Undecided which way to go. I may even stick with my immersion chiller. Any tried and tested results for both. Pro V Con on changing over from immersion?
Immersion allows you to leave cold break behind which commercial brewers don't,mostly. Plate needs a good filter fitted before the wort passes into it.
That's what I has thinking.
Using a therminator plate chiller here. Duda diesel one before that. Bag your hops or use a good filter to keep hops out (you'll need to do that anyway though to keep them out of your chugger pump so its no extra expense) If you are recirc/whirlpooling the cold break gets left behind in the BK. You just need to let it all sit for a half hour before transfer to FV so just start cleaning up. No big deal.
Love my plate chiller. Its tidy & its a mini version of what a real brewery uses so whats not to like! Any fears of infection or crud hanging on inside are easily avoided with proper care. If cleaning isnt enough & you are still paranoid you can do what I do & recirc your mash & sparge water through it & your pump. This helps evenly heat the water & it pasteurizes your chiller. You can also recirc boiling wort to but I prefer recircing my mash & sparge water as its less messy/sticky.
@HB do you use pellets? If so, what do you use to filter. Had bad experience with all pellet and bazooka in my kettle.
I use mostly pellets. Sometimes leaf. I got a deadly hop spider made in the states. Its 300 micron stainless mesh with a thick collar on it. It keeps almost all hop pellet gunk inside it but still allows wort to flow through for proper utilization.
(http://www.stainlessbrewing.com/assets/images/photo2.jpg)
Mine is the one on the left. Savage yoke. Just hose it clean after no bother. Ive a 6 inch bazooka tube along the kettle wall for when I use leaf hops & as a fail safe to keep anything out of the pump & chiller.
I opted to buy one of these hop spiders but you could make one if you had the skills & materials handy enough.
From the stainless brewing guys in the states? I emailed them about a price on a group buy with them and they never got back to me.
Yeah same guy. I dount a GB would be a runner considering he cant meet demand for current orders at full price. Mine took a while but worth the wait.
I seriously looked a plate chiller a few years back as my water pressure is terrible. I decided against it in the end as cleaning it seemed more hassle. Instead I use two immersion coils fed off a water butt pump and creating a whirlpool with my chugger. I use something like Tom has too, ss mesh tube that sits in the kettle. They are great filters.