Wort Chiller Leaking into my wort

Just wrapped up boiling my first big all-grain (19 pounds of grain) and dropped in my chiller. Came to check on it 15 minutes later, and see that the hose water is leaking into the wort at the hose clamp, noooo! Not really much to do except come here and vent

Here's hoping that the big starter I made can wipe out anything that came in with the hose water.

I have never got an infection from tapwater exposure and your copper tubing probably got pretty hot sitting in the boiling wort so it likely killed off most nasty things that would have been carried in...if that makes you feel better. If not drink 5 beers and you won't care for the rest of the evening .

This has happened to me occassionaly and everything turned out fine. I double clamped the connection to the copper and it has not given my any trouble since.

yeah i had alittle water get into me carboy but its seems ok

Had the same thing happen to me as well. Beer turned out just fine.

My first run at a IC leaked like a civ. the hose I used was way to large for the 3/8th copper. However a few wraps of duct tape and double clamps and its now been used on 3 different batches with no leaks.
Duct tape fixes (almost) everything.

Yeast don't eat lead.

You will most likely DIE from drinking that beer.........just kidding, lol.

Not enough hose water to much more than a little brain damage.

Brewery in Madison went belly up - a new place purchased the Brewery and found that the cooling system with gray water was leaking into the beer. No wonder they beer was steadily going downhill.

No one ever got sick but the brew was tasting like ass (or what I believe ass would taste like).

Gray water?????

WTF.

How did they miss that?

Mine does that, too. The wear from heat and cold expansion/contraction will eventually do this. I just wrap a paper towel around where water is trickling out and it runs straight down my paper towel (into my sink), instead of down the coil and into the wort.

You can always bring the wort back to a boil while you're fixing the leak. That will kill anything that may have gotten in there.

RCCOLA said:

You can always bring the wort back to a boil while you're fixing the leak. That will kill anything that may have gotten in there.

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.....except the lead from the garden hose.......seriously.

I had about 1/2 gallon leak into my wort a while back. The hydro sample tasted fine; but at bottling, the band-aid smell & taste was overpowering. (I used a brand new garden hose to hook up to the chiller). This batch has been in bottles about 1 month now, still tastes NASTY. Could be a drainer.

CRAP.

I have found that bandaid doesn't clean up.

I finally dumped a batch after 14 months. Still band aid.

Mine did this too. I got a couple feet of copper tubing, two joint 'sleeves' and then sweated them onto the chiller. Gave me enough length that I could bend the new tubing so it would hang outside the kettle.

Now if it leaks its on the driveway. I didn't have problems with infection when it did leak in the kettle either.

You guys are all missing the major point i think.

Today i wrapped up a really nice AG brew day and when i finished chilling i noticed that i picked up a bout 2 extra gallons...all from a "small" trickle leak. I just took a hydro reading and at best it was about 1.030. The sample i then drank tasted like water-porter.

Over a period of about 30 minutes i managed to add rougly 2 gallons to the brew which i'm sure ended up ruining this batch. Only time will tell but i'm definitely in search for a much better way to secure the fittings. Any suggestions fellas?

I had the exact same thing happen. I was doing a peach wheat which was only supposed to be about 4% ABV but after the water leak it ended up at 3%. It still tasted pretty good and turned out to be a decent session beer. Next time I tightened the clamp as much as it would go but it still leaked at the connection, so I positioned it so that the water sprays away from the wort and placed a washcloth over the leak. The water saturates the rag and drips straight down, not into the wort. I think the duct tape idea is brilliant and simple and I am doing that as soon as I get home.

seems like if you had 2 gallons extra worth of leak, you could've reboiled back down to the right consistency no? I guess your hop profile would suffer.. damn, that sucks man.

Depending on how your connections are setup, you can use JBWeld. I had a tiny leak from the PVC hose to the copper even with the hose clamp. Ended up putting some JBWeld on there, and all is well

I'll take a pic when I get home. I ran water thru it for half hour or so the other night (yard needed sprinkling and the wort chiller needed to be put thru it's paces. Put one end to the hose, other end to sprinkler) and it worked well with not so much as a drop leaked

a little bit of silicone where the tubing meets the copper? works everywhere else where you don't want water to get in.

water can't travel up.



.

Yeah, cause that's helpful.

DarkPhyre said:

water can't travel up.

.

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Haha yeah what does this mean and how is it helpful lol water can definitely travel up with pressure. The water has to travel up to get out of the wort chiller

I think he's saying that if both lines have a bend down at the end, the drip/leak will end up on the ground, and not the wort.

This happened to me on my last partial mash. Wort chiller leaked an extra gallon of water into my bk. turned out to be one of the best beers I've made. Ironic huh? Ill try this recipe again, this time without the extra gallon. Hopefully it will be even better!

Nothing is as secure as soldering thread adapters on so that you can screw the garden hoses directly on. Clamping non-heat rated vinyl tubing over smooth copper is always a recipe for disaster.

On my last brew, I was a couple of minutes from flameout and about to drop in 2 oz of a flameout addition when I see the tubing from my chiller was melted and disconnected. I knew I needed to move fast to be able to preserve my hop profile, which was 8 ounces, 2 each at 15, 10, 5, and 0. I ran to the basement grabbed a few tools, and somehow managed to take off the clamp, the melted piece of tube and put the tube back on. Then I look and noticed I forgot to replace the hose clamp on the tubing, so I had to cut the hose and do it over. It was all very hot, right next to my boiling wort. By some stroke of luck I managed to finish with the replacing the tubing with just a few seconds to spare before flameout. It was very nerve racking.

I dont feel so bad now. The same thing happened to me the other night. First time using a wort chiller and I didnt even notice until I did a hydrometer reading of some wort left behind in the pot after I pitched the yeast in the fermenter. It was 1.010 I thought wtf but the chiller was still going. So I took off the lid on fermenter and got a reading of 1.046. The same as pre biol reading. Hope it works ok. Oh and I had pvc hose straight to the tap. Cheers!

This friggin happened to me tonight....like an hour ago and I'm pissed! Murphy's Law!!