67 replies to this topic

[zymot]

Why would stiring be better than whirlpooling? They do the same thing.

As I recall, they did not provide an explanation. IIRC They said that it is a bit of a surprise, but their testing shows stirring gives better results over a whirlpool.

Just a guess, maybe a whirlpool is pointed in a fixed direction and the wort spins around in a circle concentric with the coils. With stirring you can induce the wort to move up an down or different directions.

My empirical knowledge tells me you get the best results by moving the IM up and down. Probably an ellipse pattern would be even better.

[neddles]

Not a rabbit hole I want to go down here but I'd put my money into stainless and keep the copper out of the brewery if possible.

[HVB]

Not a rabbit hole I want to go down here but I'd put my money into stainless and keep the copper out of the brewery if possible.

Stout CFC is on my short list. My convoluted CFC and one copper pipe are the only copper I have left.

[pkrone]

Year round cold water would be nice..........

 

No kidding.   Do you think my wife would be up for me having a well drilled just to have cold chiller water?    

[denny]

Not a rabbit hole I want to go down here but I'd put my money into stainless and keep the copper out of the brewery if possible.

 

Bah....

My well water is between 45-58F all year, which is definitely a plus.  I use the whirlpool arm from Jaded along woth my Hydra and a pump.  I can go from 6 gal.boiling to 60-65F in about 6 min.

[positiveContact]

Bah....

My well water is between 45-58F all year, which is definitely a plus.  I use the whirlpool arm from Jaded along woth my Hydra and a pump.  I can go from 6 gal.boiling to 60-65F in about 6 min.

 

did you have the pump and arm before the hydra as well?  I'm curious how much of your speed is the whirlpool and how much is the hydra.

[Buscotucky]

I like my plate chiller; well water at 60 & chills as fast as I drain (no pump.) Granted I don't brew very often but even when I did it didn't seem to be a chore to use.

[denny]

did you have the pump and arm before the hydra as well?  I'm curious how much of your speed is the whirlpool and how much is the hydra.

 

pump, yes.  I had been using a homemade 50 ft. 3/8" chiller with homemade arm and pump.  The Hydra setup takes maybe 1/3-1/4 as much time as the homemade setup.

[zymot]

I got my Hydra Friday. Did some tests to see what I can expect.

 

Using the hose bib available to my brewing location. As luck would have it, the bib is at the front of the house and the point water comes off the meter feeds the whole house. Maximum available pressure.

 

Test #1

10' white potable liquid hose filling straight into a bucket. I wanted to get a best case, base line of what my water source can do.

9.8 gal/minute

 

Test #2

10" white hose feeding Hydra. To see what kind of a load the hydra adds.

5.6 gal/minute

 

Test #3

50' white hose feeding Hydra. This represents real world brew day. My brew location is 50' from front of house hose bib.

5.5 gal/minute

Test is slightly less than 10' hose. Interesting. Contradicts JaDeD's advice of a long hose significantly hurts flow rate.

 

Bilge pump through the Hydra.

Rating = 12.5 gal/minute (spec = 750 gal/hour)

test = 1.5 gal/minute

 

Ground water = 60° - 55°.

This is a big wild card. I have no idea what summer temps my source water will be. Since I am on city water, I expect it will always be pretty close to this. I do not know how much pushing water through 50' hos hose sitting in the sun in the after noon will heat the water. But the hose is white, so it should be minimal.

 

Looks like 2 stage cooling. First stage = source water straight through the Hydra. Stage 2 = making ice water and pushing  it through the chiller. Will the 1.5 gal/minute pump be enough? Should I get a bigger stronger pump? Another option is push water through prechiller.

 

Looks like I have some more testing ahead of me. Learn how much of a load a prechiller adds and how effective it is at lowering water temps.

 

 

[Seven]

How are you measuring flow rates?

[zymot]

How are you measuring flow rates?

 

Timing how long it takes to fill a 5 gallon bucket.

[Stout_fan]

My 14 gal keggle system uses a convoluted chiller. Indoor 6 gal system is a plate chiller.

When doing lagers outside I run it down to 70 degrees with city water. Then I change over to a sump pump in a cooler full of ice to drop it lower. When the water exit temp drops to 55 degrees I start to recirc the cooler water and drop the keggle to 45 degrees. At that point it goes into three cornies for yeast dosage.

 

For the first two stages, I'm spraying water from a squirt bottle on the keggle and burner stand. Anything to get rid of more heat faster.

[zymot]

Testing Update:

 

I use garden hose quick disconnects. Same idea as camlocks or the other brewing disconnects. Love the convenience and the security of getting a good solid, leak proof connection. The ones I have been buying have the "feature" that allow you to make a change with the water on. E.g. You can swap a trigger handle nozzle for a fertilizer sprayer without turning the water, make the swap, turn the water back on.

 

The female has a poppet like thing that closes up under pressure and putting the male on, pushes the poppet out of the way.

 

At least in theory, you can do it. That never worked for me. Removing the nozzle with water on was difficult and I always got spritzed any way. I am in the habit of turn off the water, change nozzle, turn water back on.

 

I bought some new garden hose fittings and they did not have the poppet. The female is a through hole. Once I saw that and examined my old fittings, you could see that the poppet made for a choke point. It had to restrict water flow.

 

Tried the new models. Wow! Made a huge difference. Increased the flow by about 65%. Was: 5.5 gal/min Is: 9.2 gal/min. This is going through the Hydra.

 

My el cheapo bilge pump saw even better results. Increased by 92%. I get 3 gal/min with the new fittings.

 

Interesting that the 10" hose and the 50' had pretty much the same results. The 50 hose was around 10% less floe. But still ~9 gal/min. Much better than JaDeD's baseline of 6 gal/min.

 

The fittings to look for are the brand Yardsmith. They are on Amazon at a pretty cheap price, They are compatible with my old fittings. The existing fittings on bibs and hoses I use for gardening are not obsolete. You can take the old style and punch out the poppet with a hammer and screwdriver.

[BlKtRe]

Im still using the old plate I got from DJ when plates started to become a thing. I love it. Maintenance is super easy if you have a pump. I have a small 4ish QT pot with a valve and I use it to back flush PBW in a loop and to pump sanitizer through the plate during the boil. This cleans and sanitizes my hoses, pump, and plate. Im a inline chiller fan so I built a nifty SS contraption that attaches to the output of the plate that has a carb stone, thermo and a site glass. This setup might take a little more time cleaning than using a IM but not by much. Plus inline chilling makes things pretty easy.

 

I'd like to add another plate someday. The second plate I plan to pump cold ice water through so it would act as a post wort plate chiller during the summer months

 

But the main thing is it doesn't matter what type of chiller you use, you are at the mercy of the ground water temp. So time is temp. 

[djinkc]

Yeah, I just didn't trust plate chillers.  And of course now I've been using one forever

[zymot]

If you are going to go plate chiller, looks like the one to get is the Duda Diesel B3-36A 20 plate. $103.86 + shipping.

 

They have a good introduction to plate chillers. Interesting how they point out that more plates could be detrimental to you beer cooling cause. Goes against the homebrewer addage of "more and/or bigger is better!" I know on one homebrew forum, Duda Diesel was commenting that a 20 plate is sufficient or optimum for homebrewer applications. Maybe a 30 plate would be better if you wanted to gravity feed wort through the plate chiller.

 

https://www.dudadies...&i=beerchillers

 

And a performance comparison chart:

 

https://www.dudadies...erwortchart.pdf

[BlKtRe]

Same can be said for a long CFC. At some point the wort is going to be chilled as far as its going to be. No sense in buying a 40ft length when its already cooled at 20ft. 

[zymot]

Same can be said for a long CFC. At some point the wort is going to be chilled as far as its going to be. No sense in buying a 40ft length when its already cooled at 20ft. 

+1

 

By far the greatest factor is difference in temperatures. Assuming you are pumping wort through your CFC and return the chilled wort to the boil kettle (no your fermenting bucket) you do not gain much after 20-25 feet CFC. The second big factor is the temp of your chilling water.

 

JeDeD makes this point. After 25' an immersion chiller does not get you much. Certainly 3 X 25' coils is better than 1 X 75' coil.

[Stout_fan]

When we tore apart out ESCIOT TX test stand they asked me if I wanted the counterflow.. umm YEA!!!

Haven't used it yet but it's freakin EEEEEEUGE!!!

4 1/2 x 3 1/2 x 11 1/2" It makes the one I bought from Williams look absolutely puny.

We ran DI and food grade glycol through it.

[MyaCullen]

Not a rabbit hole I want to go down here but I'd put my money into stainless and keep the copper out of the brewery if possible.

why the cupric disdain?