Plate chillers

[Martybhoy]

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]

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]

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]

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!


View attachment 14208 View attachment 14209

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]

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

Might try building my own immersion one though.

 

[simon12]

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.

 

[Drunkula]

I got one of these and switched the live and neutral around and am just about to immerse it into my kettle - see ya in a bit.

 

[Mungri]

I got one of these and switched the live and neutral around and am just about to immerse it into my kettle - see ya in a bit.

That will soak up a lot of wort!