Chiller built into keggle

i've seen some pics of keggle that has the copper pipe from the wort chiller built right into the kettle. Seems like an awesome idea.
does it work as well as regular chiller?
Worth doing?

Should work just as well as a regular IC of the same size ... Cleaning would be a little more involved.

It's basically a HERMS build but for a brew kettle. I don't really see much of a benefit.

I have one built into my HLT/BK. I can use it as a HERMS coil during the mash, and as a Wort Chiller. It works well. One thing to be careful of. Dont put it too high in the keggle. Mine is a little high and 5 gallons of wort doesnt quite cover all the coils. It works just fine though.

25' of 3/8" refrigerator tubing. I repurposed an old wort chiller.

Cleaning is not a problem. I spray the keggle and coil down with a garden hose, drain, refill with water and oxyclean. Heat up the water, soak and rinse. No different than cleaning a stand alone wort chiller.

Here is a pic of it dry fitted in the keggle while I was making it. I cleaned the keggle before mounting the coil ;-)

As mentioned above, what you saw was probably a herms, and not a chiller. It might work for a chiller, but a chiller is going to work much better if you move it around while chilling. Though I guess if you had a pump so you could whirlpool the kettle it might work good in that case.

JeepDiver said:

As mentioned above, what you saw was probably a herms, and not a chiller. It might work for a chiller, but a chiller is going to work much better if you move it around while chilling. Though I guess if you had a pump so you could whirlpool the kettle it might work good in that case.

Click to expand...

Thats exactly what I do. I whilpool my wort during chilling.

I originally built the coil for a HERMS, but most of the time I mash in an igloo cooler and it holds temps just fine, so I get the most use out of mine as a chiller.
I whirlpool just because I have a pump and Im gonna pump into fermenters anyway, so why not whirlpool and get rid of some trub.

If I didnt have a pump, Id just swirl the wort with my mash paddle. I did this when I used an immersion chiller. I liked to keep the immersion chiller in one place.

If your thinking of putting a coil in your keggle, I'd encourage it. You can use it for a wort chiller now, and have a HERMS coil if you want to expand your system in the future.

Thank you for the input, if I ever get a chance im going to do this, probably when I get another keg for my hlt.