Hello from Grants Pass OR

[quietman ST]

Hi all. Shawn here. First AG batch tomorrow. Borrowing a 3 Hop IPA recipe from the site here and trying to get the hang of the tools here. Brewed 3 or 4 extract batches years ago and always wanted to go AG. Made a mash tun from the 10 gal orange cooler and bought a bigger kettle. Friend here sold me his homemade wort chiller so here we go!
Cheers!

 

[jmcnamara]

Welcome and good luck!

A wort chiller has been one of the best things I've bought so far, much better than remembering to get ice and waiting forever for an ice bath to work

 

[quietman ST]

Well I did it. Not so sure about brewing in summer here. The tap water is already pretty warm so while the wort chiller halved the temp, still had to do the ice bath and took several hours to get to pitch temp.

 

[jmcnamara]

Try running the hose through an ice bath before it goes into the chiller. And you can gently stir the chiller in the wort to help mix it up.

Also, when I got mine, I had to spread out the coils a bit. I probably increased the height by half or so

But, that's part of what this is all about, tweaking the process to make it efficient, easy, and fun

 

[quietman ST]

Cool thanks for the tips. I'm using the non-imersion type. What I'm up against is getting enough height from mash tun to kettle to chiller to carboy, without having to lift any of these things. Today was a challenge for sure. I probably should have waited for some guidance since I've never even seen anyone do any of this before. But like you said I'm way beyond our ancestors. I'm sure it will be fine!

 

[jmcnamara]

Ahh. Can't really help you on that side then. I know some people here use some setup of pumps and hoses, maybe try creating a thread in the questions forum?

I've also seen folks make a wooden tri stand thing. You can probably find good plans if you Google a bit.

Whatever you do, be careful. At any point we've got quite a lot of hot stuff going on, cleaning up a spilt mess is the best case if something goes wrong

 

[jmcnamara]

Also, a brewers assistant is invaluable for some things, i.e., the significant other

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

I turned my immersion chiller into kind of a counterflow..sorta lol. first I use pumps and hoses and I have one of those square coolers on wheels. all I did was put compression fittings on the copper pipe ends to match my hose fittings, I put my immersion chiller in the cooler and fill it with ice then pump the wort through the pipe and back into the pot, it cools down in 15 minutes to 70, I can even whirlpool till 170ish then just run through the chiller strait to the carboy then I can get to 60 in 15 minutes, I only use 2 large bags of ice which costs 7 bucks but working on another method by freezing 2 litter bottles

note: you have to boil through it then fill with sanitizer before you begin otherwise it can give off flavors