25 replies to this topic

[Deerslyr]

With the summer heat fast approaching here in NorCal, the ground water is going to rise to an unbearable high 70's low 80's. It sucks when you have to brush your teeth with warm water, let alone try to chill boiling wort down to pitching temps. I've also been a bit embarrassed at the amount of water I use when I'm chilling and cleaning. It just doesn't seem right. So... I picked up a sump pump at Lowes for $67 with some money I got from an expense check at work. Now all I have to do is make sure I freeze some blocks of ice to put in the cooler with the pump. Now, I should be able to limit my water output on brewday to a more reasonable amount. Does anyone else do this? How do you cut wastefulness when brewing?As a second purchase, I picked up one of those $6.00 tubs to put my fermenter in with water and a t-shirt. During the summer, we keep the house at around 79 degrees, so I know that isn't great for the beer. Hopefully this will lower my temp enough.Anyways, looking forward to my next brew, which is going to be a Hefe. 50% 2 Row, 50% Wheat Malt, Mt. Hood and a 3068 yeast cake from my buddy.

[ncbeerbrewer]

Sounds good Deerslayer. I wish you well. I just brewed a Hefe with a buddy of mine tonight. I used tap water to chill to 90 then ran the IC with an ice bath. It worked well chilled down to 70 degrees. I am looking forward to brewing by myself and 5 gallons and see what this does too. Good luck with yours, hope it goes well.

[HVB]

I have done this for a while. I have used it for both a CFC and am IM chiller. With the IM I have got the beer to 65 while whirlpooling. For me this is the only way to co it. I do not liek wasting water. The first gallons of water that come out hot go back int eh MLT for cleaning and that once the water is "cool" i direct it back to the tub where the pump is.

[stangbat]

I also do this. I have two ice makers in and I start stocking up on ice a few days before the brew session. I start off with tap water and I use it until the chilling seems to be slowing down to a point where I'm just wasting water. I also whirlpool and that has really helped speed up my chilling. Overall it works pretty good, and I can get 10g down to the mid 60s or lower. I wish my pump was a little more powerful, but it was on sale at Harbor Tools so I can't complain too much.

[ncbeerbrewer]

Sounds like your method and mine are pretty much the same Stangbat. I did the same thing last night. The tap water here has really warmed up already and chilling to 90 degrees with an IC is about the best I could do. I bought a pump last year Cheapy at Lowes and never used it that much. Last night was my first run with it for the year and it will be used for the coming summer months too. I too wish it was a bit more powerful but I won't complain better than not using it at all.

[3rd party JKor]

If you're going to recirculate the initial hot water back into the ice bath, you may want to make a pre chiller. It could be as simple as a coil of copper with a fan blowing over it.

[NWPines]

I fill my washing machine with the waste water from the chiller and by the time the washer is full, the wort is usually around 90-100F (our tap water is typically pretty cold most of the year). I then switch to circulating ice-water with a sump pump through the chiller. I whirlpool the wort through my march pump the whole time. Chill times are usually pretty quick (20-30 min or so for a 10 gal batch).

[Deerslyr]

Ok, so here are some more details. The pump is a 1/6 HP 1,100 GPH pump (with standard garden hose connection). Since I use a CFC, I typically go from boiling to a 15 minute whirlpool rest (to obtain my cone) and then start draining through the CFC into the fermenter. On one occassion I recirculated, but frankly found that to be a waste of time and water as it was winter and the wort coming out was 65 degrees.Do you think the pump is strong enough? What are you guys using?If I am using ice water at the pump and recirculating it, shouldn't I just be able to directly to the fermenter without having to recirculate? Or would the the ice would be more efficient if I did recirculate?Maybe I'll whip up a batch of boiling water this week and test it out.

[gnef]

I think if you wanted the most efficient design, add a post chiller to your CFC. This way, you can run the CFC wide open with the tap water, which will get it down to 90's, hopefully, and then your wort will go through your post chiller to chill down to pitching temps.If you just use ice to cool down the entire batch, you are looking at a tremendous amount of ice. Do you make 5 or 10 gallon batches, or more?Another difficulty with just using ice with the CFC, is it will be difficult to predict the exact temperature the entire batch will be going into the fermenter. The ice will be able to cool down the wort very quickly, and most likely down to below your pitching temps, which means you may have to guess how much of the wort to just go through the CFC without the ice running - this matters only if you care the exact temperature of your wort before you pitch.I think I recall one member's solution of using two therminators - one with ground water and the other with ice water, they were attached in series.I think overall, I like the post-chiller the best, and I think you will have the best regulation of the temperature of the wort as it goes into the fermenter - you should be able to affix a thermometer inline to the post chiller exit to know the temperature of the wort.Let us know what you choose to do though.

[Yeasty Boy]

Here in No CO the tap stays cool enough to chill down to ale temps at least. I run through a shirron plate chiller into the washing machine, but that's only good for 5g batches. (Ask me how I know!)I also have a house RO filter, which wastes water like mad, so I've rigged a 12g extract drum to collect under the kitchen, above the washing machine, to use for washing clothes as well. Now when I do 10g, I can fill up the wm and then fill the reservoir, should be plenty of room. If not, I can always go into the garden. Or the kiddie pool, a bath for one of the kids, or.... (I know a woman who takes a bath every Sunday and keeps the bath water to use in her toilet tank throughout the week. Pretty good idea if you live alone.)Once you start looking at how much water you use, the idea of letting it run onto the ground is just absurd. Especially here with all the fighting going on with water rights.

[3rd party JKor]

How about evaporative cooling? A fan, heat exchanger (radiator/AC-style) and a mister is all you would need. You could tweak your mister flow rate and fan speed to get the right pitch temp. You're in Cali, so the dry climate should make it pretty effective.

Edited by JKoravos, 16 May 2009 - 01:46 PM.

[Dean Palmer]

I think I recall one member's solution of using two therminators - one with ground water and the other with ice water, they were attached in series.

That would be me. I'm currently using two Therminators, but my main issue is ground water over 80F most of the year, and larger batch size. I use a bit of water even with the first just acting as a pre-chiller, but the water can be used to top off my spa, and fill the washing machine for no real waste.I was doing very well with my immersion chiller, run first with tap water until the wort got down near 100F, then switching to a 1/2HP submersible pump in a bucket of ice water ($30 at Harbor Freight). This was a cheap chill setup that worked well. The key to efficiency with an IC is keeping the wort moving, no matter if you stir or have a wort pump to recirculate. As to address the OP's question, just using a bucket of ice water and a pump with the goal to save water is workable, but you will go through the ice immediately if starting the chill right after the boil, unless you have a boatload of ice. Using a post-chiller for the returning hot water before it hits the ice water bucket again is a decent thought, but air chilling it may not be efficient at the speed the water passes through unless you have a huge copper coil with good air circulation, but it is workable by the numbers. This may allow you to use 10-20lbs of ice to get 5 gallons of wort to pitching temps with no other outside water. As stated however, the post-chiller would need to be huge to be able to release the amount of BTU into air that would be required (air is a poor conductor). A water bath would be better for the post-chiller, but then again you'd need to use more water which isn't really the goal here. I'd love to see someone rig this up to prove it out. I'd do it, and have the spare gear, but not the time. I'd love to see this water saving effort work.

[Deerslyr]

Definitely a lot to think about guys. I'll have to try a few things to see how it goes. Might possibly consider recirculating the water for a while before introducing the ice... Again... a test with water should help me figure this out. Will report the results.

[3rd party JKor]

Not to beat it to death, but I think it would be really cool to make an evaporative cooler to chill your wort. I'd have to run the numbers, but I think with enough surface area you could cool it from boiling to pitch temp in one pass.

[djinkc]

Over the winter I put together a motorized stirrer to use with my IC. It made a big difference stirring the wort at 60 rpm. Guess I got lucky on the initial design because any more stirring would start aerating the wort while it was still hot. The last two batches I used the sump pump/ice trick to finish cooling, again a big difference in cooling times. I probably didn't need to just yet (but our ground water is getting a lot warmer), but both were with yeast that I wanted to start fermenting just over 60df. Just thought I would throw that one out there.

[NomNomHopzinator]

How about evaporative cooling? A fan, heat exchanger (radiator/AC-style) and a mister is all you would need. You could tweak your mister flow rate and fan speed to get the right pitch temp. You're in Cali, so the dry climate should make it pretty effective.

I think you are getting close to the idea of a CPU heatsink that uses a fan. I bet if one was slick with welding, a heatsink/fan system could be made pretty easily. You could mist with rubbing alcohol for the faster evaporation rate and get the fins really nice and cold. I built a wort chiller last week from copper gas line which has a pretty small diameter (1/8 inch) pretty much because I had it laying around. It is sort of an experiment in progress at the moment though. I made it so that it has 4 separate coils in tandem but it turns out that the water flow isn't quite fast enough (due to pressure backup) to keep the last 2 coils cool. It is pretty efficient though. The water output is ~4 degrees cooler than the liquid being cooled which means that the water is given time to take up almost as much heat as possible as it passes through the coils. I was testing it out on hot water and I was able to cool a gallon at 130F down to 80F in ~10 minutes but surprisingly used under a 1/2 gallon of tap water. I was thinking...hey, it might not be the fastest way but maybe I can go with it and cut down on water use. My next plan to step up the efficiency is to cut the 4th coil out and make it a pre-chiller coil that goes in line before the wort chilling coils. That way, I can submerge the solo coil into an ice bucket to get the tap water running through the main coils nice and frosty.

[3rd party JKor]

I think you are getting close to the idea of a CPU heatsink that uses a fan. I bet if one was slick with welding, a heatsink/fan system could be made pretty easily. You could mist with rubbing alcohol for the faster evaporation rate and get the fins really nice and cold.

I was thinking more along the lines of a car radiator or an AC condenser coil (with a big fan), rather than a heat sink and fan like a CPU cooler. It would be super efficient, but you probably don't want your beer running through a car radiator (lots'o'lead, I'd imagine). Therefore you could simply use it as a cooling water chiller. That way you could have 60F (?) water instead of 80F water doing the chilling.

[NomNomHopzinator]

I like that idea. A google search found this...seems a bit small thoughhttps://www.novatecp...om/iceprobe.htm

[Deerslyr]

Ok, you guys got me thinking a bit more... Granted, I don't want to dump a ton of money into a cooling method, but then I remembered my neighbor is an AC guy and he's always taking out old parts that might be useful. It's possible he could hook me up with something that I could put after the output of the cooling water and sit that in an ice bath before it gets back to the pump, which would just then be chilled water, much like my ground water in the winter. So... the loop would be a container with the sump pump going to the CF Chiller out to another chiller sitting in an ice bath and then back into the container with the pump. He said he had something that I could use to chill the wort, but he didn't understand at the time that it needed to be "sanitary", but since we are just talking about the water for the heat transfer... I think I could probably get a pretty good score that would significantly limit my water usage when chilling.More thoughts?Oh, the probe idea looks pretty good too, but seems like you'd need a bunch just to keep up. What's the cost of those things?

[3rd party JKor]

Yeah, the thermoelectric elements don't have the juice to keep up with wort chilling, unless you have a bunch of themIf you can get a hold of a cheap/free AC condenser, look at evaporative. It'll be much cheaper than ice.