DIY Interwoven "Rib-Cage" Immersion Chiller

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I'm not saying you shouldn't do the recirculating pump idea, but I don't waste any of the water that comes out of my immersion chiller. I collect it all and use it in my washing machine and my swamp cooler.
 
mtnagel said:
I'm not saying you shouldn't do the recirculating pump idea, but I don't waste any of the water that comes out of my immersion chiller. I collect it all and use it in my washing machine and my swamp cooler.

I'll just dump into the washer, that way the boss will be happy! When she's happy, makes life easier!!!
 
Thanks for this thread (as far back as it goes...) and the ideas.
I just picked up 50' of 1/2" OD tube at Home Depot for $20. Another $10 for clamps and tubing and so forth, and I will get around to making my RCIC for my next brew day.
Just worried about the bending of the tube, especially the parts that come up and over the rim. Slightly tighter radius, I;m kinda paranoid about that kinking on me.
 
I am concerned bending my 5/8" without something solid to hold it. I still saved over $100.00, but I may have to give someone $20.00 to roll/bend it. With the 5/8" tubing being very solid, I can use soldered elbows and connectors to hopefully connect w/o kinks. I do have a question for the success'd folks though, how much tubing did you use? I have a 50' roll, and am concerned if I marked the middle (25") and did my ribcage, how long would the tails be?
 
I'm thinking about building a wort chiller and using a fountain pump to cycle the water. But my idea is getting a submersible pump and recirculating the water from a cooler with ice water and back into to the cooler to bring it back down. That way I'm not waisting a lot of water. My question is this.....does this sound okay or more like a hair ball idea. Any info or ideas?
Sounds good to me. I'm just getting started, and I cooled my first two batches by immersing the pot in a sink of ice water. To supply the ice, I set my old 54-qt Coleman Steel Belted cooler beside the sink and scooped ice out of it. But I'm sure a rib-cage immersion cooler hooked up to a fountain pump in that Coleman would work a lot faster...
 
I think one of those $12.00 12v pumps would be the ticket too, but at what point (*F) would you divert to the ice bath? I'm fairly sure, w/o burning up ice, that knocking the temp down from boiling to 100*F or so would be done easily with just "tap" water. I believe the ice box pre chiller idea is a sound one for taking 100*F or so wort down to pitching temps, especially when the weather outside is hot.

I know we have engineers here, any suggestions?
During the time that the wort is exposed during cooling, (from 40*F to 140*F) what type of covers are you guys/gals using to keep things from the sky falling in and creating havoc?
 
No cover on mine. At the longest, it's ~30 minutes to chill. My basement isn't the cleanest either and I've never had an issue leaving it open.

And I think getting it down to ~100F with just tap water is fine and then using some sort of ice method. I have a prechiller that immerse in a bucked of ice water and that works well, but I bet pumping ice water through the main chiller would work even better.
 
Thanks Matt. I am mechanically enough to take something apart, fix it, and put it back together again, but bending 5/8" tubing around a jig I would have to make baffles me as I no longer have a garage full of tools. (long story). I would really like to make the rib cage cooler, and am asking for ideas: if I had a small CO2 tank, I would start there.
My new 30qt turkey pot and my 40qt brew kettle, are both 15" tall, but they differ in width. The 30qt is 11" wide, and the 40qt is 15" wide. I wonder what diameter I should make the chiller. Oh crap, wait a second, how much volume does an immersion coil displace? I would hate to find out my 30qt pot only holds 3 gallons after adding in my custom coil before it overflows. Does anybody know how much, or know how to calculate the volume of a given length of tubing? Is it Pi R2 (x) L /1728?
Maybe? Help!
the volume displacement
 
I just made a huge post, and it got lost... What I really wanted to know is how to calculate the volume of displacement of a given diameter and length of tube/pipe. Let's say I make this bad ass IC out of 5/8" tubing, and when I go to put it in my 30qt pot with 5 gallons of wort, the pot overflows as the IC displaces too much volume. N/M, I found a calculator and the total volume of displacement of 50' of 5/8" od tubing is 0.8 gallons. I can't stuff that much tubing in there if I tried.
I just realized that a 6" id coil 8" tall uses only 5' of tubing, and with 50' to play with, if I screw one up no big deal, as I will sell it for #1 copper scrap, and probably break even dollar wise.
Major Edit: I started on my IC last night, and using a 1 gallon jug as a form, each wrap is 2 feet in length. Damn, what happened to my math skills?
 
Thanks for this thread (as far back as it goes...) and the ideas.
I just picked up 50' of 1/2" OD tube at Home Depot for $20. Another $10 for clamps and tubing and so forth, and I will get around to making my RCIC for my next brew day.
Just worried about the bending of the tube, especially the parts that come up and over the rim. Slightly tighter radius, I;m kinda paranoid about that kinking on me.

I believe 1/2" copper would best be attacked with solder on elbows or other fittings. That way you wouldn't have to be quite so gentle when you move it. You could also tack or wire the opposite sides together, and use hard tube for your vertical pipes and be rock solid. This is not my idea, but I am going to use it for mine.
 
5/8" tubing use 1/2" pipe fittings. I know this because I had to repair a kink. My point is by soldering together into a tee the two bottom lines, and the two top bottom lines teed as well. One way in for water and one way out is very strong/stable. I am having both lines come up through the center so I can gain another inch or so of side clearance. I am making a rib cage design. When I am done, pictures will follow.
I just realized this chiller might finish too wide for my 30qt pot to be effective I will wind a smaller one out of 1/2" for my skinny 30qt, I guess

5/8" tubing isn't terrible to make a coil out of, but a tapered glass jug isn't the best bobbin to wind on. Next time I will rent a section of sono tube to wind a coil on, and when I am done I will return the rented equipment to the store.
 
One more chiller... 50 feet of 3/8" OD copper. It just fits into the 28 qt tamale steamer I use for a boil kettle. Obviously I haven't put any hoses or fittings on it yet; need to make a trip to the hardware store.

While I'm at it I'll probably pick up another 20 feet of copper, so I can make a pre-chiller. I'm lucky; I have access to all the free ice I can use (within reason, of course).

add: I love this concept. Had I tackled the problem on my own, I would probably have tried to put a small coil inside a larger coil. Not nearly as easy or practical...

wort chiller 001.jpg


wort chiller 004.jpg


wort chiller 002.jpg
 
troy2000 said:
One more chiller... 50 feet of 3/8" OD copper. It just fits into the 28 qt tamale steamer I use for a boil kettle. Obviously I haven't put any hoses or fittings on it yet; need to make a trip to the hardware store.

While I'm at it I'll probably pick up another 20 feet of copper, so I can make a pre-chiller. I'm lucky; I have access to all the free ice I can use (within reason, of course).

add: I love this concept. Had I tackled the problem on my own, I would probably have tried to put a small coil inside a larger coil. Not nearly as easy or practical...

That's pretty cool.
 
#215. Looks nice , but it's not efficient, only one side will get cooled, the return water up the second side will already be hot. If you joined the two pipes you have at the top as a common entry, the cut and fit a tee on the bottom of your two coils and bring an exit pipe up, you will then have TWO effective coils and much greater efficiency, you only need one tee and a riser pipe.
 
apologies if this is discussed earlier in the thread, i tried to skim through and didn't see it... is there any proof that this works better than a single coil design? I am inclined to think that it does not, as any length of copper will have the same results regardless of the shape it is wound into. is this an incorrect assumption? has anyone done an actual comparison using the same length and diameter of tubing for single coil vs double coil vs ribcage style?
 
I think we are on the same wave length, my coil is only about 25' an the water exits hot! If it was 50' it would still exit hot ! 2 coils at 25' means 2 lots of hoy coming out therefore more efficient.
I believe there's mor to go 25' is too LONG !
Make it shorter, more entry point more exit points, the more heat coming out means a faster cool!
 
One more chiller... 50 feet of 3/8" OD copper. It just fits into the 28 qt tamale steamer I use for a boil kettle. Obviously I haven't put any hoses or fittings on it yet; need to make a trip to the hardware store.

While I'm at it I'll probably pick up another 20 feet of copper, so I can make a pre-chiller. I'm lucky; I have access to all the free ice I can use (within reason, of course).

add: I love this concept. Had I tackled the problem on my own, I would probably have tried to put a small coil inside a larger coil. Not nearly as easy or practical...

Troy, money's better spent buying a small pump to recirculate ice water through the IC, I pick one up off of Fleabay, works great after bringing the work down to around 100F with tap water.
 
#215. Looks nice , but it's not efficient, only one side will get cooled, the return water up the second side will already be hot. If you joined the two pipes you have at the top as a common entry, the cut and fit a tee on the bottom of your two coils and bring an exit pipe up, you will then have TWO effective coils and much greater efficiency, you only need one tee and a riser pipe.

This is basically a copy of the chiller the OP made, but with twice as many coils, and he seemed to be perfectly happy with his results. With ice water running through 50 feet of tubing, I don't think the exiting water will stay hot for long. And it'll definitely work better than what I've been doing, which is floating the kettle in a sink of ice and water. Especially since I'll usually have the kettle in a sink full of ice and water anyway.... comes a point where it's worth asking, "how much efficiency do I need, anyway?" ;)

This design was basic and easy to make, and I needed it done so I can brew tomorrow (I have grain, hops and yeast begging to be used because I unexpectedly had to work over the weekend). I thought about splitting the inlet, but rounding up tools, materials and time to do it changed my mind. The chiller will certainly be easy enough to modify, if I decide to do so when I have more time.
 
Troy, money's better spent buying a small pump to recirculate ice water through the IC, I pick one up off of Fleabay, works great after bringing the work down to around 100F with tap water.

You're probably right, but pumps need power. I can use a pre-chiller and a chest of ice anywhere I have a hose.... and I have plenty of ice chests already. I might add a pump anyway later, if I get ambitious.
 
We're cool Troy, it's just that I know cos I have got very uncomfortable with very hot water down my trousers from 25' which suggests that maybe after 15' it is not doing any cooling at all.
 
We're cool Troy, it's just that I know cos I have got very uncomfortable with very hot water down my trousers from 25' which suggests that maybe after 15' it is not doing any cooling at all.

I suspect that if you had 10', it would still be coming out hot - at first. :)

But when the water gets to the end of my coils it should still be doing some cooling, although not as much as the water just entering. And since the coils are spread through the wort better than a single stack would be, they should be more efficient. If the second stack seems redundant and not contributing its fair share of cooling, I'll turn up the water flow.

By the way, someone with a degree in thermodynamics might have fun examining what happens where the two stacks of coils intersect....
 
apologies if this is discussed earlier in the thread, i tried to skim through and didn't see it... is there any proof that this works better than a single coil design? I am inclined to think that it does not, as any length of copper will have the same results regardless of the shape it is wound into. is this an incorrect assumption? has anyone done an actual comparison using the same length and diameter of tubing for single coil vs double coil vs ribcage style?
I have no proof it works better; I just made it. But it seems to me that coils distributed throughout the wort will cool better than a single stack of coils one above the other. If nothing else, it should take a lot less stirring to bring wort in contact with the chiller....
 
Hey Troy
You have agreed that 10' may be enough. Those degrees lost are the same degree wether at 200f or 100f. What's the difference ?
The extra length does nothing for you !
 
Hey Troy
You have agreed that 10' may be enough. Those degrees lost are the same degree wether at 200f or 100f. What's the difference ?
The extra length does nothing for you !
Well, no. I didn't. I simply pointed out that any chiller is going to squirt hot water at first. But I doubt many of them are discharging water at the ambient temperature of the wort, unless the water is simply trickling through. And I don't doubt that more tubing works better, up to a point.

I just used my setup this evening, including the pre-chiller I built this morning. I monitored the water coming out of the chiller with the same thermometer I used on the wort, and there was a consistent 20*F difference.... but I didn't think to start checking it until the wort was down to about 180*F. I didn't keep close track of the time, either, but it was less than fifteen minutes.

I'll post pic's of my setup this evening or tomorrow, depending on how ambitious I am.

And by the way, I don't doubt your basic premise: that when you start using longer chillers, you run into the law of diminishing returns. But even diminished returns may be worth it... sometimes every little bit helps. :)

The question is, at how many feet does more copper tubing become not worth it? It would be interesting to build a 20' chiller also, cool two batches side by side under the same conditions, and see if there's a noticeable difference.
 
I was planning to take a picture of the pre-chiller and chiller in action tonight; forgot to dig out the camera. But here's a picture I took right after making the pre-chiller and adding the plumbing. If you get confused trying to trace things out, the water hookup is hanging down towards the bottom of the pre-chiller. I bought a kitchen faucet-to-garden hose adapter, and placed a female garden hose-to-3/8" barb on the vinyl tubing. That gives me more versatility in hooking up to water....

I made the pre-chiller from a 10' coil of 3/8" OD copper. Would probably have used 20', but the Ace Hardware I went to only had it in 10' or 50' coils. And I stuck with the rib-cage concept, mostly because both ends come out on top. Also partly because it looks cool, of course. I had originally dug out a small cooler to use it in, but wound up just sticking it into a stock pot instead. What the heck... how much insulation do I need for ice and water, when the wort-chilling process only takes a few minutes?

wort pre-chiller 004.jpg
 
#215. Looks nice , but it's not efficient, only one side will get cooled, the return water up the second side will already be hot. If you joined the two pipes you have at the top as a common entry, the cut and fit a tee on the bottom of your two coils and bring an exit pipe up, you will then have TWO effective coils and much greater efficiency, you only need one tee and a riser pipe.


I like this idea!!
I've got 25' of ⅜" tubing i was going to make a couterflow chiller with but this seems like it would be more efficient than a regular IC and a lot easier to clean than a counterflow....
Will give it a try and post pics later on
 
troy2000 said:
I suspect that if you had 10', it would still be coming out hot - at first. :) But when the water gets to the end of my coils it should still be doing some cooling, although not as much as the water just entering. And since the coils are spread through the wort better than a single stack would be, they should be more efficient. If the second stack seems redundant and not contributing its fair share of cooling, I'll turn up the water flow. By the way, someone with a degree in thermodynamics might have fun examining what happens where the two stacks of coils intersect....
.

A degree in mechanical engineering should suffice given the number of thermodynamics and heat transport classes I had to take. Although this design is more efficient than a single coil (ie half of the rib cage design) it's efficiency could be vastly improved. The easiest way to do so would be to increase the flow rate of cold water through the coil. Furthermore the most "bang for your buck" would come from splitting the coils and having a t that would send cold water down both both coils instead of routing it down one and up the other. Over all the more surface area you can get with large temp differences the better the design. Hope that helps. As far as the intersection of the coils they in theory would reduce the efficiency of the coils. This is because they will dump heat from the "hot" coil to the cold coil. Reducing the amount of heat that can be absorbed by the cold coil.
 
I probably would of just made a counter flow using garden hose. I did and it's very efficient, chills 10 gallons to around 70-80 as fast as I can drain my kettle.
 
.

A degree in mechanical engineering should suffice given the number of thermodynamics and heat transport classes I had to take. Although this design is more efficient than a single coil (ie half of the rib cage design) it's efficiency could be vastly improved. The easiest way to do so would be to increase the flow rate of cold water through the coil. Furthermore the most "bang for your buck" would come from splitting the coils and having a t that would send cold water down both both coils instead of routing it down one and up the other. Over all the more surface area you can get with large temp differences the better the design. Hope that helps. As far as the intersection of the coils they in theory would reduce the efficiency of the coils. This is because they will dump heat from the "hot" coil to the cold coil. Reducing the amount of heat that can be absorbed by the cold coil.
Thanks for the post; it's a good one. I'll try to respond point by point - but remember it's my bedtime, I've been into my stash, and I'm coming off another 12-hour shift....:cross:

1. Increasing the flow rate is easy; I just open the faucet. And the pre-chiller makes sure the water stays cold.

2. I agree that splitting the coils would create more efficient cooling. But since I cooled five gallons of wort from boiling down to 70 degrees in less than fifteen minutes with no stirring the other day, I'm not sure how much more efficiency I need.

I may do it anyway though, just because it would look even more 'Buck Rogers in the 21st Century' than my present configuration. And after all, I'm doing this mostly for the fun of it. I could afford to buy good beer, if that's all I was after....:)

3. Do you think heat exchange where the coils cross outweighs the fact that the coils overall are spread through the wort, more than they would be in a single-stack configuration?

One thing: the chiller I made from 40' of 3/8" copper tubing pretty much fills the 7 gallon tamale pot I use for a boil kettle. But I only boil 5 gallon batches in the pot (so far), which means the top few coils aren't cooling anything but air.

I originally thought about lopping off ten or fifteen feet of tubing and using that to make my pre-chiller, and it looks like it would've worked out just fine. On the other hand, someday I may be using a taller boil kettle....:)
 
.

A degree in mechanical engineering should suffice given the number of thermodynamics and heat transport classes I had to take. Although this design is more efficient than a single coil (ie half of the rib cage design) it's efficiency could be vastly improved. The easiest way to do so would be to increase the flow rate of cold water through the coil. Furthermore the most "bang for your buck" would come from splitting the coils and having a t that would send cold water down both both coils instead of routing it down one and up the other. Over all the more surface area you can get with large temp differences the better the design. Hope that helps. As far as the intersection of the coils they in theory would reduce the efficiency of the coils. This is because they will dump heat from the "hot" coil to the cold coil. Reducing the amount of heat that can be absorbed by the cold coil.



No degree whatsoever talking here!..........But if you were dialing in the efficiency of your chiller VS. coolant flow, wouldn't you try to shoot for a minimum spread of temp., ("delta T"), betwixt wort temp. and coolant outlet temp?

Speaking as an Auxiliary Equipment Operator in a power plant for a few years, many times it required DECREASING the flow through the cooler, to get the desired temp on the "cooled medium".......

Was super counter intuitive to me until I saw it in action, where we had to slow down the flow of the coolant, (longer contact time), to get the temp drop where it was needed!

Just throwin' it out there!...........:mug:
 
No degree whatsoever talking here!..........But if you were dialing in the efficiency of your chiller VS. coolant flow, wouldn't you try to shoot for a minimum spread of temp., ("delta T"), betwixt wort temp. and coolant outlet temp?

Speaking as an Auxiliary Equipment Operator in a power plant for a few years, many times it required DECREASING the flow through the cooler, to get the desired temp on the "cooled medium".......

Was super counter intuitive to me until I saw it in action, where we had to slow down the flow of the coolant, (longer contact time), to get the temp drop where it was needed!

Just throwin' it out there!...........:mug:


not a mechanical engineer but i am a nerd... for a heat exchanger, the heat energy exchanged is a function of the temperature difference between the wort and the water, as well as the size of the exchanger (in our case, circumference of tube times length). the colder the water is at intake, the faster the wort will be cooled, due to a larger temp difference in source liquids. slowing down the water flow would make the system more efficient relative to heat absorption by the water, meaning each water molecule would pick up more heat from the wort, but for our purposes this is not something we care about- faster water speeds would net a lower water temp throughout the chiller, resulting in higher temperature differential between wort and water, resulting in faster chilling. I would further argue that the shape of the chiller does not matter, as 50 feet of tubing is the same length in any shape, however having the chiller distributed throughout the hot wort will be more efficient, as the cooling is dispersed through more liquid (moving the chiller around in the wort could have the same effect)

clear as mud? or am i mistaken?
 
I just recently made an immersion chiller based on this design. I used two 20 foot 3/8" coils and joined them together with a compression fitting so my total length is approximately 40 feet.

I did a test last night and this chiller took 6 gallons of water from boiling to 70 degrees F in exactly 10 minutes. My first time using an immersion chiller and I'm totally impressed!

Up until now, I have only done partial boils on my stove-top and it would always take about a half-hour to take only 2.5 gallons down to pitching temp using and ice bath in a 20 gallon rubbermaid tub.

I'm looking forward to my first full volume boil with my new burner, 10 gallon aluminum kettle, and immersion chiller.

:mug:
 
Somewhere around here are a couple of pictures of my Frankenchiller. It's ugly, I mistakenly made the two inlets parallel by rolling the same direction, and have two parallel 5/8" x 25' coils. I don't have an accurate time for cooling so the next time I brew, I will. The water goes into both coils at the same time, and leaves at the same time. At first I was worried about a big screw up wasting time and expensive copper tubing. I don't remember where I read it, but the question was raised, "What cools a glass of liquid faster, one ice cube or two?" I now have the "two ice cube" method IC.
 
I made mine last week and brewed with it the next day.
50 feet of 1/2 copper. The first coil went picture perfect, then I realized I needed to feed it through itself to get the other one right.
Ended up with a couple slight kinks, but unwinding and rebending slowly with my bender made it all right. Still slightly pinched near the bottom but doesn't appear to interfere with the flow.
Only other thing is I over estimated the need for uprights, so the tubing is attaching a foot plus over the rim of my kettle. Guess that;s not a problem.
I brewed the next day, and got the wort down to 62 degrees in 15 minutes. EVen though it was about 35 - 40 degrees out, and presuming the ground water was about the same, I wasn;t expecting that kind of efficiency.
I got a hose valve for the chiller end, so I did't have to worry about running to the spigot when I wanted to adjust or turn it off (best idea I had)
 
I got a hose valve for the chiller end, so I did't have to worry about running to the spigot when I wanted to adjust or turn it off (best idea I had)

I have an immersion chiller I bought that uses a standard female hose fitting. Your idea to use a hose valve makes a LOT of sense... I may have to see if I can't find something like that for my chiller! :D
 
I put a valve in the input to my cooler, it's the same as normally used for domestic washing machines, it has a 3/4"BSP coupler so the ordinary washing machine hose fits straight onto it.
 
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