the Jaded Hydra for a better solution. The use multiple coils coupled to single in and out connections to get greater flow rate. I can chill 5.5 gal. in 6-8 min.
Cool, thanks. I listened to Denny’s podcast recently and you/he talked about the hydra, I’ve been looking into it. Looks very cool. In Southern California my groundwater is between 75 and 80. So I was thinking about getting the hydra, quickly chilling to around ground water temperature ( with garden hose ), and then using a pre-chiller to quickly get it down to 65. My current set up is a three eights pre-chiller in a bucket of ice and then a three eights immersion chiller. It works well but still takes me about 20 minutes to get down to pitching temperature. The pain in the ass is I have to buy about 60 pounds of ice and continually drain the icewater in the pre-chiller and keep adding ice . So I am trying to find a quicker better solution to where I don’t have to use so much ice.
20 minutes is pretty good.
I just chilled 12 gallons from boil to 75 with 35 gallons of water and 12lb of ice. This is all with a sump pump and buckets of water. I don’t use the ice water until I get down to <100
Same thing I do. Pretty helpful this time of year, especially with lagers.
I also throw in the towel sub 80° and let the freezer take it the rest of the way. Works pretty well with my morning of starter hitting its peak right around the time the wort is in range.
That’s exactly what Drew does. He lives in Pasadena. And yeah, that was me.
Ahh, gotcha. I cool it on down to be done with it. I’ve let the fridge do the work too, and it obviously works fine.
Yep. Me too. Just want the brew day fully done.
Consider recirculating the wort against the coils - it cools even faster, but you need a pump to do that.
All good advice, thanks. I do have a pump and whirlpool while chilling.
I do it by stirring rather than a pump.
ditto, spoon is cheaper than a pump and easier to sanitize.
Pump take about 1 second to sanitize and allows for keeping the lid closed. I love my pump and will never go back to not using one. Yes they cost a bit, but worth every penny.