nostalgia
Well-Known Member
My old IC was tall and narrow, causing a lot of it to sit uselessly out of the wort in my new, wider brew kettle. So I grabbed a 50' roll of 3/8" copper from the Ebay. Other ingredients were a tubing bender and two Push-to-Connect Wye fittings from McMaster-Carr. I use this type of fitting on my coffee maker/filter/softener connections and they're fantastic.
I decided to do the same thing I did on my old chiller - instead of one big 50' run of copper, there are two separate 25' runs, one going from the top down, the other from the bottom up. My theory is this will give better heat transfer since the two coils are in different parts of the wort. Whether it works better or not...*shrug*. It gives me something to do anyway
Anyway, I cut the coil in half and started with the outside coil. After getting the coil around the bucket I measured and bent the stalk that would go to the top of the kettle.
Next I wired up the joints where I wanted them, cleaned and fluxed them.
I soldered the joints (using a lot less solder than I did last time - little dab'll do ya!) and moved on to the inner coil while that cooled. This one went around a corny.
I formed the legs in the same way, making sure the runs went in the proper directions and met up properly with the outer coil. I made sure the inner coil's bottom-up leg was opposite the outer coil's so it could support the back of the chiller. It makes for a nice, solid chiller.
I then soldered everything together in the same manner. I slid on the push-to-connect fittings, attached the garden hose quick connect and I was done! Just about an hours' work.
Attached a 3/8" hose to the output side and my water source to the input side to do a pressure test. Looks good, can't wait to try it out!
Thoughts and questions are of course welcome
-Joe
I decided to do the same thing I did on my old chiller - instead of one big 50' run of copper, there are two separate 25' runs, one going from the top down, the other from the bottom up. My theory is this will give better heat transfer since the two coils are in different parts of the wort. Whether it works better or not...*shrug*. It gives me something to do anyway
Anyway, I cut the coil in half and started with the outside coil. After getting the coil around the bucket I measured and bent the stalk that would go to the top of the kettle.
Next I wired up the joints where I wanted them, cleaned and fluxed them.
I soldered the joints (using a lot less solder than I did last time - little dab'll do ya!) and moved on to the inner coil while that cooled. This one went around a corny.
I formed the legs in the same way, making sure the runs went in the proper directions and met up properly with the outer coil. I made sure the inner coil's bottom-up leg was opposite the outer coil's so it could support the back of the chiller. It makes for a nice, solid chiller.
I then soldered everything together in the same manner. I slid on the push-to-connect fittings, attached the garden hose quick connect and I was done! Just about an hours' work.
Attached a 3/8" hose to the output side and my water source to the input side to do a pressure test. Looks good, can't wait to try it out!
Thoughts and questions are of course welcome
-Joe
