Built in stainless steel wort chiller

I recently saw a post about permanently welding a wort chiller to the inside of a brew kettle.

I want to do this by. Cutting holes in the side of my kettle and welding in SS couplers to connect my stainless steel tubing too (the tubing goes into a compression fitting which connects to the coupler). Once implemented this system would allow for stress free wort chilling with a fully closed lid on top (no gaps from wort chiller sticking through it). The problem for me is rolling the SS tubing. I bought 50' of 1/2" and ended up kinking it. After that expensive mistake I was wondering it anyone knows of a professional that could do the rolling at a reasonable cost??

You heated it before rolling it right?

You should really check on TheElectricBrewery.com to see how Kal rolled his 1/2" Stainless. He did a great job using zip ties and very little pressure on the tubing. Another suggestion is sand, but sand can be hard to fill and clean out. One thing I haven't tried but would really like to try is filling the coil with water, freezing, and attempting the same kind of technique as Kal and the gang. Freezing would provide a good resistance to kinking as the ice would crack and crush similar to sand, but much easier clean out. It is very possible to do it without sand or ice, as you'll see in other examples.

The other aspect of the permanent IC in your BK is the cleaning aspect. You have to consider that it may be significantly harder to clean a coil when it's attached inside the kettle. The convenience of easily removing the coil to clean can't be ignored. Also you reduce your stir space in your boil kettle, which may not be a big deal if you're not using extracts.

Here is my coil installed in my HLT. The reason I chose to go permanent was because it will only be submerged in hot water, so cleaning should be a breeze.


This was apre-coiled 3/8" SS immersion chiller from Amazon (NYBREWSUPPLY). I made clean cuts at the top and bottom bends to get rid of the immersion risers. Then used 90 degree compression fittings. NOTE: If I was doing this over I would definitely go with 1/2" tubing, and the 3/8" causes significant head pressure on the March pumps, greatly reducing flow rates.

Dhruv6911 said:

You heated it before rolling it right?

Click to expand...

No. I am still very reluctant to try it again myself as the tubing is very expensive.

l3asturd said:

You should really check on TheElectricBrewery.com to see how Kal rolled his 1/2" Stainless. He did a great job using zip ties and very little pressure on the tubing. Another suggestion is sand, but sand can be hard to fill and clean out. One thing I haven't tried but would really like to try is filling the coil with water, freezing, and attempting the same kind of technique as Kal and the gang. Freezing would provide a good resistance to kinking as the ice would crack and crush similar to sand, but much easier clean out. It is very possible to do it without sand or ice, as you'll see in other examples.

The other aspect of the permanent IC in your BK is the cleaning aspect. You have to consider that it may be significantly harder to clean a coil when it's attached inside the kettle. The convenience of easily removing the coil to clean can't be ignored. Also you reduce your stir space in your boil kettle, which may not be a big deal if you're not using extracts.

Here is my coil installed in my HLT. The reason I chose to go permanent was because it will only be submerged in hot water, so cleaning should be a breeze.

This was apre-coiled 3/8" SS immersion chiller from Amazon (NYBREWSUPPLY). I made clean cuts at the top and bottom bends to get rid of the immersion risers. Then used 90 degree compression fittings. NOTE: If I was doing this over I would definitely go with 1/2" tubing, and the 3/8" causes significant head pressure on the March pumps, greatly reducing flow rates.

Click to expand...

If you freeze the water inside the pipe you run a risk of rupturing the pipe. I know that's a big issue with copper, not sure about stainless, but I know that's how they fix dents in dirt bike pipes.....

l3asturd thanks for the link to "the electric brewery". It's a very cool site that I have never seen. Anyway I may try to roll my own SS coil now with the method outlined by Kal in the section about building the hot liquor tank. They also sell custom rolled tubing, if I decide I don't want to make my own.

I am looking into this too. I plan on building a HERMS system based off of Kals' design but do to a new baby and a new house this build will have to be stretched out over a couple of years. I want to modify my current boil kettle with a built in wort chiller to later become my HLT. Let me know how this works out for you, and how much of a pain in the ass it is to clean.

I got super sidetracked on this project, but am happy to say I've found interest again and will be working on it. Stay tuned for results.

I recently upgraded my kettle. I’m going to use my old kettle for fix mounting my chiller. My intention is to use it for HERMS, whirlpooling and chilling. Some differences in my design, which you could consider, I’m using copper tubing and I’m soldering a NPT 1/2” bulkhead rather than welding. For reference, soldering the bulkhead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpMFQFi6Hh4

www.stainlessbrewing.com. Awesome company. They will customer bend tubing for you and are extremely reasonable. Got my coil from them very happy with it. By the time you screw around buying s.s. Tube and tools you could have had your coil.

Look at post #19 here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/bending-ss-chiller-392018/index2.html
It will get you started building your own bender. I followed the instructions, modified it some to build mine. If I knew better, would have bought it pre-bent. Less hassle but doesn't give you the "true" DIY feeling.

Here's mine:

Ki-ri-n said:

Look at post #19 here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/bending-ss-chiller-392018/index2.html
It will get you started building your own bender. I followed the instructions, modified it some to build mine. If I knew better, would have bought it pre-bent. Less hassle but doesn't give you the "true" DIY feeling.

Here's mine:

Click to expand...

That's very nice! I agree with you on the diy feeling. But after pricing all the parts for the bender I realized it was a lot cheaper just to order from stainlessbrewing. Was hard for me not to do it all myself, but I am very happy with the results that stainlessbrewing got me.

Yep, SB is absolutely cheaper. If haden't bought $70 worth of stainless tubing, I would have gone that route too. Making the bender wasn't that expensive to make. Most of the supplies are things you have laying around anyways. Only real cost was the pulleys.