Immersion chiller advice. Or, length vs. width...

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supermoth

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I just went to Home Depot to check out their prices on copper coils for the IC I want to make. They had a 20' length of 3/8 OD for $25, and then they had a 50' length of 1/4 OD on sale for $31, marked down from $42. I'm trying to decide which one to use. Also, if I go for the narrower and longer one, will 50' of copper tubing be a major pain to coil nicely without messing it up? Thanks for input!
 
Coiling it won't be a problem, but 1/4" OD won't provide sufficient flow, it's way too small.
 
I'd go for the 20 feet of 3/8 inch if those are your only choices. I think that 50 feet of 1/4 inch tubing will be so restrictive that you won't get enough flow through it for effective cooling. Your cooling capacity is largely dependent the volume of water per minute through the chiller and you'll get a lot more through the 3/8. And I think that even with only 20 feet of tubing you'll get pretty good heat transfer to the water.

As for coiling it, wrap the main part of the coil around something solid like a corney keg or paint bucket and use a tubing spring for the sharper bends on input and output.
 
I made mine out of the 20' of 3/8", and it worked fine. BUT, in my opinion you might consider making a counterflow chiller instead...it's not too much more work, really. You can use compression fittings if you don't have the equipment to sweat copper, and just gravity drain your wort directly into your fermentor.
 
This probably won't be the answer you want to hear, but I went cheap on my first immersion chiller. 25' of 3/8" I think. Finally got fed up and sprung for 50' of 1/2". It makes a world of difference.

I forget where, but I found it online for like $55. IMO, you might as well spend the extra $25 now and look at it in the long run.
 
Turkeyjerky, how many gallons were you trying to chill?

Anyway, thanks everyone for the input. I've been getting envious reading the posts from just a couple years ago where people were buying their copper for just 10 or 15 bucks. The price sure has gone up!
 
Also keep in mind that whatever route you end up going, moving the chiller around while chilling decreases chill time and water use significantly.
 
I have 25' of 3/8". It came coiled up in a box. I just separated the coils and bent them little by little by hand with no tools or forms until it was the right size for my pot. I wish I had gone ahead with a longer coil, probably 50'.

The photo is from 2 brew sessions ago. I pushed water through the chiller with a pond pump pulling tap water from the cooler and discharging it into the red bucket for hot water into the washing machine. After the temperature fell to around 100* I put the discharge into the cooler and added 20# of ice. It took around 25 minutes to get it to pitching temps.

Last brew session I skipped the prechill with tap water and went straight to a recirculate with 30# of ice. Almost 45 minutes later it was still 80* and the ice was gone. I was scrambling for blue ice blocks and cubes from the freezer to try to bring it down more. The water coming out of the chiller was very cold the whole time indicating that I need more surface area to transfer the heat quicker.

image-1735590386.jpg
 
supermoth said:
Or a slower pump?

Are you sure? It seems to me that if the pump is pushing enough cold water to keep the chiller cold at the output then the only remedy is more surface area. You want cold copper in contact with the wort and I am getting that.

Think of a radiator in a car. They use several rows of flattened tubing to get more surface area in a smaller space.
 
Nope, not sure at all, just a wild guess. But I also try to be conscious of water use, and I imagined that if you slow the pump just enough that your output is tepid, than you're getting the maximum cooling for the water you use. However, you did say that you are recirculating.

I'm surprised that it took you 45 min to chill with that setup. It seems like there are bunches of people posting online saying "I did 25 feet of 3/8 OD and got to pitching temps in 15 min!"
 
woohoo, JonK backs up my wild guess!

So does physics! Chillers work by transferring the heat from the wort to the water. If the water is coming out cold the solution is to either reduce your flow or increase your surface area (or do both if possible). It seems like everyone here likes nice cylindrical chillers but a conical shape is actually more beneficial, especially if you use your chiller to stir/aerate your wort.
 
A slower pumping rate and moving the IC in pot will speed the cooling approximately 2 fold all things being equal.
Has any one added fins to an IC???
 
Nope, not sure at all, just a wild guess. But I also try to be conscious of water use, and I imagined that if you slow the pump just enough that your output is tepid, than you're getting the maximum cooling for the water you use. However, you did say that you are recirculating.

I'm surprised that it took you 45 min to chill with that setup. It seems like there are bunches of people posting online saying "I did 25 feet of 3/8 OD and got to pitching temps in 15 min!"

When I was using a 3/8" 25-foot IC (with not-that-cold tap water), it took me longer than 15 minutes to reach pitching temp, but less than half an hour. Furthermore, my water was coming out SCALDING HOT at first. I would adjust my flow rate with the faucet to ensure that I was getting a reasonable amount of cooling with my water, but maintain a reasonable flow rate the whole time (in other words, the water should come out within 10-20 degrees of the wort). Since I was also filling buckets to use for the washing machine, I can estimate that I probably used ~15-20 gallons or so to cool a 5-gallon batch.

Of course, I was stirring my wort with a sterilized paddle every 5-10 minutes to get it flowing around the chiller, and to get the trub to accumulate in the middle of the BK. That's REALLY important for proper chilling.

Now I have a counterflow chiller that I'm eager to try out next brew day.:ban:
 
I have 25' of 3/8". It came coiled up in a box. I just separated the coils and bent them little by little by hand with no tools or forms until it was the right size for my pot.

This is exactly what I did. It cools 6 gallons of wort in under 30 minutes. For $30 in parts and the 10 minutes it took to assemble, that ain't too shabby. Cheap, easy, and effective. For me it was a logical choice for a piece of equipment that will eventually be upgraded in the future.
 
Well. It looks like I was just doing things wrong. This was only my second batch. I shortened my PVC hoses in an attempt to increase flow rate and was not stirring the wort at all while chilling. I also think that the initial chill with tap water helped me last time. I guess 10# of ice has less cooling potential than 15-20 gallons of tap water.

The fins are an interesting idea. Maybe just wrap a 14-18 AWG wire around the tubing? Solder/braze them together?
 
I made a 50' IC at 3/8" diameter, but with a rib chiller design: Post #142: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/diy-interwoven-rib-cage-immersion-chiller-106415/index15.html

I modified the original design by adding 2 inlets of cold water.


I can take 6.5 gallons from 220F to 70F in about 7-8 minutes. I have not yet tried it in mid summer with warmer cold water temps, but I was really impressed. The most important part, is that swirling the coils around in the wort had no effect. It was that efficient!
 
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