Homemade Wort Chiller

Damn. Too much math for me to cool my brew. I bit the bullet and bought Philchill phittings, copper line and gardenhose. My 20' CF chiller would take boiling (really, literally boiling) wort and chill it to tap h2o temp as fast as I could pump it through. Some particular reason you're going with an immersion type?

Happy Chilling!

Bob

You put way too much work into it :)

Buy 50' of 3/8" copper tubing. Wrap it tightly around an empty cornelius keg. Put 3/8" hose on each end (bend ends so they are vertical and and will stick out of the kettle) and clamp it. Put the coils in your kettle and vertically expand so that the top end of the coil is just below the level of your cooling wort.

That's it.

Tom Veldhouse

I use the immersion type simply to avoid all the break material and hops. I don't want to have to transfer it twice. Immersion chillers are easier to clean as well. That is why I use an immersion chiller rather than a counter-flow chiller.

Tom Veldhouse

So how fast does it cool the wort? Say you are at near boiling when you start, and you have 68F tapwater... how long to get it to pitching temperature? I'd like to get my 5 gallon batches down to temp in about

Steve

I've read that counterflows are harder to clean and they also seem they might be difficult to get started in the limited space with which I am working. I've got an apartment kitchen, which means every time I transfer beer, its a big deal. I'd probably be connecting the counterflow chiller up to my sink and then attempting to siphon. How much water is in 20' of 1" tubing? Not sure if I want to invest in a food grade pump. with 1" outer and 3/8" inner, I calculate about a half-gallon of water in that tube for siphoning....

An immersion chiller is simpler, and I think that with a good design, might be able to do almost as well. It might be tricky to fabricate, but I am thinking of using the 1/8" refrigerator (Cu) tubing and having

Using that tiny tubing, I can stick over 100 feet of tubing in the pot and it will only take up a 10th of a gallon.. Not too bad... That tubing should have just about 1.5 times as much area to transfer heat as the outside shell of the pot.

Steve

With my 50' IC, I'm able to get 10 gallons of wort within 8-10 F of my tap water in 15 mins if I stir every 2-3 minutes. With no stirring, it takes about 30 mins.

Beer here,

Mike

-- sarge0503 at sbabootcamp dot commercial

Uhmm, almost too much info for me. I built my own chiller out of 1/4" tubing because my closest Lowes didn't have 3/8" at the time. It works really well, and will work better in the summers when I build a prechiller. I will say that my kettle (a converted keg) retains a lot of heat, so I'm thinking about putting it in a large washtub full of ice water to help speed the process. Stir your wort, or build a stirring device to keep it constantly flowing. The trub cone is not a myth, but I think you really only benefit from it when using a kettle with a rounded bottom, like my keg. Anyway, you can see the chiller at

Maybe that will help someone make their own. I'd recommend 3/8" for the simple reason that it is a little more sturdy than 1/4". I'm always stretching my chiller to help it stay near the top of the wort level instead of sitting at the bottom.

BTW, this was an EASY thing to build. Super easy. The washing machine hoses made it a lot simpler to make and use.

With a 50' chiller immersed in your 5 gallons of wort with tap water at 68F. You will have it down to about 72F in at most 15 minutes. In the summer our water temp is in the mid to high 60s and and I cool 6 gallons of wort to 70F in 20 minutes or so, and that is with a 25' immersion chiller. I will be making a 50' chiller very soon and retiring my old 25' after 10 years (actually, I will give it to a friend just getting into brewing).

Tom Veldhouse

To much for me as well and I like math.

I made a copper coil 3/8" ~25'.

But the kicker to this is I use a pre-chiller. I bought a truck heater core

for $12, at auto zone. I put it in a 3 gal pot of ice / water.

This greatly reduces the incoming water temp to the coil. Cooling from

Frank

ATF Homebrew Club

New Bern NC

It makes for a more efficient heat transfer, thus you get more cooling per gallon with 50' than with 25'. Significantly more. I don't know where the point of diminishing return starts, but 50' is a good length for a wort chiller.

Tom Veldhouse

I snooped around the rest of your site, and saw the Prickly Pear Mead recipe. A couple of questions:

How did it turn out? Was it a sweet or dry mel? How did you get the seeds out? Split them down the middle and scoop?

I like the idea of making the juice instead of throwing in all of the pulp. Were you able to get all of the flavor you wanted? Would you do anything different the next time?

BTW, nice job on the wort chiller!

Beer here,

Mike

-- sarge0503 at sbabootcamp dot commercial

It is still in the fermenter, but at the last racking it was nice. I can't really describe the flavor, I guess a very mildly sweet prickly pear. The color is absolutely gorgeous, this stuff is beautiful just to look at. When I pulped the pears I left the seeds in and they got seperated out by the tea press. Just a quick peel and rough chop, then the heating and juicing. The seeds may have added some tannin, but if they did it isn't really noticeable.

I might use more pears next time for even more color. The flavor is definitely there, but for most people they wouldn't recognize it as prickly pear. I had read some horror stories about wine made from prickly pears, but I think next year I'll make at least one more gallon of this mel.

Yeah, and don't even think it's going to stay nice and pretty looking. It won't! That's one of the good things about it. You can twist, turn, squish, or stretch it, as you see fit, during use or cleaning. Still works. It's all about function. They is ugly things. Ken