Josh
Every time I think about detailing my process, I am on my phone, better to do this when in front of a PC, so here it goes.
I use an immersion chiller, and add it to the kettle at 15 minutes so it gets sanitized.
When I kill the power, I start chilling right away.
Most brews I do however have a hop stand / whirlpool, this is how I do this.
I preset the controller to maintain the desired WP temperature, and kill the chilling water about 7-8C higher than desired WP temperature as there is some thermal transfer that continues to take place after turning off the water.
I built my own chiller which is 100 feet of 3/8"OD copper tubing, with two separate flow paths.
I don't measure chilling time in minutes any more, I measure it in amount of water used.
My last few batches with really cold ground water, and only chilling to 30C, it took less than 3 buckets.
To get from 30C to 20C takes about another bucket.
This will change with the warmer weather coming, I plan to overcome this by prechilling the water by running it through another chiller coil that I have in a bucket of ice water.
If you don't have the ability to solder copper pipes, and make your own chiller, the Jaded, or Cus.s three path units are well worth the money in my opinion. I suspect that there are others either already on the market. If not there most likely will be.
Jaded is the original, and I believe that the Cus.s guy was formerly a part of Jaded.
Here is a video from Beer & BBQ by Larry on the Cus.s unit (they come in different shapes and sizes).
Here is my home made unit: Frankenchiller!!!!!
I have added 16g copper wire to spread the coils out since I took this picture.
It was a design as I was building situation, and I realized once I start fitting it together the two flow paths are going in opposite directions.
There was actually no way to avoid this, so my story is that this was the plan all along
Between the two flow paths and the wort circulating in a whirlpool fashion, thermal transfer is excellent.
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