18' of 5/8 in. Copper Tubing for Wort Chiller
 

Is 18' of 5/8 in. Copper Tubing too short for an immersion Wort Chiller?

Not terrible. What size batches are you doing?

Thanks for the quick reply!

Primarily 5 gallons until I get a burner and keggle, at which point I will be doing 10 gallon from time to time.

It'll work for the 5 gallon batches I would think. Once you go to 10 you will prob want to replace it. If it were 1/2" or 3/8" I would tell you to replace it now, but you should get some good surface area out of the 5/8. Prob take about 15- 20 minutes to cool you batches depending on your ground water temp.

Sounds good. I think I will go with that for now as it will make my manifold build for my MLT a lot easier if I use 5/8 in. tubing. Is it possible to later extend the length of a wort chiller by either soldering or compression fittings to accommodate larger batches?

I don't see why not. Just make sure you use lead free solder and don't bend the copper too many times. The more times you bend it the more brittle it gets, and it will fail pretty quickly.

Great! Thanks for the help!

:mug:

As an example I use a 25 ft 1/2" diameter in 10 gallon batches. Using tap water down to 120 or so, and Ice water pumped from a pond pump down to pitch temps, it takes approximately 30-45 minutes. So I would say with your 18 ft, you could be under 30 minutes.