Wort Chillers

[Qs]

My homemade wort chiller has sprung a leak and I think my latest batch is now infected as a result. So I'm in the market for a new wort chiller. I'm not bothered making another one, the price of the copper and the hassle for a sub par result doesn't seem worth it to me. So what are decent options on the Irish market at the moment.

And are plate chillers any good or should I just get a new, better immersion chiller?

[Greg2013]

My homemade wort chiller has sprung a leak and I think my latest batch is now infected as a result. So I'm in the market for a new wort chiller. I'm not bothered making another one, the price of the copper and the hassle for a sub par result doesn't seem worth it to me. So what are decent options on the Irish market at the moment.

And are plate chillers any good or should I just get a new, better immersion chiller?

Also wondering the same,i bought my wort chiller but it still takes too damn long to chill a batch as i think the copper is too narrow, i think it is 10mm.

[Hop Bomb]

Plate chillers are great but you need pumps in your system. You can gravity feed it but then you cant recirc it back to your kettle & you get an amazing instant cold break with them that will increase your trub loss a lot if you are chilling straight into your fermentor.

Ive had a duda diesel plate chiller & it was great. I have a blichmann one now & its even better (only upgraded from the duda diesel one as a mate of mine was in USA & brought it back for me)

Aliexpress has loads of cheapish plate chillers & coil chillers. Worth a look.

Duda Diesel have an ebay store.

[Qs]

Yeah I was wondering that about the plate chillers, don't really want to buy a pump as well. So gravity feeding them is worse than an IC you reckon?

[Qs]

Another question for ICs, is SS better than copper or vice versa?

[Hop Bomb]

Yeah I was wondering that about the plate chillers, don't really want to buy a pump as well. So gravity feeding them is worse than an IC you reckon?

Not worse. It doesnt make any difference to the beer, You'll just have a lot of cold break in your FV so less beer going to keg after ferment. You can brew more to allow for it.

[Qs]

I'm pretty tempted to splurge on something from Jaded Brewing in the states. The Hydra or King Cobra look like they'd be amazing. Also this review by Brulosophy makes them sound great (although they do sponsor him).

Any good reason I shouldn't splurge on one of these?

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Another question for ICs, is SS better than copper or vice versa?

Copper is a much better conductor of heat than stainless steel but stainless is less susceptable to damage by caustic cleaning agents or denting. Heat transfer is dependant upon the contact surface area therefore the bigger the diameter and longer the coil is the better it will perform, plus moving the wort around the coil by stirring etc will reduce cooling time much more than the difference between materials. Aesthetics and price play a role also with many brewers preferring the look of all stainless equipment plus it will probably last longer and therefore less likely to puncture and impact on the brew as your previous copper chiller did.
In large breweries the cooling water is coloured so that any leaks are made apparent which might be worth thinking about if you are ever thinking about using rain water butt as your cooling water. Another safety point is that the product is kept at a higher pressure in plate heat exchangers than the cooling medium so that in the event if a leak the wort flows into the cooling water rather than the reverse which would contaminate the wort.

[armedcor]

I'm pretty tempted to splurge on something from Jaded Brewing in the states. The Hydra or King Cobra look like they'd be amazing. Also this review by Brulosophy makes them sound great (although they do sponsor him).

Any good reason I shouldn't splurge on one of these?

I was just looking at these. I'm thinking I might splash out on a king cobra at some stage I'll be brewing in a keggle but usually 5 gallon batches.

[biertourist]

My homemade wort chiller has sprung a leak and I think my latest batch is now infected as a result. So I'm in the market for a new wort chiller. I'm not bothered making another one, the price of the copper and the hassle for a sub par result doesn't seem worth it to me. So what are decent options on the Irish market at the moment.

And are plate chillers any good or should I just get a new, better immersion chiller?

Also wondering the same,i bought my wort chiller but it still takes too damn long to chill a batch as i think the copper is too narrow, i think it is 10mm.

10mm is actually the standard size.  Most people in the US use 3/8th inch which is about 9.5mm; I THINK that's the inside diameter, not the OD, though.



Adam

[Vermelho]

I built a counterflow chiller which chills 25l in about 5 mins. I love for speed but it requires a bit more setup than an ic and I had to buy a pump. I reckon you could build a great 1/2" IC for about 80.

[biertourist]

I have spent a pretty INSANE amount of time considering a ridiculous number of factors in wort chillers and I've gone through an immersion chiller (with and without recirculation) a plate chiller and am VERY close to finalizing my decision on a counterflow chiller.  I've looked at many alternative types of chillers, too including double pipe, tube and shell, and comercial brewery plate and shell designs. (And counterflow options using regular copper, convoluted copper, recirculated and single-pass; multi-stage chillers, too.)


After wasting my life by spending far too much time researching esoteric details I can make a few well-informed generalizations:

• Unless you are doing very large batch sizes (>10 gallons) it is VERY difficult to recommend anything other than a good immersion chiller with a recirculation arm aka the "Jamil-style immersion chiller"
• If you make a lot of really hoppy beers, you should really lean towards an immersion chiller
• If you plan to do single-pass chilling with a counterflow or plate chiller you need to plan what you will do about trub; either let it settle and siphon off of it or use the dump valve if you have a conical. Single pass chilling with a counterflow / plate chiller is best if you have a conical and can just dump the cold break material.
• Counterflow chillers have less clogging and cleaning issues than plate chillers
• If you are really want a counterflow chiller check out Jaded Brewing's option which allows you to take it apart and visibly inspect it and physically clean it with a brush.  -The only homebrewer sized plate chiller that allows you to dismantle it for cleaning costs $750 from Sabco, so from that perspective the Jaded offering is a deal!
• Copper is a great choice of material for a chiller. You want a tiny bit of copper somewhere in your brewery as a yeast micronutrient but the copper also neutralizes unpleasant sulfur compounds that you may get from hops, fermentation (downstream), lager malt, water or over-treatment of chlorinated water with camden tablets. Copper transfers heat considerably better than stainless.  Many of the people who have purchased the stainless convoluted counterflow chillers quickly resell them on HBT or Ebay after one or two uses when they get very poor cooling performance out of them.
• Convoluted copper DOES result in significantly higher efficiency than regular counterflow chillers but all of the commercially available offerings only include 12 feet of tubing which really is less than ideal and won't get you straight to pitching temps unless you run the wort VERY slowly.  The Exchillerator from www.brickriverbrew.com (website fairly unreliable -watch their youtube video) is a GREAT alternative counterflow chiller that includes 16'-25' of copper tubing AND uses a high turbulance convoluted-like technique to create very high efficiencies. The main problem is that the outside of their chiller is PEX tubing which won't last forever like copper / stainless and is actually susceptible to damage from UV light.  (if you cover it in foil to block light form getting to the PEX tubing you should be good-to-go for many years.

There is a lot of additional data and discussion points behind many of these recommendations but honestly the Jamil whirlpool immersion chiller is VERY hard to beat and the Jaded offering offer even more performance.

I've been chilling with an immersion chiller in my whirlpool boil kettle for the last 4 brews and the speed of chilling is INCREDIBLE when I just suppliment the whirlpool by putting my plastic mash paddle into my cordless drill and making a CRAZY fast whirlpool with it.  I'm also chilling the entire volume of wort rapidly (important for DMS formation but more importantly to prevent the evolution of aromatic hop oils and to halt isomerization so that my nice hop aromas don't just turn into more bitterness). The immersion chiller also means that cold break stays in the kettle and not the fermenter.  Easy and verifiable cleaning, too.

Serious gadget-obsessed American homebrewers have been switching from Immersion to Plate or Counterflow chillers and back again to Immersion+whirlpool chillers in droves, lately.  When Americans who are obsessed with gadgets start selling their fancy plate chillers and going back to immersion, you should pay attention because its for a reason.


So far I've mentioned two of the new chiller companies that are out there so I'll mention "Zchillers, too".  They're a new guy in the all copper convoluted counterflow space but unfortunately they don't really bring anything new from the established guys; if they had a 16' length chiller for $200 USD or less then they'd have something.... I don't think they offer much over the existing options other than a temporary 15% off coupon code right now...


Adam

I AM switching to counterflow but that's simply because I want a counterflow chiller to double as a heat exchanger for HERMS mashing AND for chilling.

[biertourist]

I built a counterflow chiller which chills 25l in about 5 mins. I love for speed but it requires a bit more setup than an ic and I had to buy a pump. I reckon you could build a great 1/2" IC for about 80.

I agree, but if you already have a pump, save a small bit of the copper and make a jamil-style recirculation arm.  (Or if you don't get a 5 euro plastic mash paddle and put it into a cordless power drill and whirlpool the whole volume of wort for the first 6 minutes you're chilling -you'll get down below DMS formation temps EASILY within 6 minutes with the wort whirlpooling.)


Adam

[mr hoppy]

I take it you reckon hot side aeration's a myth.

I'm curious: I don't have an opinion, although I try to minimize it even if it's only a superstition.

[biertourist]

I take it you reckon hot side aeration's a myth.

I'm curious: I don't have an opinion, although I try to minimize it even if it's only a superstition.

Not sure I understand the relevance of the question to the topic of wort chillers...

I could see how someone could leap to some weird conclusion that recirculation chilling back into the kettle would result in aeration but you just make sure that the return is below the surface.

In general, though, no Hot Side Aeration isn't a significant concern even if there is some level of truth behind it.  Well, it's not a significant issue unless you do something really dumb/non-standard (no boil / no chill), anyway.