Help with cooling

[Sebrina]

Hi,
I have a grainfather all in one connect with a chiller. This is great however, I live in S Florida and the water is 85 degrees. I am wasting water from hose as it is running. Taking too long to cool. Right now I have the beer going to the conical fermenter and I have the glycol chiller on to cool beer.

I need an extra gadget so I can run water in a cooler so I dont go broke wasting precious water.
I have a pump chiller but it is for the fermenter. So the connections are exactly the same as glycol chiller. I want to fill a cooler with cold water and run water off for a few minutes then have it recirculate.

Any suggestions as to what I should buy? For next batch?
Thank you.

 

[Craigerrr]

You can run the chilling water through a coiled immersion chiller in a bucket of ice water. I am near Toronto, so ground water is nice and cold from late fall until spring. I will doing this myself in the coming months.

 

[Craigerrr]

I tried a recirculating system pumping ice water out of a large cooler full of ice, and recirculating it back in. I let the first 5 gallons run out on the driveway, then started recirculating it. I didn't find that this worked very well for me. There are others that do something similar to this.

BTW, I save all of my chilling water for clean up. I use my homemade double pass immersion chiller, with 100' of 3/8" copper tube. With good cold water I can chill 5 gallons with 3-4 large buckets of water.

 

[Craigerrr]

Sorry, I am bombing you with ideas here. A counterflow chiller may be a good option for you...

 

[WesBrew]

If you got a plate or counterflow chiller, you should be able to get mid 80s on a single pass into the fermenter, then put the glycol on to work it down to pitching temps. that would save a ton of water. to get temp down faster, you could run the tap water through your immerision coil (drop it in a cooler or tub of ice water) then the colder water through the plate/cf chiller to cool wort down even more before going in the fermenter.

 

[Minbari]

I use my hlt with herms coil as the chiller. Run the wort through it after boil with 20 lbs of ice in the hlt. Takes about 20 minutes to get from boiling to 80°. only takes the 5 gallons of water to fill the hlt

 

[Sebrina]

I use my hlt with herms coil as the chiller. Run the wort through it after boil with 20 lbs of ice in the hlt. Takes about 20 minutes to get from boiling to 80°. only takes the 5 gallons of water to fill the hlt

I want to use the chiller that comes with the grainfather. It makes it easy to keep sanitized. I have a pump that is for fermenter. So tubing is for that. I feel if I could use that pump and concoct some tubing with connectors I could do this. I guess I will go to home depot and see if someone there can help me put something together.

 

[Donoroto]

Home Depot sells 3/8" refrigeration tubing made of copper. Run your hose water through that (50 ft suggested) while it is submerged in a bucket or cooler of ice water. That brings your hose water down to 60 or less, making the mash pot cooling system far more effective.

Or fill the fermenter with wort (at any temperature) and use glycol system to bring it to pitching temps.

 

[Zambi]

I don't know the grainfather set up, so maybe these ideas don't work.
I got quite hot water as well. I use an immersion chiller till the wort is something like 15-20 oC above water temperature. Then move the wort to the fermenter and put the fermenter in the fridge till required temperature.

You can look at no-chill as well

Or use kveik yeast.. They like it hot

 

[SabreSteve]

I don't know the grainfather set up, so maybe these ideas don't work.
I got quite hot water as well. I use an immersion chiller till the wort is something like 15-20 oC above water temperature. Then move the wort to the fermenter and put the fermenter in the fridge till required temperature.

You can look at no-chill as well

Or use kveik yeast.. They like it hot

Even if the tap water is at 80F (which to me sounds crazy warm) it'll still have a cooling effect on a 212F wort. I like the immersion chiller idea, that's what I use. If the immersion chiller won't get you to pitching temp maybe use an ice bath for the rest of the way?
When I used to use an ice bath I used to start by just filling the sink up with cold water and then draining and changing the water out till under 150F in order to not just melt through all my ice. This would be similar only you'd be using the immersion chiller to get started and then the ice bath to finish. No chill works too, my father-in-law has done that for years and never had a problem. I don't have the patience though for that. Based on how long it used to take with the ice bath vs how long it takes with my immersion chiller I'd guess it'll probably take between 30-45 minutes combining the 2 methods to reach pitching temp