Herms Coil as a Chiller

[Jordan West]

Been looking into the design of my 3 keg conversion system and saw a really good video of a system that used the herms Coil as the immersion chiller after the boil by filling the HLT with ice and water ... I thought after that wouldn't it be a good idea to add salt to the ice water to allow for cooler liquid... Or would that be bad in some way for the stainless steel /copper over time ??

 

[peebee]

I designed my system to use the HERMS "coil" as a cooler. Made sense to me to have one coil as dual use. But my design uses a counter-flow heat exchanger so offers nothing that you might copy; except support for the concept! Corrosion could be a problem with salt, especially with copper, but as long as not storing damp it shouldn't be anything to worry about (I can't store my cooler dry, so it is stored full of water, which isn't the same as damp).

 

[jceg316]

I had a 2 vessel herms and used my stainless steel wort chiller as the heat exchange. I'd heat up sparge and mash water in my kettle with the chiller inside, then after mashing in the sparge water would remain in my kettle and act as the source of heat as I recirculated wort through the chiller. I'd then run my sparge water through the chiller to clean out any wort in there.

I'd also use it as a wort chiller after the boil is complete.

 

[Bigcol49]

add salt to the ice water to allow for cooler liquid

Hi!
I would hesitate to do that - I am sure it would react with the copper ('O' Level Chemistry Grade 5 1971 )
You don't need to get a super-cool liquid - just have a constant supply of ice ready to replenish the reservoir in the HLT