I made a copper coil IC, that was slow. Then I made another one and used one as a prechiller in an ice bath, that didn’t work either. I ran both of them as ICs in the kettle, still slow. I added a shirron, not fast enough. I ran through the shirron first and then the water out went through both of the ICs in the kettle, better but still really inefficient. I got a therminator, now we’re getting somewhere. I added a 12 dollar submersible fountain pump in an ice bath and about 6 dollars worth of fittings, now I can get boiling wort down to 68 degrees in 5 minutes.
If you live in the southern US, do not waste any time or money on trying out cheap chilling solutions. Buy a therminator (haven’t tried dudadiesel so maybe they’re fine but shirron is not, too restrictive and poorly designed for a gravity feed) and a cheap pump for an ice bath circulator. This 250 is much less than the 500 I have spent to end up at the same place. On a different note, anyone want a shirron?
Even up North in MN this summer I was having some trouble with the Shirron getting the wort cool enough. Our ground water got pretty stinken hot this year. That said it worked like a dream in the winter!
I really like my therminator too, made a few less investments than spykeratchet, just 2 different intercoolers but cooling is now quite fast. I thought I might have to go the same route with recirculating ice water out of a bucket as we’ve had a warm summer but the ground water has remained plenty cool enough for me to get wort down to pitching temps easily.
I do have a simple fountain pump that is part of my keg and carboy cleaning setup, has also worked well to recirculate PBW through the therminator, just backflushing with a garden house wasn’t cleaning it very well.
I picked up a B3-23A from Dudadiesel and have been able to chill to five gallons to within a couple degrees of ground water temp in five minutes using a gravity feed. I’m very happy with its performance.
