Wort Chiller Coil

[Ross]

That is a beast!

Copper prices going up leans me more towards no chill, once I start AG. :icon_offtopic: Waiting on kettle fabrication now...

copper prices have plummeted as have pretty well all metals.....

cheers Ross

 

[bigholty]

Its not about the cost of water its about the fact that we are running out of it.

And certain parts of Queensland are up to their eyeballs in water!
I know, I know, that's not the case for most of the country. But in those flood-affected areas I imagine you could just pump the water out of your lounge room through your chiller.........
(Sorry to anyone who has been affected by floods by the way, not meaning to take the piss).

 

[Joe Palooka]

Hi.
I have decided not to bother with a chiller. After whirlpool, I rack the wort into two 15 litre pots with lids. They go into my laundry and kitchen sinks. I get sanitary, fill the sink, stir the pot and swish back and forth. When the heat exchange is done, I have a hand pump to get the water out the window into a wheelie bin that travels around the yard. I chilled 21 litres in 20 minutes on Sunday like this. This time is usually when the dried yeast is rehydrating. The sinks are little, so with Archimedes and all that it only takes a few litres to fill them. I'm very careful about infection. In summer, I don't know, I will either buy ice or just no chill, or maybe even no brew ... no scratch that last ... I've tried to stop and I can't :icon_cheers:

Not the current, but the previous issue of Brew Your Own has a one page howto for making an immersion chiller.

Cheers.

 

[schooey]

I have a 1/2" copper x 9m long coil hard plumbed into my kettle. The remaining 3m off the roll I bought, I coiled also. The smaller coil I put in a 40L esky and chuck in 4 frozen 2 litre botlles of water, a bag of ice and a hand full of coarse salt. This chills the tap water to about 7-10 degrees before it gets to the big coil in my kettle.

This system cools 50L of wort to 18C in about 30-40 minutes and uses 180- 200L of water that I collect in a 200L blue plastic drum and water the garden with later. I've only ever overflowed my collecting drum once. I found the trick was to slow the flow through the coil down, not to a trickle, but not full mains pressure either.

 

[Acasta]

Im just thinking, as an easy do it myself setup, could i go from my Tun, down some vinyl tubing, coiling in a bucket full of ice, around 2 meters worth, then into a fermentor?
I was thinking after going into fermenter 1, doing the same process with the tap half open and get it to go slow and hopefully chill more, keep going untill its coo.
I have a pretty small budget, but its not bad for a $3 bag of ice right?

My only question would be in the tubing would let through enough heat.

 

[felten]

Vinyl tubing isn't rated to hold boiling hot wort, there might be some problems with leeching off flavours there.

 

[plaidpaint]

Vinyl tubing isn't rated to hold boiling hot wort, there might be some problems with leeching off flavours there.

I was thinking along the same lines as Acasta but was unsure about the tubing. What kind of tubing would be safe for hot wort?

I'm new to Australia, and I haven't really sussed out where I would be likely find these kinds of things. I checked Bunnings, but they didn't have any high temp rated tubing. Maybe my LHBS?