Yesterday I came up with (what I think is) a new technique for pre-chilling water before an immersion or CFC chiller.
I wanted to add ice water directly to my running hose without extra pumps or copper chillers. My hose water is just slightly too hot to get to pitching temps so just a little extra cooling would come in handy, especially during the summer.
So what I came up with was this nifty little contraption. Behold, the 2 Liter bottle Pre-Chiller!
What you have here is a a device that allows you to attach a frozen 2 liter bottle in line between your garden hose and immersion chiller. The water circulates in the bottle causing the ice to melt, quickly cooling down the water.
Building this contraption requires a garden hose Y-splitter, a female to female hose connection, and a tube connected to a small barb.
Step 1) Attaching bottle to the hose splitter.
It turns out that the 3/4" garden hose thread is really close to that of a 2-liter bottle. To get them to fit almost perfectly, all you have to do is heat the 2-liter bottle thread with a hair drier or heat gun to melt it ever so slightly. Then you carefully thread it into a garden hose the best you can. The plastic threads will melt and reform to fit on the garden hose. I was able to get this to work on the first try, so it's not too difficult.
Step 2) Attatching the barb and hose
After testing my first prototype I leaned that the Y splitter wasn't by itself providing enough turbulence in the bottle to melt the ice quickly. What I did was add a barb connected to some 1/4" tubing to redirect the incoming water into the plastic bottle.
On the left is my first version, which is a 3/8" brass barb (1/4" would be preferable). I chopped off a bit on the top and bottom of the fitting using my angle grinder to get it to fit in the Y splitter. I had to heat up the tubing and fitting and use some serious force to get them to fit together.
On the right is the second version, which instead uses a 3/16" beer tap tail piece I found in my box of spare parts. This fits with no modifications needed, although the smaller diameter does appear to limit the flow ever so slightly. A 1/4" tail piece would be perfect.
Step 3) Assemble as shown.
At the top right of the image, you can see I adapted the device to fit a garden hose. A normal garden hose outlet thread is male, so I used two female garden hose thread to barb adapters. The two adapters are connected by some tubing and clamped together.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Don't use silicone tubing for the female-to-female garden hose adapter. The pressure is too high and it will fail at high hose pressures (see final picture for example)
The Test
I gave it a quick test run from my sink faucet with a 2L bottle that had been filled with water and then fully frozen. It took 3 minutes and 15 seconds to melt the entire bottle of ice. That seems like just about the perfect amount of time to me, as that gives me enough time to use 2 bottles if I prefer.
For my second test, I was concerned how much the pre-chiller might restrict water flow. I connected the pre-chiller to my higher pressure garden hose and turned the hose up all the way.
As you can see, I was able to get a very strong flow through the 50' chiller - more than adequate for my purposes. Unfortunately at the bottom right you can see the silicone tubing failing at high pressure. High psi tubing is definitely required for the female-female garden hose adapter.
Verdict: Success! I look forward to giving this prototype a bit more testing but so far it looks like it is functioning exactly as I had hoped. I plan on using 1 or 2 frozen bottles for my 5 gallon batches, and 2-3 bottles for 10 gallon batches. Should work great, I'm actually surprised by how functional this thing turned out! I'm not sure if anyone else will find it useful, but it looks just about perfect for me.
I wanted to add ice water directly to my running hose without extra pumps or copper chillers. My hose water is just slightly too hot to get to pitching temps so just a little extra cooling would come in handy, especially during the summer.
So what I came up with was this nifty little contraption. Behold, the 2 Liter bottle Pre-Chiller!
What you have here is a a device that allows you to attach a frozen 2 liter bottle in line between your garden hose and immersion chiller. The water circulates in the bottle causing the ice to melt, quickly cooling down the water.
Building this contraption requires a garden hose Y-splitter, a female to female hose connection, and a tube connected to a small barb.
Step 1) Attaching bottle to the hose splitter.
It turns out that the 3/4" garden hose thread is really close to that of a 2-liter bottle. To get them to fit almost perfectly, all you have to do is heat the 2-liter bottle thread with a hair drier or heat gun to melt it ever so slightly. Then you carefully thread it into a garden hose the best you can. The plastic threads will melt and reform to fit on the garden hose. I was able to get this to work on the first try, so it's not too difficult.
Step 2) Attatching the barb and hose
After testing my first prototype I leaned that the Y splitter wasn't by itself providing enough turbulence in the bottle to melt the ice quickly. What I did was add a barb connected to some 1/4" tubing to redirect the incoming water into the plastic bottle.
On the left is my first version, which is a 3/8" brass barb (1/4" would be preferable). I chopped off a bit on the top and bottom of the fitting using my angle grinder to get it to fit in the Y splitter. I had to heat up the tubing and fitting and use some serious force to get them to fit together.
On the right is the second version, which instead uses a 3/16" beer tap tail piece I found in my box of spare parts. This fits with no modifications needed, although the smaller diameter does appear to limit the flow ever so slightly. A 1/4" tail piece would be perfect.
Step 3) Assemble as shown.
At the top right of the image, you can see I adapted the device to fit a garden hose. A normal garden hose outlet thread is male, so I used two female garden hose thread to barb adapters. The two adapters are connected by some tubing and clamped together.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Don't use silicone tubing for the female-to-female garden hose adapter. The pressure is too high and it will fail at high hose pressures (see final picture for example)
The Test
I gave it a quick test run from my sink faucet with a 2L bottle that had been filled with water and then fully frozen. It took 3 minutes and 15 seconds to melt the entire bottle of ice. That seems like just about the perfect amount of time to me, as that gives me enough time to use 2 bottles if I prefer.
For my second test, I was concerned how much the pre-chiller might restrict water flow. I connected the pre-chiller to my higher pressure garden hose and turned the hose up all the way.
As you can see, I was able to get a very strong flow through the 50' chiller - more than adequate for my purposes. Unfortunately at the bottom right you can see the silicone tubing failing at high pressure. High psi tubing is definitely required for the female-female garden hose adapter.
Verdict: Success! I look forward to giving this prototype a bit more testing but so far it looks like it is functioning exactly as I had hoped. I plan on using 1 or 2 frozen bottles for my 5 gallon batches, and 2-3 bottles for 10 gallon batches. Should work great, I'm actually surprised by how functional this thing turned out! I'm not sure if anyone else will find it useful, but it looks just about perfect for me.
