counterflow wort chiller

hey guys, just wondering if anyone out there has built there own counterflow wort chiller. what is the easiest cheap way of doing so. thanks tom

Check the "Stickys", someone on here had a dandy setup using copper tubing and a garden hose.

Look in the DIY forum. There is a project locator sticky. I believe there are a couple ways in there.

you could build one of these cheaply:









This thing works unbelievably well. I wish someone else would build themselves one. It would be good to get a second opinion from an independent source.

How does this one work? Which way does the water flow through?

Catt22 said:

you could build one of these cheaply:

This thing works unbelievably well. I wish someone else would build themselves one. It would be good to get a second opinion from an independent source.

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1. What did you use for those center pieces that hold the pipes in place?
2. How about a complete parts list with sizes.
3. I promise to build one if you do 1 & 2 above, I can't seem to get enough projects going. LOL

That design would work better if the wort in/out weren't on the same end of the coolant pipe because you've got the hottest wort entering just as the coolest wort is supposed exit.

Devil's advocate: it looks like about 8 piece of 1/2" rigid copper tubes, 36" long. That's 24' of tubing which would require 3x10' lengths at about $25 each for Type M. If you had a bunch sitting around, that's not a big deal but not everyone does. If I had to spend $75, I'd go with 50' of 1/2" flexible through copper tubing sales and run that in a 3/4" garden hose.

I just bought a 5' length of type M from Lowes last week for $4.27, copper prices have dropped a lot this year! $34 & easy to take in car.

Hecho en Mexico.

Damn, that is cheap. I may be convinced to run a hot water line out to the garage now.

Bobby_M said:

That design would work better if the wort in/out weren't on the same end of the coolant pipe because you've got the hottest wort entering just as the coolest wort is supposed exit.

Devil's advocate: it looks like about 8 piece of 1/2" rigid copper tubes, 36" long. That's 24' of tubing which would require 3x10' lengths at about $25 each for Type M. If you had a bunch sitting around, that's not a big deal but not everyone does. If I had to spend $75, I'd go with 50' of 1/2" flexible through copper tubing sales and run that in a 3/4" garden hose.

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Actually, if it worked any better I don't think it would be a noticeable difference. The pipes are not touching and there's so much water blasting through the PVC that any advantage would be negligible and having the pipe exit at the opposite end without the final return run inside the PVC chamber would reduce performance in my thinking. In any case, it's not a significant issue for me.

I don't know where you've been shopping, but I bought three 10 ft. lengths of 1/2" rigid copper for $5.47 each. I think it's type "L" IIRC. The copper prices have dropped significantly recently.

Fifty feet of 3/4" garden hose and tubing? Are you kidding me? Do you realize how bulky that thing would be, not to mention heavy? I could easily build a 50 ft. version of this. It would either be six feet long or their would be two three footers working in tandem. The performance of this shorter 20 ft version is way more than just adequate. It rocks!

Yeah, I was way off on the cost of rigid copper because I hadn't priced it in a few months. I just noticed Homedepot.com shows type M at $6.76 and type L at just under $10. Hey, $21 for 30' is a steal now.

I agree that having the exit on the other end wouldn't be all that much more efficient because the wort continuously goes back and forth between the colder and hotter zones.

samc said:

1. What did you use for those center pieces that hold the pipes in place?
2. How about a complete parts list with sizes.
3. I promise to build one if you do 1 & 2 above, I can't seem to get enough projects going. LOL

Click to expand...

The center pieces are some scraps of vinyl sheeting that I had laying around. I scrounged it a long time ago. I'm not sure where you can buy it, but you could use most any kind of thick flexible plastic for this or something similar. They serve two purposes. They help hold everything in place while you sweat the fittings and they work a baffles to help to create turbulance in the water flow. I'm sure it would work nearly as well without them, so if you can hold the pipes together some other way temporarily while you sweat the fittings, you'd be good to go. A couple of aluminum cans or something might work just as well. You could secure the pipes with nylon zip ties until you get it soldered together.

The final connections aren't shown and I made one other last minute change. I switched over to CPVC for the pipes that enter and exit the chiller. IOW, I soldered adapters to the copper inside the cap and ran CPVC out through the cap. I was concerned that the hot copper in direct contact with the PVC cap might not be a good idea. The CPVC does not conduct heat nearly as well as copper.

I simply drilled and tapped holes directly into the side of the PVC for water inlet and outlet. Inlet is at the bottom and outlet at the top. I'll post pics of the finished product and the water ports.

Here's the basic parts list"
3 ft. 4" Schedule 40 PVC w/end caps
20 ft. 1/2" rigid copper pipe (two 10 ft. sections/cut to 8 pieces 32" long)
7 ea. 1/2" copper 90 deg street elbows
9 ea. 1/2" standard 90 deg elbows
2 ea. 1/2" copper adapter - sweat x NPT (national pipe thread)
2 ea. 1/2" CPVC adapters 1/2" NPT x Slip (solvent weld)
2 ea. Male Brass 1/2" NPT x Garden hose thread adatpers
4 ea. 1/2" CPVC 90 deg elbows
4 ea. 1/2" CPVC 90 deg street elbows.

I didn't do an exact count on all the small elbows, but this should be close. I suggest buying a few extras of all the small fittings. Good to have on hand and might save you a trip to the Depot. You could do your own count on paper fairly easily. It's a good idea to plan this out in your head first anyway.

You could make this chiller either longer or shorter if desired. My choice of 32" was completely arbitrary as this was only supposed to be a test prototype and I did not think it would work very well. Boy was I wrong on that!

I would estimate the total cost was about $50 and maybe less. I had some of the fittings on hand and I don't remember the exact prices of the smaller fittings.

I'll dig up the pics of the completed unit and post back in a few minutes.

More pics:







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I presume that you pump your wort through this. Just looking at the design, I think you would have to change it a lot to be able to gravity feed through here to your fermenter. Is that correct? I really have a lot of reservations about putting my wort through something that I can't see inside of to clean (I know, I know, it's just me). I have used an immersion chiller for years but I don't want to add ice to cool 10 gal. AG brews. Having said that, I had just about talked myself into building the tubing/hose chiller. Now that I've seen this design, I like the fact that it is much shorter and I might go this route. I suppose you clean it by running hot (boiling) water through it after each use? I believe if I build one, I would omit the cpvc on the wort side. You guys chime in and give me some ideas about this. Thanks - Dwain

Yes, the wort is pumped. Not only that, but I circulate it back into the boil kettle in order to rapidly reduce the entire wort volume more rapidly. My goal was to achieve a temperature drop from near boiling to below 140 F asap similar to Jamil's method only using a CFC rather than an IC.

While you certainly could set this up for gravity flow, it wouldn't allow me to circulate the wort back to the kettle and you might have to mount this thing horizontally to make it work. Gravity flow was way too slow for my needs.

I flush the chiller, pump and hose by first flushing with hot tap water immediately after use. As soon as practical, I will then circulate hot water and a cleaning solution through the hoses, pump and chiller. I link all the hoses together to make a big loop. The cleaning solution is usually PBW, Oxyclean or automatic dishwasher detergent. I often let the cleaning solution circulate overnight or at least for a couple of hours. Then a flush with both hot and cold tap water followed by a Star San rinse. I blow out the excess sanitizer with compressed air and put caps on the connector ends. It's no different than cleaning and sanitizing any other CFC really. I also circulate near boiling wort through the chiller for 10 minutes or so before starting the actual chilling process.

Which pump are you using and does it give you any grief when you circulate the hot wort before you start chilling? When I finish my build, I will have my system hard piped. By the way, that is a really cool build. - Dwain

Thanks Dwain. I'm using a Little Giant mag drive pump. It's nearly identical to the March pumps most are using. I have learned that you cannot pump unpressurized boiling liquids without having cavitation problems. The solution is to cut the heat while doing the sanitizing cycle so not to interfere with the pump. You can do this anytime during the boil. I've only used this chiller one time (only built it last week), so I am still fine tuning procedures. I'm confident that this design will evolve quickly as others try it and add their own custom mods. I already have one idea that might be easy to add. How about using some "tees" and cross pieces to connect the eight long tubes side to side? These would add to the turbulence both inside the PVC and the copper. It could also eliminate the need for the plastic baffles. Hmmm...the next one I build will have this feature. Hind sight is a wonderful thing indeed!

Bobby_M said:

I agree that having the exit on the other end wouldn't be all that much more efficient because the wort continuously goes back and forth between the colder and hotter zones.

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I'm relying on a high volume water flow through the PVC jacket to minimize any thermoclines. It's got to be quite turbulent in there. Keep in mind, that this chiller was designed to drop the near boiling wort temp as fast as possible to 140 F or below. It gets the wort to 130 F in one pass with 55 F water and the flow rate is about 3 gpm and maybe a little more than that. Once under the 140 f threshold, I slow the flow rate and pump into the fermenters. There's no big hurry at this point. It's easy to hit the desired pitching temperature by simply adjusting the wort flow rate. I had to actually cut the water flow and speed up the wort rate as I filled the second fermenter recently. The wort was too cool at first. Easily dialed it in. I shoot the side of the fermenter with a hand held infra red thermometer.

samc said:

1. What did you use for those center pieces that hold the pipes in place?
2. How about a complete parts list with sizes.
3. I promise to build one if you do 1 & 2 above, I can't seem to get enough projects going. LOL

Click to expand...

How's the project coming along? Was the parts list complete enough? Let me know if you need more information on parts or assembly. You're gonna like the end product performance.