How to Make a Wort Chiller?

Given that I live in the Great Country...err...State of Texas, and summer will be starting in about two weeks, I'm going to need a wort chiller soon. And given that I'm cheap, I'd like to make my own immersion chiller instead of buying one.

Here was my thought to keep the water cold. Would this work, fill a sink or cooler full of ice water. Pump the water through the chiller and then back into the sink/cooler. Add ice as needed. This saves me water.

Does this work? What all do I need for the chiller? I know copper tubing, can I buy it from Home Depot already coiled?

Thanks

TexasSpartan said:

Given that I live in the Great Country...err...State of Texas, and summer will be starting in about two weeks, I'm going to need a wort chiller soon. And given that I'm cheap, I'd like to make my own immersion chiller instead of buying one.

Here was my thought to keep the water cold. Would this work, fill a sink or cooler full of ice water. Pump the water through the chiller and then back into the sink/cooler. Add ice as needed. This saves me water.

Does this work? What all do I need for the chiller? I know copper tubing, can I buy it from Home Depot already coiled?

Thanks

Click to expand...

Yep,
That'll work. the first few minutes of the cool, I'd exit the water to the drain. If you return warm water to the reservior, you're just warming your cooling water.
Some people use frozen plastic soda-type bottles to chill the water. Use a pond pump to circulate the water. You can use refrigeration copper tubing and clear plastic tubing attached to the copper tubing with radiator clamps. Coil the copper in to form a cylinder.

For some reason, people mistakenly think water is expensive and ice is free. I'm not saying conserving water is a bad thing, but unless you literally get handed surplus ice from a fish market or something, it's going to cost you a lot more money than water.

Now, to get to the real issue of the water not being cold enough... I'd recommend chilling with tap water for the first half of the job (until the wort is about 100F), then switch to pumping the ice water. If you want to use the icewater from the start, you should discard the output water for the first half of the chilling because it will be coming out at about 180F. Tap water can be used to replenish the water in the ice reservoir which is obviously less than 180F.

Cool, thanks for the tips guys. I appreciate it.

Any ideas on how to actually build it?

I rack 5 gal from the brew pot through a homemade 25' counterflow chiller and into my carboy. I recirculate from cooler with about 5-8 gal of water & 20lbs of ice with a medium sized fountain pump from Home Depot. Works like a charm! 212 to 65 in the amount of time it takes to siphon.

Bobby_M made a video for the Rolls Royce version of an immersion chiller. Check out the video. It should give you an idea. If you have any other questions, just ask.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8EolKTDZUQ&feature=PlayList&p=DD904B9BABCE723C&index=0]YouTube - Immersion Chiller (IC) Build[/ame]