# Copper Cooling Coil



## manga (23/1/06)

I will soon have a 50L S/S kettle (40cm diameter and 40cm height) and will be buying some copper tubing from a plumbing store to cool the wort.

Question (1)
I have the option of 10mm or 12mm diamter tubing. I am thinking to get the 12mm as it would have more surface area, hence better cooling, however am not sure how easy it would be to bend into a coil. I take it that the copper is only about 1mm thick so should be easy to bend ?

Question (2)
For my kettle, I am thinking I would need 10m of tubing. Would this length be sufficent ?

Question (3)
What average flow rate of water through the copper tubing can I expect ? I have read that is would take approx 20-30 minutes to cool your wort. The reason I am asking is that I want to collect the hot water for watering the garden and need to know how many buckets I will need to buy

Any help on the above question would be apprecieated.

Cheers


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## Samwise Gamgee (23/1/06)

Make sure you get soft annealed copper otherwise you'll have a hard time bending it.

In regards to flow rate, i suppose it will depend on how hard your tap is turned. Not sure if there is a typical water usage in cooling.


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## warrenlw63 (23/1/06)

Manga

10m is good. 15 metres would be even better. I use 15m to cool 40 litres of wort and it takes about 30 mins to bring the wort down to 30c in summer temps. Beyond that you'll be hard pressed to get any cooler without using a pre-chiller or pond pump recirculation.

Hope this helps.

Warren -


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## Screwtop (23/1/06)

I thought 18M would be enough, ended up with 25M in this baby. Definitely 1/2" for ease of connectors etc and Bunnings cheaper than plumbers supplies. Cost me something like $110 for one roll of 18M from plumbers supplies.


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## fraser_john (23/1/06)

What a whopper! How long does it take to chill a kettle full?


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## BoilerBoy (23/1/06)

I use 9m of 10ml copper tube roughly coiled to fit inside a 60L plastic stackable crate I got from BigW.

I drilled a hole down the bottom side to fit a grommet to seal round the tube at the outlet
.
I fill it up with water and heaps of ice and just stir it around regulating the flow of the wort through the tap to adjust temp.

With a digital thermometer at the outlet the temp bounces between 10C & 25C with a collected temp of 18C.

It may not look pretty, but Its very effective! and very cheap when finances are tight!  

Cheers BB


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## bindi (23/1/06)

25m Screwtop  wow, makes my 18m look sad  Ah, but seems to work for me.
By the way, did you enjoy my Belgian yesterday? big session :beer: will crack your IPA tonight.


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## stephen (23/1/06)

Bought either 15m or 18m (can't remember how much) of 10mm annealed copper tude from my local hardware for some where around $75 (again memory is faded!) I wound this around one of my kegs leaving about 6m for future projects. As for the ends, I bought some normal hose connectors - the ones used to connect two hoses together - drilled them out to 3/8", smeared sealant around my tube and forced the connectors onto either end of the chiller tube. With the sealant fully set I haven't had any leaks whatsoever. As for connecting to the kitchen sink I modified a dishwahser connector with a tap connector.

View attachment 5669


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## stephen (23/1/06)

My chiller connections:


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## JSB (23/1/06)

Hi Wally,

Does the $86 bucks inc the 30% price hike ??

Cheers
JSB


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## Rex (23/1/06)

Screwtop said:


> I thought 18M would be enough, ended up with 25M in this baby.



Nice work, how did you get the coiling so neat? or is it soldered together?


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## nonicman (24/1/06)

I picked up a little pond pump from Bunnings for 7.95, fill the cleaned Keep Cold mash tun with ice and water (15 litres approx) , found it needed elevation to pump through the immersion chiller and back into it'self. Kick the ice water in at around the 30-40 mark and recirculate.


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## Screwtop (24/1/06)

The largest boil so far has been 15L have yet to do a full 30L AG with it. Typical I overengineer everything, it's the German and Irish in me to be sure to be sure. Took 22 min on a hot day to reach the water temp of 24. Love the crate and ice idea from BoilerBoy, what a saving in water and materials. Have seen some great inovative home brew gear lately (feel another thread coming on, maybe "Way out home brew gear"). Saw Bindi Bob's grain mill mount the other day, an invalid shower chair with adjustable legs,   you gotta post a pic Bob.


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## GMK (24/1/06)

bindi said:


> 25m Screwtop  wow, makes my 18m look sad  Ah, but seems to work for me.
> By the way, did you enjoy my Belgian yesterday? big session :beer: will crack your IPA tonight.
> [post="104229"][/post]​




Nice looking tap in the background :super:


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## bindi (24/1/06)

Nice looking tap in the background :super:
[post="104301"][/post]​[/quote]

A Guy in SA sold it to me <_< let me think.. YOU  the red one is going beside it soon.


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## manga (24/1/06)

Wow guys, that was a lot more feedback than I expected. I'll have a peek in Bunnings some day and see if they stock the 1/2 inch that you all rave about. But why the imperial measurements ? I thought Australia was on the metric system !

Anyway, many thanks. I may also post some pics of my first AG mash when I get the chance.


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## bindi (24/1/06)

Screwtop said:


> The largest boil so far has been 15L have yet to do a full 30L AG with it. Typical I overengineer everything, it's the German and Irish in me to be sure to be sure. Took 22 min on a hot day to reach the water temp of 24. Love the crate and ice idea from BoilerBoy, what a saving in water and materials. Have seen some great inovative home brew gear lately (feel another thread coming on, maybe "Way out home brew gear"). Saw Bindi Bob's grain mill mount the other day, an invalid shower chair with adjustable legs,   you gotta post a pic Bob.
> [post="104300"][/post]​


''
As requested the mill even two 'socialy confused brewers can use  with a drill :blink:


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## Screwtop (24/1/06)

Funny how the mill just would not turn until the chuck was tightened. Think this should move to a "Way-Out Home Brewed Home Brew Gear thread to see what weird/way-out gear others have produced. That was some funny mill base!


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## Justin (24/1/06)

To throw a spanner in the works my immersion chiller is 3/8" and about 9-10m long. It works great, I imagine better than 1/2" but probably little difference in real terms. Just to correct you on your question in your first post, 3/8" actually has a higher surface area "to volume" ratio than 1/2" which is actually what your after.

Get whatever is cheapest-1/2" or 3/8". If you don't skimp on length you can't go wrong with either.

Cheers, JD


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## Screwtop (24/1/06)

Would imaging 3/8 would have less pressure/greater volume and so more effieciency (greater heat transfer over time due to reduced thermal saturation) even without calculating additional surface area. Many ways to skin cat, grasshopper


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## Bobby (3/2/06)

i my built immersion chiller today. cost me an earthly sum of $35. 
bargain. thinking of picking up another roll just for the sake of it. no doubt i will find a use for it...perhaps a prechiller.


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## agro (3/2/06)

I have the good fortune of having a 2000 Litre tank of water to pump through my nice, shiney new immersion chiller. My plan is to pump from the tank, through the chiller and back into the tank to avoid wasting any water.

Unforutnately I don't have a torch to solder the copper joints... Anybody using compression fittings in the pot ? 

Agro.


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## warrenlw63 (3/2/06)

Agro.

It's possible to use compression fittings. I used to do this.

Be very meticulous, tighten the fittings properly and use lots of plumber's tape. I found the pink tape that costs a few dollars more sealed the joints up nicely as they had some mild dripping with the regular stuff. You don't want any water (particularly tank) leaking into your wort.  

Eventually I went down the copper elbow and soldering path though. It's not that difficult to do. :beerbang: 

Warren -


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## warrenlw63 (3/2/06)

Before and after shots.  

Warren -


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## agro (3/2/06)

Cool 

I have run water through the cooler for over an hour in the (empty) pot to check for leaks - all clear so it shouldn't leak. It will be interesting to see how well it works this weekend given the tank water is usually 2-3 degrees below ambient.

Yeh - the solderings easy... if you have a torch!

Cheers
Agro.


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## apd (3/2/06)

warrenlw63,

Is that a dog turd in the bottom right of of the before shot?

You need to teach your dog to show some respect around your brewing gear!


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## warrenlw63 (3/2/06)

LOL! :lol: :lol: 

Nup, a bit of fig tree that was giving me the irates. I took the loppers to it in a big way. It's gone completely these days.

That said I've got 2 Cocker Spaniels and sometimes walking through the yard at night is a bit like Tip-Toe through the Minefield.  

Warren -


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## browndog (3/2/06)

My chiller is made of 10m of 1/2" annealed copper tube and upon doing my first AG just recently freaked out a little about wasting a heap of water cooling down the wort. I had a brainstorm, I simply ran the waste water into my pool which was depleated by evaporation. Upon doing this I happily turned the tap as wide open as it would go. 25mins later the wort was at the same temp as the water coming out of the tap (about 26C) I now have no qualms about wasting water.


cheers

Browndog


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## markws (4/2/06)

Similar to most people I am half way throught making an immersion chiller - Bunnings have ?12mm annealed copper tube/pipe for $49 for 15m.

All that remains for me is to fit connecotrs 

Regards

MWS


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## Bobby (4/2/06)

check your local mitre 10 first. they might be cheaper and they have a sale on now.


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## Simon W (4/2/06)

Scrap metal yards are good. They only care about scrap value.
I picked up an unused 5m roll of 8mm copper tube for .... $1!!!
Didn't have what I wanted, could do with a bigger roll but eh, I can wait.
They've usually got all sorts of stainless stuff too.
Worth a try.


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## agro (5/2/06)

Just tried the chiller out on the weekend recirculating water from tank->pump->chiller->tank at fairly high pressure. As an extra insurance I chlorinated the tank water earlier in the week 'just in case'.

End result - 20 lites of wort cooled from boiling 20 doen to 24 degrees in a little over 12 minutes. A heck of a lot faster than I expected. No noticable difference in the water temps going in and out of the cooler. Given the amount of water flowing through the thing that wasn't surprising. 

The tank water was relatively cool at around 22 degrees which would have help considerably.

Given the water pressure and the way the cooler was vibrating - I think I will change from pressure fittings to soldered joints fairly soon.

Agro.


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## Simon W (6/2/06)

agro said:


> I think I will change from pressure fittings to soldered joints fairly soon.



Lead free solders are available if you want go that route.
It's proobably not worth worrying about with such a small amount of solder in contact with the wort, but it's up to you.


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## Screwtop (6/2/06)

I do zackary the same!


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## matt77 (17/8/19)

I'm thinking of pumping hot wort out of boiler. Into fermenter. Through a coil immersed in an esky full of ice n water.
Probably 3/8 , maybe even 1/4 .
A slow pump and that should cool to pitching temp once it's in the fermenter...
Is this wrong, because it seems the minority of people are doing it this way?


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## TheSumOfAllBeers (19/8/19)

You probably don’t have enough thermal mass in the esky to take it down to pitching temp, but the esky is a good way to take it down the final 10C or so quickly.


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## Tony M (20/8/19)

Matt, You may have to do both. The tap water here in Perth is 28C in the summer so I have to run a 15metre X 13mm immersion chiller in the boiler which drops the wort to the low thirties over 20 minutes or so then I pump out thru another 15 metres immersed in a 9 litre bucket filled with 4kg of crushed ice topped up with water. This gives me a final wort temp of 16-18C which is spot on for pitching. I crammed the secondary chiller into the bucket by making a double wrap of coils with a nominal 150mm dia. Have a couple of 2 litre containers of water which I keep in the freezer and break up into chunks with a welders chipping hammer. These figures are for 50L brews.
A quick hint--- Keep the wort circulating while the primary immersion chiller is running; it drastically increases the chill rate


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