Condenser water temperature

[Tom's Foolery]

I am using tap water in my consenser. The tap water is about 70f, so the condensed spirit will never get close to the magic 60f that my hydrometers are calibrated to.

Are some of you chilling the water entering the condenser down to something lower than 60f, like 40f or 50f?

I know there was a post recently on using glycol in the chiller but this is really a different question.

If you are chilling the condenser water (from the tap) and then into the condenser (not recycling the hot condenser water back into the loop), how cold do you want to make your condenser water?

Thanks,

Tom

[porter]

I'm not sure of any practical need, or reason to bring down the parrot to 60f, which is what you are apparently trying to do. This isn't a precise control area like the final proofing/bottling stage.

The more practical method is to simply print out a cheat-sheet on temperature compensation for the hydro. If you always get the condensed product down to 75f, then the hydro will always show the same reading according to the sheet.

I've never seen anyone in the artisinal field to hold the exact same temp throughout the cycle, unless they have a really large condensor. and a very large thermal mass for cooling.

Using a glycol chiller, unless you already have one fired up for something else, would be very cost prohibitive on a small scall.

[DrewKulsveen]

As long as your distillate is below 90F you should be in good shape. The only real need for a chiller is to cool your mash for fermentation. You can reference the gauging manual for temperature correction for your hydrometers.