immersion chiller - alternate design

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Jun

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Last week I made a small immersion chiller that looked pretty darn good, and as always that wasn't enough so I decided to upgrade it by doubling it in size.
As with most of the things done in the middle of the night and after few beers I wound the coil the opposite direction - so now I ended up using up all my copper and messing up my chiller that I never got a chance to use.
to fix this problem I decided to add another small peace of copper tubing in the middle of the chiller.
Has anyone played around with different designs for chillers?

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Looking at your gallery, it looks like you have a inner spiral, and an outer one. I have seen this before, but not the dual in/out. Should work good, as you have a lot more surface area contact with the wort, as well as covering (dependent on your kettle) with the outer edge as well as the inner edge. Check for leaks, use it, and let us know how it works!
 
Hre is another one of my designs, the only thing that is different from the conventional is that the cold water intake tube is located in the center


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keelanfish - that looks great, almost a work of art! I like how you drilled out the rigid uprights to space the coils.
 
by how much does it raise the liquid level in the pot?

Actually, not as much as you would think. The support legs are hollow and therefore don't displace that much liquid. The only real displacement comes from the coils themselves and I ended up using 60' of 1/4" ID (3/8" OD) tubing, so the coils themselves don't displace nearly as much as some of the 1/2" ID chillers I've seen. I designed it primarily for 5 gallon batches, but I've got a 15 gallon pot, so I left some coils higher incase I ever do 10 gallon batches.
 
Here's my double coil immersion chiller I recently built. I added supports to make the whole thing rigid and more durable. Cooled 5 gallons to 70 degrees in under 10 minutes on the first trial.

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"Mr. keelanfish, I don't use the word 'hero' lightly, but you are the greatest hero in American history."

I hope you won't mind when I shamelessly steal your design for my chiller upgrade. :ban:
 
How in the hell did you get all that tubing ran through those uprights??!!? I had a hard enough time just getting my basic coil. Thing really is a work of art, I'm highly impressed.
 
That is a great design, no doubt. But aren't you worried about sanitation? It seems like the upright support structure has a lot of places for stuff to get trapped.
 
Here's my double coil immersion chiller I recently built. I added supports to make the whole thing rigid and more durable. Cooled 5 gallons to 70 degrees in under 10 minutes on the first trial.

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That looks awesome, but just curous, with all the money in copper for that, why not just build a CFC?
 
How in the hell did you get all that tubing ran through those uprights??!!? I had a hard enough time just getting my basic coil. Thing really is a work of art, I'm highly impressed.

I drilled the holes in the uprights slightly larger, but even with that, it was still a two person job. Also, I threaded the coils through the individual pipes first and then soldered the upright supports together. That definately made it easier.

That is a great design, no doubt. But aren't you worried about sanitation? It seems like the upright support structure has a lot of places for stuff to get trapped.
I was a little concerned about that, but upon using it the first time it was surprisingly easy to clean with a water hose. I also put it in the boil for about the last 5 minutes to ensure it is sanitary as most people do with immersion chillers.

That looks awesome, but just curous, with all the money in copper for that, why not just build a CFC?
Actually, originally I was just going to build a 50' 1/2" diameter chiller. But when I saw the cost of 1/2" tubing, I quickly changed my mind and decided on 60' of 1/4" tubing which was about 1/3 the cost. The supports are 1/2" regular copper pipe that I had left over from building a manifold for my MLT, so that didn't really cost me anything. Even if you had to buy everything to do this build, I think it would cost less than $100 from a typical home improvement store. But, there are some online sources for copper tubing that I think would be much less expensive.

I considered a counterflow chiller, but I do everything by gravity and don't have a pump to recirculate the wort. Also, I'm trying to keep cleanup simple and didn't want to worry about cleaning and sanitizing the inside of a CFC.
 
I considered a counterflow chiller, but I do everything by gravity and don't have a pump to recirculate the wort. Also, I'm trying to keep cleanup simple and didn't want to worry about cleaning and sanitizing the inside of a CFC.

This is what I thought before reading Bobby_M's tutorial. no pump is needed. I gravity fed my CFC 10 gallons from boiling to under 70 and into fermenters in 25 minutes the first time I used it. Just the one pass from keggle, through CFC, cooled it down to then directly fall into the fermenter.
 
Here's my double coil immersion chiller I recently built. I added supports to make the whole thing rigid and more durable. Cooled 5 gallons to 70 degrees in under 10 minutes on the first trial.


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Whether it is efficient or not, that is one beautiful piece of brewing artwork!!! :rockin:
 
i would love to remold my 90' of tubing into a design like this. i have no clue how you were able to shape it so perfectly. great job!
 
oh sorry i meant to compliment keelanfish. although this forum raises an OK q about the benefits of double-coil v. counterflow...
 
Any interest in releasing the design specs? Picture tells the story, but would love to build one of my own! Very impressive design.
 
Here is my cooling system. It fits in a 7 1/4 inch hole in keggle and allows room for hop bag as well. Top part not showing but it is only the fittings for the hoses.

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Very cool. Mine is also a double coil but not near as nice looking.

I have been considering changing it to a CFC just because I have a temp probe that gets in the way at times and if I use hop bag or ball it is also in the way. At least that's my reasoning. My IC works very well but I am sure a CFC would work just as fast if not faster. I built a stand last summer so I now have two pumps on my Brutus type stand so running to CFC and back to BK is what I am thinking about doing OR right to primary if it works that good.

Great Job.
 
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