I'm looking for opinions on whether I should switch from cooling my wort in an ice bath to making a chiller. I make 3 gallon AG batches so I can easily put the boil pot in the sink with ice water and get it down to 70 degrees or lower in 30 minutes.

I have a lot of chill haze in the finish beer even though I use Irish moss the last 15 minutes of the boil. John Palmer's book suggests using a chiller to help with this. Would it be faster and form a better cold break with the chiller? Our tap water is 57 degrees right now.

thanks

using a chiller will dramatically increase your cold break and your chill time.

Now's a good time to make one. Copper prices are down.

I think Paul means it will increase your cold break and decrease your chill time.

Paul said: using a chiller will dramatically increase your cold break and your chill time.

He meant Decrease chill time...

Using both methods will get you down in temp. real quick.

I'm a big fan of in-line chillers. To me, if you can keep your process closed from the environment once it's cooled, infection risk is much lower. Unfortunately, this requires a pump--which isn't cheap--and either a plate chiller or an immersion chiller and ice bath.

yea thats what i ment. was a little tired when i got up. drank too much last night.

right now i use an immersion chiller with a cheap little pond pump pumping ice water and have been pleased with chill time. i like the idea of a cfc but am curious how difficult they are to clean. some of my transfer hoses have started to look a little nasty and i swapped em out for new. thank god (or whoever) they are clear and i knew they were not clean inside

The thing to remember with a CFC, particularly with larger batches is that while you are cooling the wort in the chiller very quickly, the rest is left to sit near boiling temps for awhle

From an infection standpoint, that's a good thing.

My cfc sits on a shelf

The small bore CFCs do require a bit of cleaning but the bigger bore and esp the convoluted wall ones trap no residue-my Chillzilla is great and while the undrained wort sits I am whirlpooling it..in addition a CFC gets the wort out of the hot pot which amkes it cool even quicker..I started with an IC then a double barreled Ic but like most of my friends use a CFC or Theminator

Ice bath is LESS efficient than IC because of the poor heat distribution in the liquid and the HOT pot wall

what about the old garden hose with copper tubing inside? how efficient are those compares to the chillzilla and such?

Those are immersion chillers. I think we all started out w/ those. They're great b/c you can just throw them in the kettle when you add your whirlfloc or Irish Moss to sanitize them, but--as Zymurgy Czar pointed out--I think gradually dropping your kettle temperature while it's exposed to the environment is not as good as running the kettle through the chiller while it's submerged in an ice bath. Keep the system "closed."

Arin, those are counter flow chillers. I use one and it works great. Usually, depending on the time of year, by the time my primary is full the temp is around 65 degrees.