Thoughts on this wort chiller?

I have never read anywhere anything that specifies what a wort chiller has to be but they are typically either copper coils or a plate chiller. I have a totally different way of cooling it that is super efficient but some might think is a bit unconventional. I've attached a pic. It's a refrigeration evaporator from a beverage air worktop refrigerator (it was a new part, no refrigerant has gone through it). It has a ton of surface area which makes it hard to clean and sanitize but it will cool 5 gallons of boiling wort down to 70 deg. in about 5 minutes flat by pumping ice water through it. I have also thought about pumping the wort through it while it is sitting in ice water. Not sure which would be more efficient but it sure is efficient now. The ends of the copper line are 1/4 OD and the dimensions are 20"x4"x4"

It got me wondering why there are not more radiator type chillers.

That's an interesting idea. So do you put that into the boil to sterilize it? Is it painted? Unless that is powder coat I would be concerned a bit about paint coming off or leaching in boiling wort. Any impact on flavor?

It seems like a neat idea.

It looks rather tall though. Shorter and squatter would be better. In any case, it looke like it would rapidly cool wort, even with tap water. Then switch to ice water.

Cleaning doesn't look that hard, rinse it off.

But as dbrewski said, I'd be concerned about the coating/paint. It would be exposed to boiling , slightly acidic liquid for 15 minutes.


Please let us know how it works out for you.

If it is new and has never had any contaminants run through it's internal plumbing, wouldn't it be better served as a Chiller running wort through it's internal lines rather than an Immersion Chiller. You could sink it in a Cooler or Tank of some kind. But then again, isn't that Aluminum? That drawback would hold true no matter how you plumbed it. If you immersed it, you'd have not only the filth this thing would attract, but also the oxidized aluminum area hidden everywhere. Especially using the oxy based cleaners etc. Too bad the tubing wasn't copper anyways married to Alloy fins for heat exchanging.

I vote to run the wort through it while it is in a bath.

My only concern is if there is anything coating the inside of the pipes that would come off in the high temp wort.

It is a neat idea. If there was some way you could fabricate something like this out of copper, maybe not as close together, but with plates rather than just tubing it would increase the efficiency of an IC. It seems like it would cool quicker with 3/8" or 1/2" line, although this seems to cool pretty quickly already.

It's actually copper lines and aluminum fins. I believe it might be painted but sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. I have not sanitized it by keeping it in the hot wort, I sanitized it by putting it in a 6 gal bucket of sanitized solution. I'm beginning to think because of the height of this thing that it would be better to put it in a bucket that could completely cover the top (the brewers best 7 gallon brew kit buckets would work well) then fill that bucket with ice and water. Pump the wort through the chiller then rather than cooling the chiller in the hot wort.

bwilliamson said:

It's actually copper lines and aluminum fins. I believe it might be painted but sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.

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That has some kind of coating on it! Copper is a metallic brown color not silver gray.

I would use that as a pre-chiller in conjunction with a standard immersion chiller unless I was sure there is no finish of any kind on the inside of the tubing. I definitely would not immerse it in the wort without knowing exactly what the coating is.

I agree with those who suggested immersing it in ice water and running the beer through it. All those fins provide just too much area to catch dust, insects, etc and I would not want to immerse that into my beer. It is a very interesting idea though. I'm sure some savvy HVAC guy (you?) who is a homebrewer is now coming up with a way to turn this into a dual purpose chiller. Use it to chill beer from the kettle and then the fermenter.

Believe it or not, a plain copper coil IC would be nearly as efficient with the same icewater coolant.

That would make one badace prechiller if your worried at all about sanitation issues! You could permanently mount it in a bucket with fittings, would look sweet

Plus it looks like coated copper, I'd pump some star-San into it, let it sit about 15 mins, see what comes out, could be a great hybrid chiller for your wort as well as long as its clean copper in the inside

kh54s10 - look at the lower of the two lines in the pic, it's copper. I said it was either painted or powder coated.
limulus - I'm not an HVAC guy but the guy I got this from is. I was even thinking of just recirculating the wort through this and have a few 4" PC fans blowing across the coils. Wouldn't be as fast as dunking this in an ice bath but it would still get the heat out of the wort. I had my HVAC guy talk with the manufacturer of this and they said there shouldn't be anything inside the lines that would harm you, although wort might not like it. He said they are cleaned very well because refrigeration systems cannot operate with dirt of any sort in them. Star-san through it for a bit and should be clean. Any other ideas on how to use this thing?

You could stick it into a length of PVC pipe, maybe 6", with sealed ends like this build but no need to fabricate all the copper! Then you pump the wort through and either into your fermenter or recirc back into the kettle to cool the whole thing.

This is a cool idea. The problem with using it to run wort through it is this, it has small fins just like a car radiator, them fins are so small that if any hop or grain residue would plug it up easily. Then you run into a problem of cleaning it out and sanitizing it, and not being able to flow water through it. I say use it as immersion if any.

There is no fluid that runs into those fins, the fins are a heat sink they are made to pull heat off the tube running them to create a larger surface to be air cooled. It would interesting to see if you could make a air-cooled wort chiller

Thomsen1287 said:

There is no fluid that runs into those fins, the fins are a heat sink they are made to pull heat off the tube running them to create a larger surface to be air cooled. It would interesting to see if you could make a air-cooled wort chiller

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I'd put this as a pre-chiller to cool the water going into an immersion chiller. Put it in a bucket of ice. Doesn't look like it'd be too sanitary.

You sir, are are very resourceful.

Why not use it as an immersion chiller and use a compressor and condenser with it? R-134a isn't that expensive...

I'm fairly new to brewing and I'm in a 6 month long college level Science of Brewing class and have brewed several batches. Pretty intense course that has 3, 1 hour long lectures and a 5 hour lab every week. I have five instructors in the course one is a history professor and the others are bio chemists all of which have brewed for nearly 30yrs each at home. We uses some pretty simple setups to brew and one of the most simple effective setups is our wort chillers. We use a 20ft length of 1/4 copper tubing coiled and the coils are spaced rather than compacted in an effort for the cold water and ice to isolate and cool the hot lines. We use our mash tun cooler as our ice bath. Simply throw the coil in and fill it with ice and then water to about an inch from the top. (3gal cooler). Hook up the lines and start siphoning the wort. It's fairly important to grab the output of the chiller and bob it up and down in the bath about a half an inch. This keeps the fresh cold water circulating. Doesn't take but a few minutes to chill a 5 gallon batch. We actually had a problem with our wort only being 40 degrees and was too cold for our yeast and had to wait for it to warm up a little bit to an effective temp for our yeast.

We also had a discussion about immersion chillers in which you pass the water through the chiller and dunk the chiller in the wort. All of the instructors advised against it mainly because of sanitary reasons. Yes yeast needs oxygen often missing in home brews but they state through numerous experiments there was not a significant increase in O2 in the wort with this method. The risk is much higher of getting a bacterial infection etc in your wort by dunking the coils in this method not just from the atmospheric but also from the coils themselves. Copper scratches easily and bacteria can easily hold up in those areas and pass into your wort. It is more difficult to scratch the inside of the tubing and is easy to maintain the sanitation. Simply flush it with PBR followed by Star Sanz before and after brewing and hang upside down to clean.

This is the one I just built for myself with $20, 3/8 in 20ft copper tubing, $3 spring pipe bender and a few zip ties. We also use quick connects, cheap, effective and easy to replace frequently to maintain integrity. I have mine built so that if I need more tubing I can simply bend another length, attach it with a quick connect and strap it to the output like the rest of the coil to secure it. This is going to utilize a 5 gallon cooler for the bath. So IMHO running the worth through the chiller is the way to go.

It seems that the jury is still out on which method is best as they all have pros and cons. My chiller takes a 15 minute bath in the boiling wort to address the possibility of introducing contamination. I like to chill my wort in the kettle and whirlpool in order to leave as much break behind as possible.

Made an English Bitter Monday evening and this chiller of mine dropped the wort from boil to 65 degrees in 6 minutes. I had the chiller in a 7 gallon bucket of ice water and the wort was recirculated back into the boil kettle until cool. Worked we well as running the coolant through the chiller but the more I looked at it the more I realized how hard it is going to be to sanitize that thing correctly. It has a ton of surface area with little nooks and crannies.

What you have is a cross circuited, corrosion proof, DX coil. A direct expansion coil. It's too bad it isn't a dual circuit. It has several times the heat rejection capacity than a non finned coil. As long as it was never hooked up to a condensing unit, you can circ wort through the inside. As long as it doesn't plug up with hop goop. The coil has low pressure drop which will slow down the flow a little. That's a good thing. The coils are brazed with 45% silver and nitrogen purged. They leave the factory nitrigen filled, the coils aren't coated on the inside. The idea you have with the PC fans is kinda how a closed circuit water tower works. The only difference is, the water tower sprays water across the coil, using the lowered wet bulb temp to help cool the fluid by water evaporation. What you're doing is nothing new. There are water towers designed to cool wort to a reasonable temp, before pumping it to the refrigerated chiller or jacketed fermentor. Yours is just in the mini scale range. It certainly, will work. If you want to get more Rube Goldberg-ian. Make a spray header out of pvc with a bunch of holes drilled through it and spray the ice water throught the fins.

bwilliamson said:

Made an English Bitter Monday evening and this chiller of mine dropped the wort from boil to 65 degrees in 6 minutes. I had the chiller in a 7 gallon bucket of ice water and the wort was recirculated back into the boil kettle until cool. Worked we well as running the coolant through the chiller but the more I looked at it the more I realized how hard it is going to be to sanitize that thing correctly. It has a ton of surface area with little nooks and crannies.

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That's pretty amazing cooling speed. :rockin: