Worm Chiller

[Henry1]

I saw this on Brewit, a "cooling worm" inspired by what you'd use with a pot still. It seems like a good solution for those of us who are on well and septic and don't want to waste water during the summer months when it can be scarce.



http://www.reddit.com/r/Homebrewing/com ... xperiment/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Anyone interested in helping me build one? I've never bent copper pipe before.

[jtmwhyte]

Very fascinating must try it myself. Doesn't seem very difficult to build. I think I may repurpose my old immersion chiller. I think that it would be much more efficient than an immersion chiller.

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[dexter]

So its basically an immersion chiller that drops into a primary? neat!

[Tony L]

Well actually it is like a counter flow chiller without the outer flow which is replaced by ice.
I would imagine it is easier to clean and sanitize due to that you can remove the connections after you rinse it inside and then you can bake it in the oven to sanitize.

[redoubt]

Very fascinating must try it myself. Doesn't seem very difficult to build. I think I may repurpose my old immersion chiller. I think that it would be much more efficient than an immersion chiller.

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jtmwhyte, did you ever try this?

I was poking around on here trying to figure out how to reduce the water we waste with a not terrifically efficient immersion chiller. On our last brew we accidentally left the water-measuring gadget on the spigot so it measured how much was wasted during chilling -- somewhere over 400L IIRC. Hard to stomach creating that much waste. I guess the chiller's easy enough to disassemble and attach to a bucket to try it out ourselves. If you've already done the experiment, though... Figured it would be worth asking.

-Kirsten

[GAM]

Is that gravity feed in to the bucket below?

Sandy

[redoubt]

Is that gravity feed in to the bucket below?

Sandy

Yep, looks like it. From the original description:

For this version I went with a 2gal bucket, 10 feet of 5/8-inch copper tube and some silicone high temp to match. The stainless cylinder is a common wine chiller. The end of the copper is connected to a short bit of silicone tube which drains directly into the bunghole of my 5gal ferment buckets. The whole thing just sits on top.

He acheived a 100F chill in 6 minutes with no more waste than the ice and water in the bucket. Which, if it would work with my little 25 ft copper immersion chiller (rejigged), would be effing fantastic.

Think it would work?

-Kirsten

[GuingesRock]

Think it would work?

-Kirsten

No

I saw a YouTube of a home brewer merrily emptying bags of party ice into his wort after the boil. Instant cooling, no messing around. He calculated how much ice to add and factored in the post boil dilution caused by the ice. He dunked the bags of ice in a starsan bucket so the outside of the bag was sanitised. He seemed delighted with himself and his process and said he never had any problems.

You are not SUPPOSED to do that. It introduces infection into your beer, or could this be another one of those brewing myths?

I think it might take too much ice though. Might work for an extract brew.

…For example if the ice was at 0C, adding 5 gallons of ice to 5 gallons of wort at 100C would only bring the temperature of the wort down to 50C. This makes me think that the worm chiller won’t provide adequate cooling, unless it was a substantially larger unit.

The heat has to go somewhere. Dumping ice in the wort is 100% efficient, as far as heat transfer from the wort to the ice is concerned. The copper coil in the ice bath will be quite a bit less efficient. Even if the copper coil was 100% efficient (which it isn’t), 5 gallons of ice and water (not present in that picture) would only reduce the temperature of the wort to 50C.

[GAM]

Yes it will work but is 100f good enough?

If you used your immersion and dropped it to 150f you may be able to pitch.

Limiting the flow (keeping the flow slow while keeping the copper full) would certainly help too.

Sandy

[GuingesRock]

Before you fabricate anything, boil 5 gal of water in a pot, throw in the amount if ice you anticipate using, then stir and check the temperature. It won’t be anywhere near adequate cooling …I’ll bet a pint on that.

The worm chiller will be less efficient than throwing the ice right in the pot.

[CorneliusAlphonse]

You could turn your immersion chiller into a counter flow, much more efficient. Get it down to probably 50L

[GuingesRock]

You could turn your immersion chiller into a counter flow, much more efficient. Get it down to probably 50L

I was thinking that too. Chalmers had a really good one that I saw at the brew day. Used much less water, and no increased carbon footprint from, and expense of, making ice.

On our last brew we accidentally left the water-measuring gadget on the spigot so it measured how much was wasted during chilling -- somewhere over 400L IIRC. Hard to stomach creating that much waste.

-Kirsten

Some large baths hold 300L of water. If you are worried, have one less bath every time you brew. No one will notice in this neck of the woods

We have a small house on the mountain, which we built and didn’t sell (yet) when we moved to town, so we have tenants in there. The water comes out of a well I had dug, and goes right back out into the septic field. They tenants are worried about wasting water and wanted a high efficiency washing machine.

If you are really worried you could look into the Australian no-chill method: http://www.brewnosers.org/forums/viewto ... f=3&t=4884" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[vgoreham]

…For example if the ice was at 0C, adding 5 gallons of ice to 5 gallons of wort at 100C would only bring the temperature of the wort down to 50C. This makes me think that the worm chiller won’t provide adequate cooling, unless it was a substantially larger unit.

The heat has to go somewhere. Dumping ice in the wort is 100% efficient, as far as heat transfer from the wort to the ice is concerned. The copper coil in the ice bath will be quite a bit less efficient. Even if the copper coil was 100% efficient (which it isn’t), 5 gallons of ice and water (not present in that picture) would only reduce the temperature of the wort to 50C.

Your science is off. You're forgetting the energy required to melt ice (334 kJ/kg) which is significant when you consider it takes only 419 kJ/kg to bring water from 0C to 100C.

So if you start with equal masses of 0 C ice and 100 C water your water ends up around 10C. Of course, we have wort, not water - which is a little different - you'd end up at a temperature a little hotter.

[GuingesRock]

…For example if the ice was at 0C, adding 5 gallons of ice to 5 gallons of wort at 100C would only bring the temperature of the wort down to 50C. This makes me think that the worm chiller won’t provide adequate cooling, unless it was a substantially larger unit.

The heat has to go somewhere. Dumping ice in the wort is 100% efficient, as far as heat transfer from the wort to the ice is concerned. The copper coil in the ice bath will be quite a bit less efficient. Even if the copper coil was 100% efficient (which it isn’t), 5 gallons of ice and water (not present in that picture) would only reduce the temperature of the wort to 50C.

Your science is off. You're forgetting the energy required to melt ice (334 kJ/kg) which is significant when you consider it takes only 419 kJ/kg to bring water from 0C to 100C.

So if you start with equal masses of 0 C ice and 100 C water your water ends up around 10C. Of course, we have wort, not water - which is a little different - you'd end up at a temperature a little hotter.

Thanks! I had a suspicion. I was working from water at 0C. That's interesting. It's still going to take a hell of a lot of ice though in the "worm chiller". Probably at least an equal mass to that of the wort (20KG), to get the wort down to a 20C pitching temp.?

[AllanMar]

What's the concern with the amount of water? Is it environmental? Cost? I gotta think Ice would be worse on both fronts?

You'd probably make better strides with a more efficient chiller then trying to switch to ice over water. Of course in the summer some ice can become a necessity.

[redoubt]

Holy crap, guys! Thanks for all the thought you've put into this! I'm giving my inefficient little chiller another shot tonight to see better how quickly it cools, and will stick with it for now. Though I am keeping in mind options for improving efficiency, including this one if it can be imrpoved upon. I think we all agree that, as it is, the "worm chiller" isn't quite right.

Mark, I'm not sure about the whole ice into kettle business. First, I think you're right that there's no way I'd be able to make the numbers work. Far too much ice required to bring the temp down, so my beer would be... Watery. Unless I've misunderstood and the ice stays in the bags, in which case, it would be very baggy. Second, as I've only recently stopped using nitrile gloves whilst brewing, I think the fear of infection would stop me taking this route!

Sandy, I'm not sure if a 100 degree drop would suffice. It would, I suppose, still leave my wort at 112ish. Not nearly good enough, when I give it a bit more thought.

Allan, the concerns are mostly environmental. But I suppose they're only seasonal as, in the summer, I can use the waste water in the gardens. There's always a trade-off, though, isn't there? Either I waste a bunch of water (which isn't a huge concern, I suppose, since I'm on a well and it's just going back into the ground again) or I waste some water plus a bunch of energy (and since we're in NS, that's mostly from coal). Maybe, as Mark suggests, 400L isn't really all that much. And it's not like I'm brewing everyday (though I wish!).

From what you guys are saying, the idea's a bit of a flop and won't actually be all that great. Back to the drawing board...


-Kirsten

[CorneliusAlphonse]

400L definitely seems a lot to me. But a CFC will seriously cut it down as it is much more efficient - and could be built reusing the copper coil from your immersion chiller - it would need a flexible hose, some fittings. Pump might help but you could probably do gravity too.

Also, nitrile gloves to brew! Physician style commitment!!

[AllanMar]

Yea, 400L is alot. I use 20-25gal (~75-95L) this time of year to chill 6-7gal (more in the summer though) with a homemade CFC.

I would suspect a plate chiller is probably your best use of water.

[redoubt]

Hm. You guys are using a 1/4 of the water I'm using to chill. My IC is damn inefficient! I'll tinker with the flow next time and see if I can't get it down to a more reasonable amount while I look into other options like converting it to a gravity feed CFC. May have to go bug chalmers at some point to see his set-up.

Mark, I may give the Aussie no-chill method a shot sometime. I'd be interested to see how it works out. Hell, I'm already using their BIAB method, so I might as well go all-Aussie!

-Kirsten

[Jimmy]

Hm. You guys are using a 1/4 of the water I'm using to chill. My IC is damn inefficient! I'll tinker with the flow next time and see if I can't get it down to a more reasonable amount while I look into other options like converting it to a gravity feed CFC. May have to go bug chalmers at some point to see his set-up.

Mark, I may give the Aussie no-chill method a shot sometime. I'd be interested to see how it works out. Hell, I'm already using their BIAB method, so I might as well go all-Aussie!

-Kirsten

Have you been stirring or recirculating your wort while it chills? That will signifcantly speed up chill time.

[HoweFox]

Have you been stirring or recirculating your wort while it chills? That will significantly speed up chill time.

+1

For the longest time I just left my IC in the pot and walked away. I figured that convection would be sufficient to move the hot wort past the copper...but I was severely wrong. Moving the IC around or up and down will cool the wort much quicker. You can feel the copper outlet line get much hotter as soon as you start to move it. It is crappy having to stand there and constantly move it (which is why people rig up pumps to circulate the wort), but I cooled my lager the other day from boiling to 55F in 20 minutes.

[redoubt]

Have you been stirring or recirculating your wort while it chills? That will signifcantly speed up chill time.

When I remember, I go out and give it a stir with the chiller. Key there, though, is when I remember! I'll try being better at this, too, and hope it makes things a bit more efficient.

We're still very much working out the bugs in our system. This isn't the only efficiency problem we're having -- I've spent the morning looking at the various ways to improve mash efficiency with this whole BIAB thing, too. (Lots of advice on that in other threads so thanks Jimmy, Mark, all who went before us!)

Hopefully, our next brew will be more efficient all 'round!


-Kirsten

PS: How on earth do you people have time to do other things than brew and learn about brewing?! It's easily all-consuming.

[redoubt]

Have you been stirring or recirculating your wort while it chills? That will significantly speed up chill time.

+1

For the longest time I just left my IC in the pot and walked away. I figured that convection would be sufficient to move the hot wort past the copper...but I was severely wrong. Moving the IC around or up and down will cool the wort much quicker. You can feel the copper outlet line get much hotter as soon as you start to move it. It is crappy having to stand there and constantly move it (which is why people rig up pumps to circulate the wort), but I cooled my lager the other day from boiling to 55F in 20 minutes.

Wow, okay, looks like I'll have to spend a lot more time tending to my beer while it's cooling... Done and done. I think I may have judged my IC too harshly. Seems like we might just be inefficient brewers!

Thanks, guys.

-Kirsten

[mr x]

Circulating wort during cooling is critical to efficient cooling for immersion chillers.

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[redoubt]

Circulating wort during cooling is critical to efficient cooling for immersion chillers.

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Definitely getting that now. Also feeling like a bit of a dork not knowing some of these basics and then blaming it on the chiller. I guess maybe he's not such a bad chiller after all, the poor maligned little guy.

-Kirsten