Economical Immersion Chillers??

How's it going fellas? Just wondering what is the most cost effective immersion chiller or chiller in general?

I've been doing ice baths, but I'm still having a helluva a time chilling my brew with my last batch taking an hour and half leaving me very upset. It's time to step it up.

Thanks for the help.

Making one yourself can be reasonable. It is worth it to take some time finding the best copper prices.

Building A Chiller

i guess you could just take some of the siphon tubing you got and submerge it in the wort and run water through it. Assuiming you have the heat resistant ones it is the cheapest way i can think of.

build an immersion chiller. It is a lot cheaper than buying one. google it and you should find some videos showing you how

Bigjuicy said:

i guess you could just take some of the siphon tubing you got and submerge it in the wort and run water through it. Assuiming you have the heat resistant ones it is the cheapest way i can think of.

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Doesnt work the tubing insulates the water to much

Well, what are some good places to buy a chiller? Looking at the price of copper, it doesn't seem that much more practical to build one then just buy one.

I Bought one at my LHBS there prices were pretty much the same as most places i found online. So I would deff check your LHBS but just surf all over the web and compare prices.

I bought mine on craigslist for dirt cheap. Worth a look at least

Spludge said:

Making one yourself can be reasonable. It is worth it to take some time finding the best copper prices.

Building A Chiller

Click to expand...

This is how I did mine. Soldering isn't necessary, but is nice. Mine is all floppy. However, they do sell a brass barb -> garden hose fitting. That is the only thing I did different, just one piece. If you want to use it inside, you can buy a faucet adapter to garden hose piece, which is what I do in the winter.

$40, and with garden hoses

http://www.learntobrew.com/store/it...Cooler_25_Feet_with_Garden_Hose_Fittings.html

it's well made and I couldn't have made one cheaper.

You can place a WTB in the classified section of this site. I see them go by now and then. Or maybe find a brew club near you and talk. I bet there is a lonely chiller waiting for a good home for cheap.

Just checked the classified section here ... and what do you know.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f16/25-counter-flow-chiller-220164/

I just built mine 50' of 3/8" copper and the fittings cost about the same as the 25' ones at the stores only took about 10 min to build so the extra cooling efficiency was worth it to me

Don't mean to high jack this thread but... at-least keeping on topic.....
What size pipe would be best? I could buy 20' of 3/4" for $20 or 20' of 1/4" for $10. That and the cost of a few fittings (which I probably laready have) makes for a pretty economical chiller. Would the lower volume in the 1/4" be less effective. I would think the volume actually moving through it would be about the same, but it would pick up heat faster. If my logic is correct there's no need to make a longer chiller because you'd want to get that hot water out of there sooner. Am I completely off here or on track?

Check for soft copper at a local metal scrap yard. I recently purchased a 50' roll of 3/8" for $25.

Of course the 3/4" would have more surface area for heat exchange ... I just don't know.....

I bought this from Midwest and used it for the first time on my last brew:

http://www.midwestsupplies.com/stainless-steel-immersion-wort-chiller.html

Best investment I have made for brewing since my Johnson temp controller.

I was able to get my wort down to under 70 in less than 20 min

I see that they are currently sold out of the model I got with the sink fittings but the garden hose fitted model is only $5 more.

Definitely worth the investment IMO.

What size pipe would be best?

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There is a trade off here. The smaller the diameter, the greater the surface area to volume ratio; hence greater heat extraction.

However, the smaller the diameter the slower the fluid will flow for a given source pressure (gravity or pump).

Another trade off is cost vs. length. The longer it is the more extraction, but the more cost and possible retained wort.

There are probably hundreds of threads about chillers on this site. There are three basic types and then some more exotic ones I've seen here.

The first one I built was a garden hose type counter flow chiller with 3/8 OD soft copper (1/4 ID), 30 feet long. I used gravity feed without a lot of height. It worked really well but took what seemed forever to siphon through 10 gallons.

I have now moved to a plate chiller (which is also counter flow BTW) since my first chiller has finally worn out and I now use a pump.

Nazdravy

There is no way to use a cross flow chiller without a pump on a kettle with no ball valve correct?

I was siphoning out of a 10 gallon pot with the first one I built. I built it with extra long tubing coming out of one side and bent this into a "hook", that went up over the top and down into the pot. That's one reason there was not a lot of height. It was not the best setup, but my 10 gallon pot remains as it was from the store.

Have you tried a bathtub? I've been chilling 5 gallon batches to well below 75 degrees in 30 to 45 minutes easily in my tub. just plug up the drain, fill with cold water out of the tap, pop the keggle in with a lid, go clean up the rest of everything and prep stuff, by the time I'm ready to rack it's basically ready to go. the roommates certainly think it's pretty entertaining seeing me come through the house with a keg full of boiling wort...

cuse88 said:

There is no way to use a cross flow chiller without a pump on a kettle with no ball valve correct?

Click to expand...

I use a Counterflow Chiller from the Boil Kettle using gravity. The cooling water flows backwards up through the outer chamber, while the hot wort drains through the center tube.

So you'd have to have the BK up a level to get it to work.

Or you could use a pump...

Yes, get a chiller. Buy one, make one, whatever is easiest for you. They are well worth any amount. I made my own, 20' 5/8" od with hose fittings. Instead of bending the ends up to hook to the hose fittings, I used 4 elbows and 2 straight pieces. Looks much nicer. All from Lowe's for $48. I wanted the larger dia. because a garden hose is either 5/8" or 3/4" and with a larger dia. it draws more heat out of the wort faster. Going from the hose dia. to the smaller dia. of the chiller increases pressure and pushes water through the chiller too fast. If the outlet water is always cooler than the wort at any given time, you are wasting water because the flow is too fast and cannot cool as efficiently as it should. I keep the flow turned down.

I would never want to brew without this. I can get to the low 60's in 10 minutes in winter and about 15 minutes in summer. In the summer, I hook up a sprinkler to the outlet hose and water the lawn.

This is my next purchase too. I had a perfect brewing session ruined by an almost two hour wait for cooling (thought I'd try the snow pile chiller). I ended up pitching at 80 degrees as I ran out of time. So what do you hook up your chiller to when the kitchen sink is one of the newer faucet/sprayer types? I'd hate to have to tote my boiling wort outside to a hose bib (I don't have a slop sink) or run a hose through my house to the kitchen.

sdillow said:

This is my next purchase too. I had a perfect brewing session ruined by an almost two hour wait for cooling (thought I'd try the snow pile chiller). I ended up pitching at 80 degrees as I ran out of time. So what do you hook up your chiller to when the kitchen sink is one of the newer faucet/sprayer types? I'd hate to have to tote my boiling wort outside to a hose bib (I don't have a slop sink) or run a hose through my house to the kitchen.

Click to expand...

You could install a hose bibb under your sink.