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wanting an immersion chiller

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fletcher

bibo ergo sum
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hey all,

i'm looking to see if anyone had an old/spare/new-one-they've-made copper immersion chiller that they'd like to sell. i'm inner city sydney but am happy to head a few hours to pick it up. i'd make one myself but i'm all thumbs when it comes to shit like that.

please PM me if you have one you'd like to have taken off your hands and we can chat about price and details. i BIAB and my pot is a 20L (sorry don't have measurements but can get these once i'm home).

if this post is in the wrong spot, my apologies.

fletcher.
 
An immersion chiller for a 20L pot might be pretty small, most are designed for larger volumes.

Its not that hard to make one yourself, annealed copper tubing from bunnings already comes in a coil, you just need to tighten the coils up a bit and add some fittings (depends if you are going to use a re-circ or water in-out-dump system.

Bear in mind the last time I looked at annealed copper from bunnings it was $75 for a coil (not sure the length)

You can buy a purpose built one from http://www.ibrew.com.au/collections/wort-chillers/products/copper-immersion-wort-chiller

Not sure of you budget
 
If you're only chilling ~20L then the linked chiller is about as cheap as you can get and will also be more than big enough for said volume. You'll struggle to find one 2nd hand at that price. Might cost about $20 for delivery but still good value IMO.

JD
 
cheers guys, that one in the link looks the goods.

i'll be moving up from 20L eventually so one that takes a bigger volume would be great :)

thanks again. much appreciated.
 
It took me about 15 minutes to make one from some copper I bought from an air conditioning supply store, about $6 a metre, so a 25 footer would cost like $40. Just wrapped it around a keg. Bends like butter.
 
I've been avoiding telling people how cheap mine was to make, in case I want to sell it! It was $38.

Polyaire sell 1/2" (13mm) pipe for $60 for 50 feet. I've made two chillers out of it. It was fairly easy to coil around a keg.
Add a $8.00 garden hose and clamps (fits perfectly on the 1/2") from bunnings.

(The only other thing I bought was $15 pipe bender from supercheap, however it was for 14mm pipe and was really hard to use).

Actually not sure if I'm keeping or selling the second one yet, but I'm in Canberra anyway....


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Hey Drew - im thinking of building one for myself - is 25 feet enough for a chiller.

I generally do double batches.
 
I use 30ft and its only just enough for single batches. If you are going to run really cold water/ice water then you can get away with 25ft.
 
if I can make one(which I did) anyone can. copper pipe, garden hose and 2 clamps
 
Sprungmonkey, it comes in 50 foot lengths anyway, just use the whole length :). I only do ~12 litre batches and I was going to keep it at 50 feet, until I realised it was sticking 10cm above the pot! So I split it.

Probably more important to keep an eye on the diameter. I'm sure I'm missing some variables here, but I notice that 50 feet of 3/8 inch pipe only gives a slight increase of surface area (12.5%) compared to 25 feet of 1/2 inch pipe. Interesting.
 
the other option is that you make a second with the spare, connect it to tap, ant then to the other chiller, place in ice water, have the colder water then running into the wort chiller which helps get that temp down below water temp in summer months. might sound on fusing but is imple and effective
 
yeah i was thinking of buying a 50 ft length making 2 coils (submerge one in an ice bucket and other in the kettle)
then run water though to chill further / quicker. I was just wondering if anyone thinks this will be enough to chill 50 litres - or if i should get 2 x 50 foot lengths (starts getting a bit exy then though.
 
I have been doing that until I discovered one of those cheap ebay pond pumps, now I recirculate ice water through the coil. It works much better than my pre-chiller ever did.

To make your pre-chiller more efficient you need to keep moving it around in the ice-bath to keep it cold. You could also add lots of salt to your water to lower it's melting point which means you have a colder bath with no air (ice) in it, but you would have to use a lot of salt and it seems unnecessary.
 
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