Chilling Process

[scottcd]

I'm a homebrewer making the jump to a 4BBL brewpub and I have some equipment and process questions. I want to make sure I am purchasing the right size equipment for my brewhouse size and cooling needs.

I'll have four 4bbl fermenters, two 2bbl fermenter, and one 4bbl brite. I plan on keeping them cool with a Kreyer Chilly Max 50 (http://www.morebeer.com/products/kre...gle-phase.html) that I can get at a really good price.

I know it can handle the tanks, but I'm wondering if I can chill wort with it too. I have a 4bbl system with two twin brew kettles, each with a counterflow chiller. Can I hook up the glycol chiller to a Duda Plate Chiller (https://www.dudadiesel.com/choose_item.php?id=HX5290) and prechill my water going in to the CFC's? Would the chiller be too small for that or could it handle it?

Or should I chill with ground water first during the whirlpool and then switch to the CFC with the prechilled water?

Pardon my lack of experience but I want to avoid headaches down the road.


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[sharperbrewer]

Congrats on the Brewpub!

I don't have the numbers you're looking for exactly, but I will tell you that in our quotes for a chiller for our 5Bbl brewhouse, with 4- 5 Bbl FV and 4- 5 Bbl Brites ,all jacketed, a small cold room, and a second stage of wort cooling. The cooling load required for knock out was more than 5 times the load of the cellar. The largest problem you'll have with the chiller you reference is the small quantity of glycol in that tank. A CLT may got you there but that tank still needs to be cooled down after knockout and you don't want the glycol in the tank to stay over fermentation temp for very long.

We received a quote from Pro-chiller, they have a great online site to input the Brewery load in all of its different parts, Wesley from Pro-chiller got back to me pretty quick and spent a lot of time on the phone explaining the numbers.

He recommended, based on our current load and plans for expansion a 7.5 Hp model with a 100 gallon reservoir (a 5 hp would get us by, but only has a 22 gallon reservoir). The 7.5hp is capable of 68,000 btu's an hour and the cooling load of the cellar wouldn't be affected by the second stage wort cooling.

Hope that helps,

Scott
3 Bridges Brewing

[Junkyard]

I would definitely get a CLT twice the size of your brewery, then your chilly max can chill it down at leisure the night before. If your planning on using convoluted tube-in-tube CFC's, you might want to get more than 2 and split the wort flow through them. It'd be much more efficient that way.