Home made wort chillers

Going to brew a Northern Brewers Speckled Heifer tomorrow with my bro in law. This will be his first and about my 10th batch. I found some 3/8" copper at work and decided to try and make some chillers for basically nothing. Only had to buy the hose adapter.







Cant wait to try it out.

If at all possible try and get the connections on the outside of the boil kettle. Nothing worse then starting to cool 5 gallons and wind up with 6 at the end.

Begin2Brew said:

If at all possible try and get the connections on the outside of the boil kettle. Nothing worse then starting to cool 5 gallons and wind up with 6 at the end.

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++1

Especially that out-flow! get it out of the kettle and over the lip. Nothing worse than dripping unboiled, unfiltered tap water into your hot wort.

Nice find.

Yes, you need to get that end out of the kettle. The connection with the plastic hose will eventually leak. Also plastic expands more than copper, so when hot, the plastic can be 'loose'; I have a couple of clamps on both ends of mine to stop leaks, I found 1 clamp was not sufficient.

At least you have it the right way around; you want the cold water to go in at the top to get some movement of the wort in the kettle as you cool.

I replaced those zip ties with some metal hose clamps. Thanks for the suggestions about running the return back up.

When you first start to cool your wort with that, the water coming out will be near boiling and you'll have the chiller in the pot of boiling wort for a bit to pasteurize it too. Vinyl tubing doesn't like hot water. Silicone tubing would be better.

If you can make it smaller in diameter I would. I find with mine that if I just leave it in one spot it only chills that one spot of wort. The temperature doesn't chill all the way through. I use a work glove and swirl mine to move the wort. Perhaps try the same with yours? You'll save water that way.

Im not going to use it today, im just going with the ice bath method. I sprayed some star san on the copper and it got a white film all over it.

Sounds like you should pickle the copper before you use it

One problem with my homemade chiller was ice cold bottom wort and boiling top wort. Try to get the chiller to sit near the top of the wort level so this doesn't happen to you. You'll get some natural convection as the colder wort sinks and the hot wort floats to the surface.

Well, you should be stirring the crap out of the wort while chilling.

Stirring makes a huge difference and it will cool 3 times faster. Sorry Bobby, you beat me to it.

comrock12 said:

Sounds like you should pickle the copper before you use it

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Pickle the copper?

Don't use starsan on it. Get that white stuff off before you use it in beer. No need to sanitize it. Just rinse with hot water

bobby_m said:

well, you should be stirring the crap out of the wort while chilling.

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+1

Bobby_M said:

Well, you should be stirring the crap out of the wort while chilling.

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I use a copper whirlpool arm these days, but moving the chiller to the top does a good self stir (not quite the same as stirring the crap out of it though). Something about having the lid off, stirring wort with rapidly falling temps seems like an infection risk.

Calder said:

Nice find.
you want the cold water to go in at the top to get some movement of the wort in the kettle as you cool.

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Just when I thought I had read everything there was to know about immersion chillers, I see this. Often wondered if it made a difference.

Thanks much,

bigken462 said:

Just when I thought I had read everything there was to know about immersion chillers, I see this. Often wondered if it made a difference.

Thanks much,

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Yeah I didn't know this either. I better check mine. Lol

snowtires said:

Yeah I didn't know this either. I better check mine. Lol

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I learned this the hard way - made a 50' chiller by linking two 25' coils in the middle with a vinyl hose, which would loosen as soon as it hit the wort. Probably put 6 gallons of water in over 2-3 batches. Boo!

That was in the early 2000's though, before HBT.