Very Simple Immersion Wort Chiller

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Erythro73

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 22, 2009
Messages
311
Reaction score
7
Location
Montreal
Hi folks,
I've built a very simple Immersion Wort Chiller. I start a thread on it here because... well, it may help someone like me who's not close to be a good handyman. I tried following a lot of designs and instructions, but every one failed me at some point. Some lacked instructions, some used soldering which I don't know how to do properly, and well... for others, I just couldn't find the parts.

Every parts were bought at Home Depot. It doesn't require any soldering nor special equipments. The plumbing parts are all of the brand Watts, which I think is available in every Home Depot in Canada and US as a standard.

I only do small batches (2.5 gallons), that's why I didn't buy a bigger/longer copper tube!

- 20' of copper tubing 3/8"
- 20' of vinyl tubing 3/8" (could be shorter, depending of the need...) which I splited in two.
- Adapter to hose
- 1 Watts A-660 Swivel Hose Adapter (3/4" FH x 1/2" FIP)
- 1 Watts A-828 Pipe Hex Bushing (1/2" MIP x 3/8" FIP)
- 1 Watts A-294 Hose Barb Adapter (3/8" Barb x 3/8" MIP)
- Teflon tape
- 5 hose clamps
- (Optional) Tube Bender

First, I wrapped the copper tube around a smaller pot than the one I use to brew. I used only my hands for everything:
dsc03010.jpg


Then, I made the two ends of the copper tube come out of the top. I did it by hand, without tube bender. I just did it very slowly/carefully as to not put any undesirable kinks on my tube. Taking the lowest end of the tube and bringing it to the top with the other end is the trickiest part, but it's doable without soldering (to put an elbow). The one that begins the coil is the "WATER in" (highest one)and the one that ends the coil is the "WATER out" (lowest end). It's ugly as hell, it would probably have been better with the tube bender... but hey, it's simpler this way!

dsc03011.jpg


View of the interior :

dsc03067petit.jpg



The 4 plumbery parts go one in another (I put Teflon tape in every connection) (in order: Adapter to hose--Watts A-660--WattsA-828--Watts A-294) which fits into the first half of the vinyl tubing. Everything is held by hose clamps.

dsc03015.jpg


The first half of the vinyl tubing goes onto the "WATER in" part of the chiller while the other half of the vinyl tubing goes from the "WATER out" into the sink.

dsc03014.jpg


End product:

dsc03013.jpg


(Yeah, I really should've put a shirt... but it's too hot outside...)

P.S. My WATER in and WATER out are this high because I plan on using another kettle soon! So I took the measurements...
 
I way overcomplicated mine with flare fittings and hose barbs. Looking back, I should've just slipped the tube over the copper like you did.
 
Indeed! I like it and may use this in the near future... I like it.
 
Glad you guys like this, despite it being so ugly compared to those sold on ebay or on online homebrewing shops!
:mug:
 
awesome!!! my tap water is getting pretty warm right now and i am brewing this weekend, so i am going to take your approach and make a pre-chiller for my IC. I have a feeling it will look something like your chiller, or at least i hope. It should get my water temp down enough, we will see. Thanks for posting. I too appreciate the simplicity.

cheers.
 
Nice! Similar to what I did, however I used the old rubber supply hoses from my washing machine, cut one end off and clamped it to the copper tubing, and found an adapter that goes from kitchen sink thread, to garden hose/utility sink/washing machine thread, and wala! The old rubber hoses are nice with the utility sink downstairs when cleaning carboys, buckets, etc. Infact if the hoses on your washing machine are more than 5 years old, upgrade them to the braided stainless steel kind that won't burst, and utilize the old rubber ones for beermaking! Also I should mention I used a 1 gal paint can to bend my copper tube around.
 
Damn you people with ol faucets. All my faucets in the apt are fancy and have no fittings. I need to carry my full pot of boiling wort 30 ft to the bathtub and recur ulster with a pump. So jealous of your easy setup.
 
Damn you people with ol faucets. All my faucets in the apt are fancy and have no fittings. I need to carry my full pot of boiling wort 30 ft to the bathtub and recur ulster with a pump. So jealous of your easy setup.

Tap into the shutoff valve (3/8 compression size fitting) on your kitchen sink faucet. Get a long faucet supply valve in the plumbing isle that will give you a 1/2" female fitting at the other end. Find the appropriate brass fittings that connect it all together with your chiller. Also, if you make your chiller out of 3/8" copper, you can just use a few 3/8" male-female extension hoses and connect the flexible hose to the copper chiller with a compression nut and ferrule.
 
Dare I ask what something like this costs? Seems like a good project for me to get under my belt.
Well, it all depends on the size/length of your copper tubing. And I'm Canadian, everything is more expensive here at HomeDepot.

But I would say... Around 50$ CAD for me without tube bender. Then again, the guy above me said it cost him about 20 USD.

So it all depends with your locations and the size/length you need.

But IT IS very easy to make, so it is really a good project to get under your belt. Even I could do it.
 
Just built the exact same thing! Thanks so much for listing the parts, I live in Canada as well and was able to find everything I needed at Home Depot. Pretty happy with the way it turned out, although the one time I rushed a bit I ended up with a bit of a crimp.. hopefully it will work ok.

Do I need to soak this in vinegar or something prior to brewing with it?

img1002vc.jpg
 
Do I need to soak this in vinegar or something prior to brewing with it?

Yes, you have to boil him along a solution of acetic acid (white vinegar). Here's John Palmer weighing in :

Brewers who use immersion wort chillers are always surprised how bright and shiny the chiller is the first time it comes out of the wort. If the chiller wasn't bright and shiny when it went into the wort, guess where the grime and oxides ended up? Yep, in your beer. The oxides of copper are more readily dissolved by the mildly acidic wort than is the copper itself. By cleaning copper tubing with acetic acid once before the first use and rinsing with water immediately after each use, the copper will remain clean with no oxide or wort deposits that could harbor bacteria. Cleaning copper with vinegar should only occasionally be necessary.

Works very well, as far as I'm concerned!

Your wort chiller is really a beauty!
 
Any thoughts on heating the copper with a torch or in the oven a bit before tying to bend it?

You could, but the copper would be too hot to handle without burning yourself. It might be easier to solder a 90-deg fitting on for that sharp bend at the bottom.
 
soft copper is so soft you don't need to heat it up, you can bend a perfect 90 and pinch the copper I suggest if you need a sharp 90 you solder a fitting onto it.

-=Jason=-
 
Nice. Looks similar to what I did except connect to garden hose, 1 clamp each hose and 25'. Cost me about $30
 
Nice dude. I've been looking for the right parts to connect mine to my sink. This writeup is perfect.
 
pretty much the way I did mine.I used 30' of 3/8 copper and wrapped it around a corney to form it. then I put quick connects on the ends so I can quickly attach garden hoses, since i brew outdoors. I'm moving up to 10 gallon batches, so I'm going to build a secondary larger ring and tee into the shorter ring to cool quicker
 
Nice work. I built my house about 5 years ago and my HVAC contractor left a large box with insulated AC copper lines under my stairs. Yesterday I pulled the huge coil out of the box and stripped the insulation off, but it was 3/4" OD copper and impossible to bend in a diameter small enough to fit into my BK. I went to put the big coil back into the box and in the bottom of the box was a 75' coil of 3/8" refrigeration line that I didn't see at first. Needless to say, I was one happy camper, probably $60 to $70 worth of copper tubing! I have a 5 gallon BK, so it may be overkill, but I plan on moving towards a larger BK in the future. I used all 75' and did a double coil - "rib cage" design, so I can use this thing forever. I used a couple of 12" deep boiling pots to wrap the tubing around from either end until the two coils met in the middle. I then carefully interlaced the coils from each, so both the inlet and the outlet were at the top. Turned out great, but now I need to add couplings or silicone tubing with hose clams for the feed and outflow hose. This thread has been very helpful in giving me ideas for finishing the project. Thanks everyone!
 
You suck!

Seriously though, go sell the 3/4 inch stuff and buy some more brew equipment!
 
I know! There is probably 30 to 40 ft. of 3/4" OD copper tubing coiled up there. I have no idea what it is worth, but I would think that it is worth something. I'll check around and try to find a place to unload it. I'm relatively new to the home brewing world, but I'm hooked. My "want list" is endless, so any spare cash to put towards equipment and supplies is great. :rockin:
 
This was a very fun project, and easy too. Many thanks Erythro for the design.

My only recommendation might be to attach an additional hose clamp to the 'out' end of the chiller where it attaches to the vinyl tubing. The water coming out of there when I first ran the system in wort was hot enough to expand the tubing and cause a small leak even though I tightened the clamps with all my might.

Fortunately I left enough room at the end of my copper coil and the leak was plenty far away from that precious precious wort.

Thanks again!
 
How long of tubing do I need for making one to use in a five gallon pot that I probably have 3 gallons in after boiling?
 
Woha! Never thought my little project would go for 4 pages on this forum. I'm glad it helped and inspired some of you.

As an update, this thing is still working like a charm. Yesterday, I brought about 2 gallons of hot boiling wort to 68F in about 10-15 minutes (my faucet's cold water is very cold).

How long of tubing do I need for making one to use in a five gallon pot that I probably have 3 gallons in after boiling?
Well, see my answer above. 2 gallons of 212 F wort to 68 in 10-15 minutes... but my water is really cold. I probably would still use 20' with 3 gallons. But I suggest you think of the future and build a larger one, because you'll probably go in 5 gallons batch in the near future. Your call.

This was a very fun project, and easy too. Many thanks Erythro for the design.

My only recommendation might be to attach an additional hose clamp to the 'out' end of the chiller where it attaches to the vinyl tubing. The water coming out of there when I first ran the system in wort was hot enough to expand the tubing and cause a small leak even though I tightened the clamps with all my might.

Fortunately I left enough room at the end of my copper coil and the leak was plenty far away from that precious precious wort.

Thanks again!
No problem!

I had no problem with only one hose clamp on the out part, but I guess it depends on many factor. Of course, you should always test it before using it with actual wort. Glad it worked out well for you!
 
I've seen lots of simple designs for wort chillers, and most of them include an attachment for running tap water through the chiller.

Would it not be MUCH more efficient to run ice water through?

I am going to build one tomorrow (like the one in this thread); I'm thinking of attaching the IN hose to my bottling bucket (because it drains from the bottom), pre-filled with ice water, and the OUT hose to a lower bucket. I'll let gravity run ice water through the chiller (syphon start if necessary) and pour the OUT water back into the ice bucket whenever it fills.

Anybody foresee problems with this?
 
It really depends on how cold your groundwater is. Mine is often lower than 40 deg F, so ice water is really just a waste of time. If you are using a 6 gallon bucket of ice water, you'll turn that into 100 degree water or higher in the first pass, then you want to add that hot water to your ice up top, which will just turn into lukewarm water which you'll be running through the coils to chill your wort with.
IMHO ice is only a solution for places with warmer ground water, if your groundwater is cold enough, you'll be wasting your time and money with the ice. If you REALLY want to chill as absolutely quickly as possible, Use your groundwater until the temp. differential between the wort and water diminishes, then switch to ice water at the end to widen the differential and speed the cooling back up.
 
I've seen lots of simple designs for wort chillers, and most of them include an attachment for running tap water through the chiller.

Would it not be MUCH more efficient to run ice water through?

I am going to build one tomorrow (like the one in this thread); I'm thinking of attaching the IN hose to my bottling bucket (because it drains from the bottom), pre-filled with ice water, and the OUT hose to a lower bucket. I'll let gravity run ice water through the chiller (syphon start if necessary) and pour the OUT water back into the ice bucket whenever it fills.

Anybody foresee problems with this?


Sounds like a good way to conserve water. Otherwise we will just be sending treated water down the sink for 15 minutes or more. That is a long shower...

I was planning on designing a similar setup, to recycle water from an ice bath through the immersion chiller, and pour the warmed water at the outflow back into the ice bath. I'm sure with some observation and adjustment this would work to not only cool the wort quickly but conserve some precious water in the balance.
 
I've now brewed several batches using my simple IC (a 20 ft coil of copper pipe) and I can regularly chill 5 gallons from boiling to 70 degrees in about 18 minutes using just tap water.

Observations: the heat transfer is MUCH faster at the beginning of the process and slows down considerably as the heat differential decreases. Adding ice at this stage would knock several minutes off cooling, I think.

As to water use: instead of attaching a hose to the sink, I filled my bottling bucket (with spigot) with tap water, put it on top of the fridge, and let gravity drive the cooling water. I usually have to refill the bucket once; I estimate 6-7 gallons to cool 5 gallons of wort. Not terribly efficient. Ice will decrease this substantially I think.

As to your idea: for the first few minutes the outflow from the IC is incredibly hot, if you pour this into icewater all you will do is melt your ice. I think the cheapest option is starting with tap water out of a bucket, then adding ice once the wort temp gets to a certain low temperature. I'm no physicist but some trial and error can probably find this temperature. The temp curve starts flattening around roughly 120 degrees so that might be a good time to add ice.
 
It really depends on how cold your groundwater is. Mine is often lower than 40 deg F, so ice water is really just a waste of time. If you are using a 6 gallon bucket of ice water, you'll turn that into 100 degree water or higher in the first pass, then you want to add that hot water to your ice up top, which will just turn into lukewarm water which you'll be running through the coils to chill your wort with.
IMHO ice is only a solution for places with warmer ground water, if your groundwater is cold enough, you'll be wasting your time and money with the ice. If you REALLY want to chill as absolutely quickly as possible, Use your groundwater until the temp. differential between the wort and water diminishes, then switch to ice water at the end to widen the differential and speed the cooling back up.

Or if your tapwater is too warm, just make 2 coils. Have your tap water run through a coil submerged in your ice bucket, then out of that coil going into the hot wort coil, then to the drain.

Thinking of making a coil this weekend, really excited about it too...ice baths soon to be a thing of the past!
 
Back
Top