Whirpool with Immersion Chiller

R

Robert McKeon

Member
Was seeing some articles about the benefits of Whirpooling after the boil and during cool down.
I currently use a 50' coil of 1/2"od tubing as my chiller. I have a 2nd coil in ice water that I circulate thru the immersion coil.
Was thinking of setting my pump up and circulate the Wort around the coil in a whirpool as I cool down.
When I get to my desired pitch temperature I would turn off the cold water to the chiller and leave the Whirpool pump on for an additional 20 minutes.
Then let it sit for 20-30 minutes before I transfer to Primary Fermenter.
Was planning on leaving the coil immersed the whole time.
Any thoughts?
 
Sounds like you pretty much nailed the process. You don't mention it, but I assume you will remove the chiller coil once you reach the desired temp, as it will disrupt the whirlpool.
One thing you might consider is skipping the coil in the ice water, and just pump the ice water through the chiller coil. This eliminates the heat transfer process from ice water to circulating water, and should speed up the cool down.
 
John Eaton said:
[post]1998[/post] Sounds like you pretty much nailed the process. You don't mention it, but I assume you will remove the chiller coil once you reach the desired temp, as it will disrupt the whirlpool.
One thing you might consider is skipping the coil in the ice water, and just pump the ice water through the chiller coil. This eliminates the heat transfer process from ice water to circulating water, and should speed up the cool down.
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Thanks for the input
 
If you're not adding hops to the whirlpool (in which case you'd want the temperature higher) why would you whirlpool for 20 minutes? You can easily accomplish the whirlpool benefits of dropping the trub with a couple minute spin of the wort with a spoon.
 
Dan_Ell_Wang_Er said:
[post]2021[/post] If you're not adding hops to the whirlpool (in which case you'd want the temperature higher) why would you whirlpool for 20 minutes? You can easily accomplish the whirlpool benefits of dropping the trub with a couple minute spin of the wort with a spoon.
Click to expand...

If a couple minutes with a spoon works, why would anyone need/want a whirlpool device and the risk of sending wort through an external device? Obviously starting at the end of the boil would greatly minimize this concern.
I was under the impression that you need to get it swirling at high speed and the trub accumulates in the middle over time.

I did learn that an element in the kettle seems to kill any whirlpool benefit. Or, does it even work on hot/cold break alone? I always contain my hops, so I have no experience with them floating.
 
John Eaton said:
[post]1998[/post] ... You don't mention it, but I assume you will remove the chiller coil once you reach the desired temp, as it will disrupt the whirlpool...
Click to expand...

Seems I missed the statement that the chiller was left in, on my first read of the original post. I would expect that the chiller would prevent proper whirlpool affects.
 
Ryan Cochrane said:
whirlpooling is essential for cooling with an immersion chiller.
Click to expand...
I would agree that stirring or whirlpooling helps decrease chilling time, but the op said that after chilling to pitch temp he would whirlpool for an additional 20 min. That's not necessary/essential.
In my experience, while my whirlpool is going, my wort never cleared. Following the creation of the whirlpool I have to stop my pump and wait an additional 15 min or so to allow everything to settle to the bottom. As long as my pump is running, I'm stirring the trub up.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk
 
Dan_Ell_Wang_Er said:
In my experience, while my whirlpool is going, my wort never cleared. Following the creation of the whirlpool I have to stop my pump and wait an additional 15 min or so to allow everything to settle to the bottom. As long as my pump is running, I'm stirring the trub up.
Click to expand...

I saw the same thing, everything thoroughly mixed during the whirlpool, but once I drained the kettle, maybe an hour later (dinner break!), everything was dead flat on the bottom. No difference from no whirlpool. I attributed it to the element causing disturbance to the force.
 
I use a whirlpooling arm similar to Jamil's configuration, and it's absolutely necessary to cut immersion chilling times to a reasonable amount and also to get the majority of the trub into the middle of the kettle. I do not remove the chiller before running off my wort into the fermenter, I do not want to disturb things as I'm trying to run off the clearest wort possible. (My diptube is less than 1/16" off the floor of my kettle, so this is critical for me -- even a small amount of hop debris will clog up the works!)
 
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