Anyone used a straight leibeg condenser to chill wort?

[rectifier]

Hey, working on my new 5gal keg still here.

Since I am also going to be using it as a small mash pot - i thought, why not pump the wort out through the condenser and use it as a wort chiller at the same time, saving time/mess and cutting down on the amount of brewing equipment around my house.

Looking at wort chillers online, they all appear to be huge coils, in the order of 20' long... but it all depends on the flow rate of the beer too, and I'd be willing to wait awhile while i play video games and beer siphons itself quietly into a carboy.

I want a straight leibeg on my potstill... has anyone here ever tried to chill wort with a straight, jacketed condenser? How big condenser/slow beer will I have to go? Anyone got an equation?

[decoy]

you can always just put your keg in a plastic bin and put blocks of ice and water around it...

[rectifier]

Yes, THM... but all the "counter-flow chillers" I've seen online are a copper coil inside a plastic pipe jacket, on the order of 20' long... what I'm trying to ask I guess, is how short that 20' can be cut down to, to see if I could make a condenser that would make a good (compact/easy to clean) still and a decent chiller.

Decoy, that's the whole thing I want to eliminate in my setup... messy tubs of water, sloppy immersion coils dripping wort on things... a nice clean inline setup.

[decoy]

No Problem

Well in that case to answer your question, the condensor can be any length.

the bottom line is what temp you want the wart to achive, this will be governed by the following four main factors

1. how cold the liquid is you will be running thru the condensor.

2. length of condensor

3. qty of wart you need to cool

4. velocity or speed you run the wart thru the condensor.

you can circulate the wart thru the condensor at a fast rate but you must kep in mind the qty of wart you have to cool.

insulating the keg and keeping it out of a breeze and out of direct sunlight or heat will help

i cant see any reason why you cant cool a 5 gal keg thru eaven a 12inch condensor if the liquid you run thru the jacket of the condensor is chilled enough.

you can add salt or glycol "radiator coolant" to the chiled liquid to achive lower temp.

[junkyard dawg]

This is just my hunch, but I think it will be very slow and very inefficient to use a liebig condensor for wort cooling. The only reason I think this is that distillate coming out of a condensor doesn't lose all that much heat. It loses enough to recondense, but its still generally warm. In order to get the distillate cool you have to put a LOT of water through it. The designs that utilize more surface area than a Liebig would be more efficient... like counterflow that THM mentioned. This is a cool gadget, but not what you are wanting

http://www.austinhomebrew.com/product_i ... ts_id=2222" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

I just saw this while looking up that link. Check out the whiskey experiment they are running... Can you Identify your favorite brand by taste???

my last batch was my favorite brand