Wort Chiller Copper tube size

Thinking of making a DIY immersion wort chiller - what size tubing? Will 1/4 OD (icemaker size) work? Or should I use 1/4 ID or 3/8 ID? I am getting ready to do a 5gal partial mash, and don't anticipate going AG for a while - would rather spend $ on ingredients . Or can I skip a chiller for now, since I won't be doing a full boil as my pot is only big enough for 3-4 gallons, so I will be adding cool / cold water to fermentor to make 5gal. If I can get away without a chiller now, that would be best.

Chiller's nice, not 100% needed for partial boils but still nice.

1/4 is small for a chiller, though. Since I found a great deal on some 1/4, I made a pair of coils that run in parallel. It connects to the hose, then splits into two coils, works its way down, then exits through two hoses. I actually like that design a lot, it gives me a lot of surface area to work with (it's just ugly as f*ck since I threw it together pretty quickly - I need to reconfigure it to now work with my keggle.

I also used 1/4" OD, two 20' lengths in parallel.

Pros:
Cheaper
Uses Less Water (efficient)
Easy to bend

Cons:
Slower flow = Slower cooling
Easy to bend (doesn't hold it's shape so I had to do a little creative soldering to get it in a rigid structure)
Difficult to attach a hose in a parallel design unless you use a 3/8" compression Tee with two of the legs on reducer compresssion nuts.

All in all, it's a good chiller, but if I built it again I'd use 25' of 3/8" OD.

I built one of these. The size really dosent matter. I mean, yes it does matter. a 1/2 inch tube of 10 feet will have twice the surface area of 1/4 inch tube. But if you really want the easy-to-bend 1/4 inch tube then just use twice the distance.

Upt to you it really dosent matter.

I put my chiller in 5 gallons of just-boiled wort and the water runs out cold. After 5 minutes the wor tmay be 160F but if you touch the chiller it is ICE COLD.

I like this chiller but it still takes too long. I might buy a new hose and junk my cheapy one for a counter flow chiller. Syphon into my fermentor and airate with a fishtank air pump for a bit.

The diameter means a lot actually. If you go with big tubing, short length, your output water is going to be pretty cold. Not enough of the column of water got exposed to the hot wort for long enough. This means faster cooling because the temp differential is always high, but more water wasted. If you go small diameter, long length, the water inside will probably soak up as much heat as it's going to, well before it leaves the wort. This means it will take longer, but you won't use as much water in the long run. I think 3/8 OD is a good compromise for both water usage and cost per foot.

Adrian, if you chiller is cold but your wort stays hot, it means you need to stir the wort. You're getting a cold pocket near the coil and it's not mixing well with the hotter sections of your kettle. I basically jiggle the chiller side to side every minute or so to break up the heat zones.

What I don't think you want to do is have a huge, single length of 1/4. The water inside the tubing will heat up to wort temp within the first few feet, and then do nothing more for you to cool the wort whether it's traveling another ten feet or another hundred. That's why I split it, so I have two separate coils of cold water.

the_bird said:

What I don't think you want to do is have a huge, single length of 1/4. The water inside the tubing will heat up to wort temp within the first few feet, and then do nothing more for you to cool the wort whether it's traveling another ten feet or another hundred. That's why I split it, so I have two separate coils of cold water.

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Very true, however, the longer length will be MORE efficient when it matters most (ie., most prone to infection)- when the wort is almost, but not quite, chilled enough.

Fair enough. I still really like the idea of using the two coils, though; I get a very dramatic drop in temp initially, which helps precipitate a whole lot more proteins that I was able to get out of there when I was just ice-bathing it. More length is better (so they say....), but to be most efficient with it I would split it.

Unless you are using a bigger diameter tubing. If the Depot didn't give me a great deal on 1/4 tubing because they had no idea how much it was, I would have gone with either 3/8 or 1/2. Probably 1/2, so I could solder on the fittings.

When I built my wort chiller, I used flexible 3/8 copper tube and bent it around the inside of a bucket. I used about 15-20 feet of copper tube. The cold water goes directly to the bottom on the coil and then comes all the way up thought the coil. It will cool 5 gallons of wort from boiling to pitching in about 15 min. I first had the water connected in the opposite direction and it took for ever to cool then I changed it so the water went to the bottom first and it worked a lot faster.

oh ya with the cost of copper these days I would wait on this project unless you plan on putting your system in hock to buy copper tube. I made mine almost 3 years ago for 15 dollars today you will pay twice that for the tube alone.

zweasel said:

When I built my wort chiller, I used flexible 3/8 copper tube and bent it around the inside of a bucket. I used about 15-20 feet of copper tube. The cold water goes directly to the bottom on the coil and then comes all the way up thought the coil. It will cool 5 gallons of wort from boiling to pitching in about 15 min. I first had the water connected in the opposite direction and it took for ever to cool then I changed it so the water went to the bottom first and it worked a lot faster.

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Hmmm...Now you got me thinking how mine is flowing. I used 3/8" line as well. I wrapped mine around a Korney keg for the shape. I had some extra so I put it to use as a pre-chiller since the tap water here in Phoenix is not cold at all.

To the bottom first and then up. That there is a really interesting piece of advice. Never really thought about it before...

3/8ths seems to do a good job and is easy to bend.
If you have enough then do a double coil.

If price were no object, I'd use as much 3/8" length as would fit in my kettle without overflowing the wort. More length would always be better because although you might get most of the heat absorbed in the first half of the lenghth, it would never quite get to the wort temp. The heat transfer just takes too long so even the warmed water would still be pulling heat out. This saves you money in the long long term because you use less water. If your tap is 60dF and it's in 200dF wort and the output water is only 140dF, it means you could take advantage of more coil length to get more efficiency.

Either way, the single fastest way to cool better is to make sure the wort is moving a bit while you're cooling. Give it a good whirlpool just before you start running the water.

zweasel said:

... The cold water goes directly to the bottom on the coil and then comes all the way up thought the coil. It will cool 5 gallons of wort from boiling to pitching in about 15 min. I first had the water connected in the opposite direction and it took for ever to cool then I changed it so the water went to the bottom first and it worked a lot faster.

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Can someone explain to me why this would make a difference? The same amount of water goes through the same amount of copper tubing regardless of direction. I don't see why the the direction that the water flows would matter.

In theory the hotter wort will be at the top of the kettle and the hotter water in the chiller would be in the top of the chiller.

I'd say it makes most sense to go for maximum temperature temperature, i.e. cold water to hot wort. That would mean in at the top out at the bottom.

BUT what ever works in practice is the way to go. If you have a double coil then this negates the question.

I find that if I don't stir the wort slowly or move the chiller around, the temperature exchange becomes stagnant. If you leave the chiller immobile and don't stir the wort, the wort nearest the tubing cools down but the rest remains very hot and cools down more slowly. The water exiting your chiller will be hardly warmer than the water you put in.

The same thing happens in a pre-chiller immersed in a bucket of ice water. You have to move chillers around or stir to break up the temperature zones. That being the case, I cannot imagine there being any appreciable difference in chilling based on the direction of the water flow.

Like B4B i also move the chiller around when cooling the wort.Letting it sit still doesn't do much cooling.My homemade 3/8 rig flexes like an accordion,so i just lift it up and down and watch the temp drop on the digital thermometer.I've got it down to 10mins for a complete cool!I run my in-flowing water from the top of the coils down and then straight up to exit.I too wonder what the difference would be if any.
Cheers

The direction of water flow makes no difference. Of course, to test this, you'd have to do a very controlled test where you do not disturb the chiller at all because as we've all noticed, stirring the wort makes a big difference. No matter the direction, you have the same volume of cooling water taking heat out of the same volume of hot wort. We are really such geeks to be discussing at this level of detail. If we found that one way would cool 30 seconds faster, we'd probably run out for another length of copper.

I just bought 50' of 1/2" OD copper tubbing that I was going to make into a double coiled wort chiller. Do you think this length is too much for even a double coiled chiller?
thanks
tricky

Stirring is the key to a fast cool, but we all fear the little bugs that could result. I haven't built it yet, but plan on doing an immersion/whirlpool setup to keep the wort moving around the coils and the lid on top the kettle. If you have a pump just cycle the wort out of the kettle and back through the top to a tube set at such an angle to create a whirlpool. This way you don’t have to stir by hand and you get an automatic whirlpool. Jamil Zainasheff spells it out on his web page.

psi3000 said:

I just bought 50' of 1/2" OD copper tubbing that I was going to make into a double coiled wort chiller. Do you think this length is too much for even a double coiled chiller?
thanks
tricky

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If it fits in your pot, you can't really have too much. Now, there's a law of diminishing returns at work - by the time the water reaches the last ten feet of the tubing, it's already been warmed up by the wort a good amount and won't pull out MUCH more heat - but it'll still be better than a 25 foot chiller.

What you might think about, though, is to use some of that tubing for a prechiller, especially for the summer. Run the water through a bucket of ice before it goes through the wort.

fifelee said:

Stirring is the key to a fast cool, but we all fear the little bugs that could result. I haven't built it yet, but plan on doing an immersion/whirlpool setup to keep the wort moving around the coils and the lid on top the kettle. If you have a pump just cycle the wort out of the kettle and back through the top to a tube set at such an angle to create a whirlpool. This way you don’t have to stir by hand and you get an automatic whirlpool. Jamil Zainasheff spells it out on his web page.

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Not sure what you mean by bugs, but when you stir, you aren't whisking or anything, just swirling the wort to make sure that you aren't getting a cold pocket around the chiller. I have a 50' 3/8" chiller that gets my 6 gal batches down to 65 degrees in 15 minutes, and under 150 in a couple minutes.

aseelye said:

Not sure what you mean by bugs

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I might be overly paranoid, but stirring cooled wort to aid in cooling and/or to whirlpool makes me nervous. Who knows what kind of nasty bugs (bacteria/wild yeast) are in the air or even fall off your arm. The reason bottle trees work is because the bottle opening faces down and bacteria and wild yeast don’t fall up. I like the whirlpool chiller method because it lets you cover your wort right after boiling and leave it covered.

fifelee said:

I might be overly paranoid...

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Yup.

the_bird said:

Yup.

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Hey, to expand on my theory that "bugs” can fall off oneself into the wort, did you know a ten-year-old mattress typically weights twice what a new mattress does. Yummy. {insert smiling nuance}

fifelee said:

Hey, to expand on my theory that "bugs” can fall off oneself into the wort, did you know a ten-year-old mattress typically weights twice what a new mattress does. Yummy. {insert smiling nuance}

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I try really hard to keep the spooge out of the brews though (except cream ales).

Thanks for perhaps the most disgusting factoid I've heard in the past two years.

Exactly what I am saying…I love my wort soooo much I’ll take drastic measures to protect her. That said…the added spooge does negate all my hard work. Your welcome.

A question for you guys:

I can get 12' of 1/2" 'M' (much lighter than the tubing labeled 'L') for $15 CDN, would that be sufficient for a chiller? How difficult is it to bend 1/2 tubing by hand?

You need the soft stuff that is sold in a coil, not the individual straight "pipes". The soft stuff is just easy enough to tighten up the existing coil, but anything more than a 6" radius is asking for a kink. They sell spring sleeve anti-kink devices for each tubing size if you want to make a more drastic bend.

Bobby_M said:

You need the soft stuff that is sold in a coil, not the individual straight "pipes". The soft stuff is just easy enough to tighten up the existing coil, but anything more than a 6" radius is asking for a kink. They sell spring sleeve anti-kink devices for each tubing size if you want to make a more drastic bend.

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Ah ok, damn, guess I'll have to look harder....