Wort Chilling techniques/setup in the kitchen

[Simonpyman]

So I have a large copper coil chiller from my earlier brew kit and the one that came with the brewzilla. I currently use both in tandem by placing both in pots filled with ice and it works fairly ok. However I am thinking of using one as an immersion chiller by connecting to the kitchen faucet while the other will have the hot wort pumped through the other coil (in a pot with ice) and back into the brewzilla using the pump. I am thinking that this should work much better but curious as to what you are doing to chill your wort when brewing in the kitchen.

I don't have the ability to connect to an outside hose hookup and want to avoid having to buy as much ice for my next brew.

 

[philjohnwilliams]

I think in your situation the immersion chiller route is your best option. What I would do is use one chiller as an immersion chiller, and use the other in an ice bath between the faucet and the chiller to cool the water passing through the immersion coil. When you start chilling, the difference in temp between your tap water and hot wort is great enough that you won't need to prechill. Let the tap water do the work until your wort is about 20 degrees above your ground water temp. Then start the ice bath for the prechiller, with the bulk of the heat taken care of, you should need less ice. I've also found that running the water through the chiller a bit slower at this point can allow it to extract as much heat as possible, which may take you a bit longer but will save you some ice.

 

[Simonpyman]

I think in your situation the immersion chiller route is your best option. What I would do is use one chiller as an immersion chiller, and use the other in an ice bath between the faucet and the chiller to cool the water passing through the immersion coil. When you start chilling, the difference in temp between your tap water and hot wort is great enough that you won't need to prechill. Let the tap water do the work until your wort is about 20 degrees above your ground water temp. Then start the ice bath for the prechiller, with the bulk of the heat taken care of, you should need less ice. I've also found that running the water through the chiller a bit slower at this point can allow it to extract as much heat as possible, which may take you a bit longer but will save you some ice.

Thanks for the confirmation, I actually haven't used the immersion chiller as intended so I will be curious to see how using this setup will work compared to my previous setup.

 

[Craigerrr]

I agree with @philjohnwilliams on not prechilling the water until the bulk of the heat is removed.
There was a a brulosophy, or or one of the many beertubers that put up a video about whether or not to prechill cooling water.
The end result was that prechilling cooling water had very little affect on speed of chilling.
You could just skip the ice completely.
Chill with tap water as much as you can, then transfer to the fermenter, just leave it to cool the rest of the way on its own, before pitching yeast.
With an air lock in place, there is no reason you couldn't just leave it overnight, and pitch yeast in the morning (assuming you don't have temp controlled fermentation).

 

[philjohnwilliams]

Also, stir the wort while chilling, it really helps the process go faster.

 

[Over The Cliff Brewing]

I use an aquarium pump submerged in a bucket in the kitchen sink that is connected to the chiller that came with the brewzilla. It works great especially in the winter when our water temp is averages around 58 degrees. It does take quite a bit of water though. You could also just do "no chill" method over night just may need to adjust your hop times.