Karl at the Salamander gave me a hand with my wort chiller. When I added the false bottom to my kettle, it raised up my chiller. I'd guess the chiller lost contact with somewhere between 1-1.5 gallons of wort. So, that got me thinking about a new chiller that was wider, making more copper in contact with the wort.
There were two things I considered here... One, when whirlpooling, the wort moves faster along the side of the kettle. That makes me think the chiller closer to the sides will work better. At the same time though, the area in the middle of the kettle doesn't move as much, and being further from the chiller might hurt things. Right now I'm wondering if some kind of baffle in the kettle to add some turbulence might help. Odds are though, the chiller right up against the wall on one side will mix up the circulation pretty well as it is. Anyway, I'll worry about that if that bridge even comes up.
So, the interesting thing here is that my old chiller actually fits inside my new one, letting me have two chillers in the kettle at once. That's a lot of copper! Actually, it's about 13 sq feet of copper, or twice as much surface area as the Therminator -- and that's only stainless steel! The plan is I'll make a short jumper to have one chiller go into the other. It will be interesting to see how much water pressure I'll have after going through two 25-foot garden hoses and 120 feet of copper tubing. :)
Here's a couple side-by-side shots for the hight and width differences.
And the new in the kettle by itself.
And the franken-chiller.
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