I'm pretty much a noob to all this... I feel like I have gained a lot of knowledge from reading here though... One of my worst 1st batch mistakes was that in the instructions for my first kit, it just said... wait for the wort to cool to about 80* and throw your yeast.... Little did I know it would take 3+ hours for it to get there... I'm afraid I didn't make my cold break point very fast...
So after reading here and looking at some of the coolers you guys have come up with I got my little brain in gear.... I used to cool my overclocked computer with water back when the best chips we had were like 1.4 mb and they ran hot as heck even without overclocking them.... I still had the parts from my CPU watercooling days and I figured I would re-purpose what I could.
I went out today and bought a 20' length of copper tube, 3/8 OD to fit my existing hose (Getting new hose though... it is pretty nasty). I had the Mighty Max pump and a aluminum transmission cooler (radiator) in my box of parts.....
I coiled the copper around a tupperware container that fit nicely in my brew pot. Hooked up the hoses and put the trans. Radiator in one side of the sink and filled it with tap water. I put 3 gal. of water in my pot and took it up to a boil. Set the pot in one side of the sink, radiator and pump in the other and started the timer. I got from 250* F down to 80* F in 16 minutes with just cold tap water...
The plan is to dump a bag of ice in the cooling side with the pump and radiator when I actually am cooling down a boil.
I thought I would brag a little and show off the pics.... I only wish I hadn't gotten so aggressive with the copper tube... it has a few over-bends but it flows fine... Filled a 1 gal. container in about 1min 20 secs once it was all hooked up. The pump by it's self pumped a gal. in 30 sec
So after reading here and looking at some of the coolers you guys have come up with I got my little brain in gear.... I used to cool my overclocked computer with water back when the best chips we had were like 1.4 mb and they ran hot as heck even without overclocking them.... I still had the parts from my CPU watercooling days and I figured I would re-purpose what I could.
I went out today and bought a 20' length of copper tube, 3/8 OD to fit my existing hose (Getting new hose though... it is pretty nasty). I had the Mighty Max pump and a aluminum transmission cooler (radiator) in my box of parts.....
I coiled the copper around a tupperware container that fit nicely in my brew pot. Hooked up the hoses and put the trans. Radiator in one side of the sink and filled it with tap water. I put 3 gal. of water in my pot and took it up to a boil. Set the pot in one side of the sink, radiator and pump in the other and started the timer. I got from 250* F down to 80* F in 16 minutes with just cold tap water...
The plan is to dump a bag of ice in the cooling side with the pump and radiator when I actually am cooling down a boil.
I thought I would brag a little and show off the pics.... I only wish I hadn't gotten so aggressive with the copper tube... it has a few over-bends but it flows fine... Filled a 1 gal. container in about 1min 20 secs once it was all hooked up. The pump by it's self pumped a gal. in 30 sec