Plate heat exchangers and cold break in the FV?

[Northern Brewer]

Just wondering how others do this. Currently I cool the post boil wort through the plate heat exchanger directly into the FV, benefits is ease/speed of use and not disturbing the hot break however on the last 80L brew I took about 4L of cold break out of the bottom of the conical FV. The PHE cooled the wort from about 94c after the aroma hop steep of 15 mins down to 20c so I'm pleased with that.

Not all cold break material falls to the bottom, some seeems to hang around in the middle, if you take some freshly cooled wort and put it into a trail jar you can see this. Cooling in the copper with a more conventional counter flow cooler means this is probably filtered out through the hop bed.

So, how do other with PHEs do it? recirc back into the copper or direct into the conical? Is anybody worried about the cold break that doesn't sink to the bottom? Microbrewers use plate heat exchangers, how do they do it?

Cheers
NB

 

[mrlard]

I Have played about with this but tend to recirc the whole lot back into the boiler. This takes about 15-20mins to crash a 50l length down to below 30. Only thing you got to watch out for is not to over fine your wort if using profloc or similar to prevent blocking youd hop filter up. As you are basically whacking double the volume through

 

[Bru4u]

Whirlpool before and filters post fermentation

 

[Northern Brewer]

I Have played about with this but tend to recirc the whole lot back into the boiler. This takes about 15-20mins to crash a 50l length down to below 30. Only thing you got to watch out for is not to over fine your wort if using profloc or similar to prevent blocking youd hop filter up. As you are basically whacking double the volume through

Cheers - I have an Aleman designed hop filter so should be good to go this way, but of a pain to take it apart and clean it but its never got blocked so far.

 

[Northern Brewer]

Whirlpool before and filters post fermentation

Bru4u, whirlpool? do you mean give it a good stir to get the cold break to settle out?

What do you use post fermentation for filtering?

Cheers
NB

 

[EskiBrew]

I've been giving this thought myself with my plan to build a Speidel Braumeister clone. I was planning to use the pump to create a whirlpool however I then realised that I'd be sucking all the hop leaves through the pump which might not be a good idea - I guess I could filter before reaching the pump to remove the worst of it but wonder if the pump would cause the filter to block because of too much suction.

I was coming to the conclusion that I would have to continue using my CFC cooler as I currently do and drop the cold break straight into the FV.

As you say, commercial breweries ferment on the cold break - but I suppose quite a lot then filter the beer when bottling :hmm:

Interested in your thoughts :thumb:

 

[Northern Brewer]

I've been fermenting on the cold break since moving to the new shiny. So far I've done 5 brews. The first two were pants due to a metallic taint caused by flux from the soldering process and/or keeping a starsan solution (slightly acidic) in the plate heat exchanger - with copper and steel and acid then you can see where thats going. Also I was using the bore hole water which is highish in iron and manganese.

Since avoiding all these problems I've done 3 brews on the cold break, first is 75% gone and had my neighbours queuing around block. No problems with clarity either - passed the feck test. Second brew is just about ready in the cornie and 2 weeks away from being ready in the bottle and is nice and clear. The third is in the FV and into second day of fermentation and smells lovely.

In all cases I've just had to drop some cold break out of the bottom of the FV, usually a couple of litres however the last time I waited longer for the FV to drop below 18c as I was using WLP810 which prefers 14c to 18c and I collected about 4.5 litres. Not too bad out of an 80L batch.

I think I may stay with this for now and just leave it longer in the FV before pitching, say 4 hours, then drop 4 litres or so out of the bottom. If recirced I may lose a little less with much of the cold break staying with the hop bed however in my previous set up with cooling coil in the copper I still got cold break in the 5 gallon PET DJ but had no way of removing it.

So to conclude, I don't think the cold break affects the taste much and if you can live with losing a few litres then using the conical to drop most of the cold break is probably a good thing especially if you want to harvest the yeast.

Thoughts?

Cheers
NB

 

[graysalchemy]

I tend to get quite a lot of cold break material in the Fv using my immersion chiller. I don't find it a problem really and never have cloudy bottled beer. I would have thought using a conical Fv would be ideal as you can drop out any crap early on. :thumb:

 

[Northern Brewer]

I tend to get quite a lot of cold break material in the Fv using my immersion chiller. I don't find it a problem really and never have cloudy bottled beer. I would have thought using a conical Fv would be ideal as you can drop out any crap early on. :thumb:

Sounds like we concur : I feel better now - just thought I may have been missing a trick

 

[graysalchemy]

Indeed we do :thumb: :thumb:

 

[Aleman]

I normally wait between 8 and 12 hours before dropping trub :shock: and pitching yeast.

I also don't worry about fermenting on the cold break either :whistle:

I also recirculate wort from the PC back to the kettle until the kettle is down to 35C

I think that covers just about every base :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[Northern Brewer]

I normally wait between 8 and 12 hours before dropping trub :shock: and pitching yeast.

I also don't worry about fermenting on the cold break either :whistle:

I also recirculate wort from the PC back to the kettle until the kettle is down to 35C

I think that covers just about every base :lol: :lol:

Thanks for that Aleman - looks like I'll continue doing what I'm doing and just wait a little longer.

If WLP810 turns out to be as versatile a yeast as the feedback then I may use this as my preferred yeast as there will be no need to use a FV cupboard for keeping the temp up. I'll need to wait several hours for teh temp to drop below 18c so I may as well leave it overnight, drop the cold break and pitch.

 

[EskiBrew]

Fair enough - I'll post a separate thread regarding whirlpooling to get a better idea of what people do with that :thumb:

 

[Kev888]

I too haven't had any problems caused by break in the FV in the past. But I have started experimenting with recirculating back into the boiler for other reasons, and that seems to catch the break as a side effect.

The reasons I'm trying this are because I feel it may give me the best of both worlds; rapid cooling of wort in the plate chiller (making good cold break) and also cooling of the whole volume of wort waiting in the boiler (as an IC would do). I'm not sure if my logic is flawed though, since the wort in the boiler and passing through the chiller gets progressively cooler, so the temperature differential is less and hence the rate of cooling gradually slows... :hmm: :wha: Any thoughts on that would be of interest!

I use a small #40 mesh hop stopper to prevent anything getting into the plate chiller that could clogg it; this mesh is okay but it needs the hops to cover it as a filter bed, or else it just gets blocked with fine trub, especially with the pump. So before I attempt my braumeister thing I'm going to try a bigger Aleman-type mesh filter to see if thats got a big enough surface area to cope with recirculation through the plate chiller even if I use a hop bag.

Cheers
Kev

 

[EskiBrew]

I'm not sure if my logic is flawed though, since the wort in the boiler and passing through the chiller gets progressively cooler, so the temperature differential is less and hence the rate of cooling gradually slows... :hmm: :wha: Any thoughts on that would be of interest!

Hmmm - yes I'd had the same thought and come to the same conclusion - I don't know what maths would really be behind it but I would not be surprised if the rate of cooling was something like an exponential decay :hmm:

 

[Northern Brewer]

Some of my work colleagues are physicists, I've posed them the following question.

"Scenario :- a liquid (beer wort) is being cooled by passing it through a heat exchanger. The heat exchanger is a plate heat exchanger which has cooling water of a constant input temp and flow that is lower than the liquid to be cooled. The liquid to be cooled is re-circulated back into the holding tank.

For the sake of argument, the plate heat exchanger is rated at 66KW, the original temperature of the wort is 95c and there are 80 litres of it. The cooling water going through the heat exchanger is at 10c and has a flow rate of 5 litres a minute. The flow rate of the wort is also 5 litres a minute.

Ignoring other smaller losses and influences, and if I’ve provided sufficient primary information, how would you calculate the theoretical time to cool the 80L to 20c and what kind of curve would the temp/time plot look like?

Best answer gets a bottle of homebrew :grin: "

Cheers NB

 

[EskiBrew]

Best answer gets a bottle of homebrew :grin:

Will be interesting to see what they come up with - unless it's 42 :shock: :lol:

 

[Aleman]

Cooling does tail off as the wort approaches coolant temp. . . . Which increases cooling time. . . Therefore I Cheat, and when I am ready to transfer to the Conical I switch another Plate chiller into the coolant line which is connected to the recirc of my Maxi 310 . . . This takes the coolant down from 16C (Currently) to around 5-6C . . . With subsequent better cooling . . . Normally a bar chiller can't be used for chilling wort, but I am using it to chill coolant, and the ice bank is good enough to do that successfully.

Also at this time I turn the coolant rate down to ensure a better heat transfer

 

[Kev888]

Interesting - I've cooled the last few degrees in the FV using the beer cooler, but that wouldn't cool as fast as using it to pre-cool the plate chiller water. Possibly if the ice bank was lacking in capacity, you could use the shelf cooler (over a longer time period) to pre-chill a bigger insulated storage tank of chilled water, hmm.

Cheers
kev

 

[evanvine]

To my simple mind, you either ferment on the "cold break" or you use an Immersion Cooler! :wha: