Home-made IC with FAST chill times

Firstly, let me say that I am a brand new brewer and brand new to the forum, so let me know if this is the wrong place for this thread.

I brewed my first batch last weekend, and since my sink is not big enough to fit my brew pot (just over 5 gallons), I had to go to Lowe's to get a sink-adapter and some hose so I could fill it and rinse it from the sink. While there, I inevitable saw the copper tubing and though, "That can't be that hard can it?"

To make a long story short, I bought 50' of narrow (1/4") copper tubing and some nice ends to plumb it all up, and used it to chill my first batch. I ran in to a few issues:

1. The chiller is heavy, and flexible, so it can't support its own weight. I fixed this by looping some tubing around it until I can come up with a more elegant fix.

2. The narrow tubing has a low flow-rate, so it doesn't move a lot of water, and it is tricky to blow it all out at the end to empty it.

3. I filled the sink with cold water to help chill the outside of the pot, but since I closed the bottom of the sink, I had nowhere for my chiller to drain! I had to start shuttling buckets to the bath tub to get rid of the water. Good thing it doesn't flow very fast.

Anyway, other than the couple of issues I had, I was able to chill from boiling to 80 degrees F in less than 5 minutes, which seems WAY faster than any of the times I saw other people talking about, and this was with a 3.5 gallon boil and the top bit of the chiller (inch or so of coil) out in the air.

Is this due to using 50' of the thinner tubing? Or is it because I put it in cold water too? Has anyone else had similar chilling times?

Going from boiling to 80 isn't what takes so long, it's going from 80 to 60. As your wort gets closer to tap water temp, there are diminishing returns. If your city water is especially cold, all the better for chilling.

Also a lot of people here are chilling larger volumes, either full 5 gallons or even 10 or more gallons, so that affects time too.

Welcome to brewing though, each time gets a little smoother as you work out the kinks.

Cheers

I, too, was at Lowe's when I decided I was going to make my own IC. I went with the 20ft 3/8", and it has worked pretty well - just 20 minutes to get from boil down to 80, without using additional ice on the outside.

This weekend, I picked up a pump at Harbor Freight ($11 FTW!) that will allow me to use a cooler filled with icewater in place of hooking my IC up to a hose. I'm looking forward to giving it a try this week during my Thursday Night Brew. I expect that running icewater through the coil will work like a charm, plus waste less water!

Yeah man, I picked up 50 ft of 1/4" tubing a couple of years ago. I think it was less than $20

It's been doing the trick for many a brew.
Tom

I've heard a few people say that the narrower 1/4" tubing is more likely to clog, but if you are only running pressurized water through it and blow it out after each use, is that really much of a concern?

Focal said:

I've heard a few people say that the narrower 1/4" tubing is more likely to clog, but if you are only running pressurized water through it and blow it out after each use, is that really much of a concern?

Click to expand...

I think you may be confused with something else, CFC maybe? If you're just running water through an immersion chiller, what would cause it to clog?

Focal said:

1. The chiller is heavy, and flexible, so it can't support its own weight. I fixed this by looping some tubing around it until I can come up with a more elegant fix.

2. The narrow tubing has a low flow-rate, so it doesn't move a lot of water, and it is tricky to blow it all out at the end to empty it.

3. I filled the sink with cold water to help chill the outside of the pot, but since I closed the bottom of the sink, I had nowhere for my chiller to drain! I had to start shuttling buckets to the bath tub to get rid of the water. Good thing it doesn't flow very fast.

Anyway, other than the couple of issues I had, I was able to chill from boiling to 80 degrees F in less than 5 minutes, which seems WAY faster than any of the times I saw other people talking about, and this was with a 3.5 gallon boil and the top bit of the chiller (inch or so of coil) out in the air.

Is this due to using 50' of the thinner tubing? Or is it because I put it in cold water too? Has anyone else had similar chilling times?

Click to expand...

1. You can take some copper wire and either solder it to the edge to stiffen it up, or just wrap it around the coils.

2. 1/4" tubing is pretty small, 3/8" or even 1/2" is much more common. If you are only doing 3.5 gallon batches, this shouldn't be a problem though.

3. The trick to the immersion bath is movement and refilling. It will chill much faster if you can move the water around and replace it every few minutes, otherwise it will be fighting the cooling process. Stirring the wort around the coils will also help speed up the chilling.

That being said, chilling the volume to 80 in 5 minutes is perfect, and aside from having the lug buckets of hot water out, that's about all you could ask for.

Only sediment buildup I suspect, but I do remember reading on one online tutorial about making a chiller that the writer mentioned it as a potential draw-back. Maybe he was talking about a counter-flow. Either way, I know I was pretty satisfied with mine, though I could have saved some money and not bought the brass fittings for the ends of the copper tubing like I did. Oh well/