Homemade wortchiller

Mar 31, 2005 32 Replies

On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 11:48:48 -0600, "Johnny Mc" said in alt.beer.home-brewing:

A five minute soak in Oxyclean (inside and out) does it for me. I've never seen anything but cupric oxide (the black one) on or in my chiller.

And yeast does need a bit of copper in its diet.

Sorry, but I have to disagree with the length not making a difference. Have you not heard size does matter? ;^) It's not all in the motion of the ocean..... ;^)

But seriously, on my chiller my tubing size is large enough diameter and all my fittings are large to not restrict the water flow. When I start chilling I run the water slow and catch a 5 gallon bucket of hot water to clean up with, then I open up the water valve and the flow is fast enough that the water coming out is not hardly even warm. I have a long hose on it so I water the flower beds, bushes and trees. It can chill down

10 gallons in about 12 or 15 minutes. That is if I swing the chiller back and forth in the wort to keep the wort passing over the surface of the coils. I always use a large freshly laundered white towel to drape over the top to keep stuff from getting into the chilling wort. Helps avoid an infection and I can still swing the chiller back and forth with the towel over the top.

I pointed this out because I see posters here using the word "sterilize" all the time. Terminology is very important; it is important to understand the difference between sterilizing something and just making it sanitary.

Okay, I will try to explain it. I guess it is a pun. A person's "pet-peeve" is something they continually complain about. A little something that gets on there nerves and bothers them. It was not a serious post, just a sad attempt at humor :^(

On Mon, 04 Apr 2005 22:16:36 GMT, "Stephen Russell" said in alt.beer.home-brewing:

I've never had it take more than 20 minutes, even in the worst summer heat, and usually closer to 10 minutes (with constant manual agitation [just moving the chiller up and down enough to keep the exiting water hot], of course). You must have either warm tap water or a small chiller or you do 10 gallon batches.

life is cruel. life is cruel. the concept sterilize/sanitize is meant as an idea of being really really clean. picking your nose or rubbing your eye ball, makes you contaminated. washing the walls and floors in bleach, is a total zero if you are drooling over everything.

lye laundry bar soap is a good cleaner. rinse til they can not smell it. relax and have a beer is a good idea.

keep it clean. well, i have on occasiion just told a few fellas to go to the sauna and pool, and enjoy. sneezing makes you beer bottling useless. what dooes a guy do in a hot sauna alone for so long? why are carrots orange? some things you do not ask.

no idea what your needs are.

25 feet of 3/8 copper line is irrelevnt. As a frig tech, lets find out the problem. you wanna cool a 5 gallon jug, in the summer time.

last year a friend got 40 by 40 foot panels of solar heaters to heat his pool, and it worked NEVER. well the shade tree in his yard stopped that.

so i invented a back yard barbeque for him. The bed of the barbeque heats both his pool and his outdoor sauna.

please state the problem, not the reworked idea of design from the seven dwarfs. dumpy fizzy, hellbent, and toad should excuse me. why? cuz i said so. dug88

you actually use and throw away water, just to cool a keg? here in edmonton, we pay for water. You bring new meaning to dumb.

create this a small box able to hold the keg. put a second outside box around it, and make it look fancy. the trick to this is you stick it on your living room airconditioning vent. the air flows thru it costs you nothing

we all make errors those that don't get nailed to a cross. help is irrelevant i find guys here trying to reinvent the wheeel. i go over my head often but someone will correct my mistakes

a guy commented he had made tea beer. TEF is a grain, so he must have tried a recipe by a typo. maybe it will work. no idea.

i am supposed to know 2 languages, but 1 is my usual. REALLY bad, when you consider my country canada is expected to have to go fully multilingual in less than 20 years.

never say sterilize to your doctor sanitize is okay, especially in the jewelerry department

The biggest mistake you make is posting your ideas, thinking you are helping! Please stop!

i notice you enjoy rewriting my comments rather than delete them. levity will asssist. brow beating is juvenile. rewrite my words is just wothless.

grown up people are looking for solutions, and as mentor, i saw your work lacking.

hey guys go get charlie papazian book, the home brewer companion.

do you have a comment none at none dug88

got a few emails back that said thanx. dug88

learning is easy if you open your mind

Basically you are building & using a heat exchamger. Bigger fatter longer does not mean better or more efficient. You need to consider also ease of cleaning & sanitising. Stick to a standard design unless that will clearly not do the job you want in which case we would need more info before suggesting modification or an alternative. For example what medium do you intend using as the coolant & how will you cool the coolant. Pete

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