Experiment in Wort Cooling

Posted by: pdtnc on: June 17, 2009

In: Brewing
1 Comment

Thoughts on cooling wort!
You use a 10-15 meter coil to make either a Counterflow cooler(CFC) or a Immersion cooler(IC)….
In the case of the CFC, could you slow down the flow of Hot Wort and speed up the flow of cooling water and thus reduce the length of your copper coil?
I’m just in the making of something that I think will speed up my Boil-to-Pitching temperature time even if it doesn’t entirely chill things down, mainly as an interim measure to either buying or making an IC, but also as a bit of an experiment…
🙂

The unequal T’s are 15x15x22mm from B&Q
The Spiral bit it a bendy tap connector also from B&Q
The Pipe is 22mm and there are a couple of 15mm bits in there too
…the other fittings are from Screwfix and just standard 15mm connectors.
I intend to restrict the flow of the 15mm down to 8 or 10 at the out-end.
Soldering it up, added a 15mm compression nut to attach to boiler and a 15-8mm reducer to restrict the flow.

I’ve ordered some bits, garden hose, Tap connector and hose quick releases.
I’m ready to go… Brewday today 🙂 while we’re off work.

Apparently its almost exactly the design of a piece of Chemistry equipment – Allihn condenser – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condenser_(laboratory)
🙂
***OK then…
****Well its just been tested!
Left the boiler to settle for 20 mins from boiling, hooked up my bits of copper pipe and garden hose and turned on the cold water.

At a sensible flow rate of wort it was able to cool to 55°C
At a slow trickle I can get it down to 34°C
I ended up with 13 Litres of wort @ 45°C in the FV (with lots of flow rate changes and temperature checks)
If I’d let it trickle it would have taken ages to empty the boiler so it had to sit in the bath cooling off some more.

Here’s the pics:

It does prove that if you were to gang 3 or 4 of these up you could probably get a lower temperature and a faster flow, but that goes against my simplistic idea, I’m now going to go buy a coil of 10mm copper pipe… 10,15,20 metres??? and make a proper IC coil! 🙂