Thoughts on THIS counter flow wort chiller

Thoughts? Opinions? Pros and Cons vs. a Coiled smaller pipe in a larger pipe or hose? I will use a CFC in my AG system. This one is different from others i've seen and I kinda like the design. Wondering if it's a good one or not. http://www.concentric.net/~vsabbe/portabrew.htm (got to click on wort chiller btw, LOL!! )

A buddy of mine uses one almost exactly like this, and it works really well. He actually chills his pale lager to 60 degrees with it (takes just a bit longer than if you were to cool to 70-80).

I have seen design plans for this type of chiller, but I can't remember where I saw them. It may be in that book called Brewware (or something). I remember really wanting to make this thing, but I totally forgot about it.

Let me know what you find. I hate using my immersion chiller - pain in the a$$!

That's a fairly uncommon design, I think I saw it in Papazian's Homebrewer's Companion. I think it's a good design.

It's one of the designs discussed in Appendix C of John Palmer's How To Brew book.

I'm seriously considering re-cycling my immersion chiller into something like this, but I'm a little concerned with cleaning it. I do see one problem with Palmer's design, the cooling water would tend to go straight through missing the coil unless you had some kind of baffle.

Agree, you'd need something in that PVC tube to create significant turbulence in the water. Else you don't break up the temperature zones that form around the copper pipes. Smooth flowing water won't do it. I've noticed similar with my pre-chiller in a bucket of ice. The water coming out of it won't be really cold unless you vigorously move the pre-chiller up and down in the ice bath to break up the temperature zones that set up around the copper.

Injecting air might do it.

If you have the water exiting from the other end of the tube instead of from right beside the entrance, I don't think you'd need to worry that much about turbulence.

Would you have to use a pump in order to use a chiller of this kind? I see how the water would flow through the pvc, but how would you get the wort moving through the copper. Will this type of chiller work with a siphon or by gravity?

Gravity should work with no issues if you stand it up vertically.

If you were to make one, you could use alternating sized coils - one or two large circumference coils followed by one or two as tight as you could make them. That would likely break the water flow up enough to be effective.

The one I've seen in person works really well - it has the inlet tube on the opposite edge from the outlet tube (i.e., if you lay it on its side with the inlet tube on the bottom left, the outlet tube would be on the top right), so the water probably gets agitated a bit before exiting.

I was looking at commercial CFC systems for HVAC sysetms. What they do for this type of chiller is insert a smaller diameter pipe in the middle of the coils to keep the water flow against the coils and preventing temperature gradients. I don't know if they fill the central pipe with something to keep if from "floating' against the coils or if they fill and brace it but just about anything would be better than a big open area where water can flow through without chilling the coils.

of course I can't find it now. If I find the links I'll post them.