b-boy

Recipes 

Anything that increases your surface area will help.

I think moving the wort around the chiller is just as important as the chiller you use. Stirring or whirlpooling will give you a lot of bang for your buck.

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worxman02

Recipes 

It depends. The best bang for your buck is from moving the wort around. See my el-cheapo wort whirlpool device here: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/cheap-whirlpool-immersion-chiller-system-sucess-384060/

Surface area helps but preventing temperature stratification of the wort is the most important factor in cooling. So a double coil vs single coil doesn't really matter if you are not moving the wort around.

If you are thinking about possibly upgrading your pot in the future to allow you to do 10 gallon batches, than I would make a single 50' coil IC. If not, then you could just go with a single 25' IC and lower your cost. However, $38 for 50' of 1/2" copper is a steal (I paid $75 for mine) so maybe you should just make a 50' IC and have your freind make one of his own.

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whitehause

Recipes 

50' 1/2" for $38??? was it a clearence sale? That's great price

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pmatson

Recipes 

The actual coil is about a foot tall, maybe a little less. I coiled it around my bottling bucket to get the shape, which fits inside my brew kettle. The intake and outflow ends go up and over the side, and extend a good bit over the side so I don't have to worry about dripping water going into the kettle. I used a compression fitting with a garden hose attachment for the intake, so I can run the garden house into the kitchen. The outflow line is some becerage tubing that can handle near boiling temps and is attached with a hose clamp. Without the chiller, I would have had to lug 6 gal of hot wort down a flight of stairs; no bueno.

pmatson

Recipes 

Also, because my chiller coil sits low in the kettle, i give it an occasionally swirl with a sanitized spoon so that the liquid cools evenly. Otherwise, the wort was stratifying so the the surface wort was much warmer that near the bottom. Good luck!

lorne17

Recipes 

Yea I guess it was $39.62 to be exact, plus tax. It was a great deal, the 1/4" x 50' was more expensive! Same brand too.

Pmatson, thanks for giving me the specs of your IC. I went to get some compression fittings and such for mine and will probably start to tackle it tomorrow. Looks like it's gonna cost me about $60 or so for a 50' dual coil. I got a t-compression fitting so I can split the water between the inner and outer coil. Hoping it cools it down quick!

There's still a big part of me that wants to use only 25' and reduce my cost that much more, but I think using all 50' and dual coil will help with the cool down and future batches larger than 5 gallons.

Thanks for the feedback!
Lorne

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overflow

Recipes 

My suggestion is single coil. The reason being is that I prefer to continue to stir the wort while the IC is cooling, which reduces cooling time and keeps the hops in suspension. With a secondary smaller coil it might cool faster, but would probably make it harder to stir. YMMV.

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