50' Dual Coil/Flow IC

Here's my "new" dual coil, dual flow IC. It used to be a single run 50' IC based on Bobby_M's design.

I went ahead and split it into two 25' runs, each with their own water flow. The idea being that I basically have two 25' IC's in the kettle at the same time rather than just one 50'.

In my experience, by the time the water was hitting the second half of the 50' IC, it was near wort temp anyway and not really doing any cooling. My hope is that I'll pick up some additional cooling with the two 25'ers.

For the naysayers... I did check the flow out of each coil before buttoning her up and it was nearly the same rate through each. The inner coil was slightly less than the outer coil, but not by a lot.

I like it.
I have one pretty much just like it but it is one continuous 50' IC in two coils like yours. I might just go ahead and change it to one just like yours but it's not high on my list, it does a great job as it is.

Nice work! I believe splitting it in two is a much more efficient way of using 50', as long as the 2 flows are about the same rate. If you had just spread the coils apart (like you mentioned in your previous thread), you probably wouldntve been able to submerge the whole thing for 10-15 gallon batches, huh? This way you'll submerge the entire thing. I'm looking forward to seeing the results.

Ultimately it's all about getting as much cold water passing through the wort as possible and this definitely achieves that. With a single run, you can get the same basic effect by cranking the pressure and pushing the water through faster (if the tubing size can handle it). I think 1/2" OD tubing is capable of flowing faster than you'd really want to so it wouldn't have the same benefit of parallel coils as say 3/8" OD or 1/4" OD, but there's also no harm in doing so.

I built an IC similar in design to yours. I have a total of 60 Ft of half-inch copper. Forty ft are in the outside coil and 20 ft in the inner coil. I have also added a whirlpool recirculation arm to recirculate the hot wort with a pump and form a whirlpool. I can drop the temp from boilding to pitching temperatures in about 10 - 12 minutes. It works great for me. I would be curious in what your cooling times are.

nice!! i don't plan on recirc'ing simply because one of my "things" is to stay unplugged so that eliminates the use of pumps. that said, i do actively stir the wort throughout the cooling process to achieve similar results as with a whirlpool .

it'll be a couple weeks before my next brew, but i'll definitely post up some results once i use this for the first time.

nice... i did something similar except the inside 25' was made into a coil down and a coil up the center (making 3 coils) off of two feeds. it cools super fast!

Nice work. I did the same with a CFC, though your coiling looks a lot nicer than mine.