Completed the conversion of my copper IC to counterflow chiller

So after moving to all grain and full boils I found my copper IC didn't exactly fit well in my keggle and this made chilling the wort to yeast pitching temps long and tedious. So I finally made the plunge and bought some soldering equipment and converted my IC to a CFC. Wow what a difference. I used a lot of resources on HBT and the web. After fixing a leaky union between 1/2" pipe and reducer my CFC is up and working. I bought a sump pump on amazon to recirculate cold ice water from a 5 gallon rubbermaid storage container. When I tested for leaks I dyed the chilled water red so I could see if any showed up in my faux boiled wort. I was amazed at how cool the boiling water came out of the chiller. This little conversion should shave off 20-25 minutes of time that is use to take me to chill in the kettle. Greatest part is I use gravity and it comes out nice and fast. I have run both hot oxiclean and star-san through it and have it capped with star-san at the moment ready for my first batch of wort to run through it. I couldn't be happier.

Awesome possum. I have been using a chill plate from a soda pop dispenser and have been looking into building a cfc so that I am not dependent on my animal club for ice. Now I see that I must make this happen!

Sweet deal! I have been thinking about doing this as well, for similar reasons. My IC fit well in my 7.5 gallon keggle but now that I have a 1/2 bbl keggle it does not fit quite as well. It would also allow me to do other things while chilling instead of standing on top of the keggle and stirring to keep the wort turbulent.

What length of copper do you run?

kpr121 said:

Sweet deal! I have been thinking about doing this as well, for similar reasons. My IC fit well in my 7.5 gallon keggle but now that I have a 1/2 bbl keggle it does not fit quite as well. It would also allow me to do other things while chilling instead of standing on top of the keggle and stirring to keep the wort turbulent.

What length of copper do you run?

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The IC I had was a 25 foot run of 3/8 OD copper coil. When I unrolled it and made my cuts it finished at about 22 feet of copper inside a good quality rubber hose. The trick was that the copper reducers available didn't quite fit the diameter of my copper coil so I had to be patient in soldering my connections. The hose and fittings ran about $40, so for me there was big value over buying a pre-built CFC.