Plate chillers

Martybhoy · Jun 24, 2018

I think I need to replace my immersion chiller, and plate chillers have always interested me.

What are people's experiences with them?

Do you still have control over how much hop debris and trub makes it's way into the FV?

And I've read that you can use gravity, rather than a pump? Is this any good?

Thanks for any feedback

Drunkula · Jun 24, 2018

Might be of no use to you but Jamil on the Brewstrong podcast was saying that he thinks immersions chillers are better and breweries use plate chillers out of necessity.

Dutto · Jun 25, 2018

In industry, Plate Exchangers are mainly used with two "clean" liquids because they are very prone to clogging up if used with anything that has debris in it or can become viscous during the cooling process.

They are very efficient and are therefore cost effective if the conditions of use don't require them to be stripped down and cleaned every five minutes.

Personally, I use a homemade immersion chiller. Cheap to make, easy to clean and efficient enough for my needs!

private4587 · Jun 25, 2018

Dutto said:
In industry, Plate Exchangers are mainly used with two "clean" liquids because they are very prone to clogging up if used with anything that has debris in it or can become viscous during the cooling process.

They are very efficient and are therefore cost effective if the conditions of use don't require them to be stripped down and cleaned every five minutes.

Personally, I use a homemade immersion chiller. Cheap to make, easy to clean and efficient enough for my needs!

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In all my time offshore(over 30years) the most hated job was stripping and cleaning plate coolers. They are great when they have two clean liquids going through them and very efficient. But and it is a big but once debris is introduced they become a right pain, the down time in stripping, cleaning, reassemble and pressure testing is vast. Admittedly the ones used in home brewing are a lot smaller but the chances of solids entering is greater and thus chances of blocking greater. I would have thought that gravity feed would not be suitable.

Martybhoy · Jun 25, 2018

Cheers guys. I think I'll steer clear of plate chillers!

Might try building my own immersion one though.

simon12 · Jun 25, 2018

I would avoid plate chillers on anything thats not already using pumps, you may be able to get the wort through it with gravity but you won't be able to clean it properly as you need to circulate cleaner through it reversing the direction regularly for 10-20 mins to get all the bits of hop out.