An idea for a wort chiller

I will be doing my second batch tomorrow, and I do not want to have to wait as long as I did for my first batch to cool in the ice bath. My though was to take plastic tubing 1/4 - 1/2 in. and coil it much like an immersion chiller. I would use zip ties to hold the form and put it in a bucket with the water line above the top of the coil, leaving both ends of the hose out of the bucket, again like an immersion chiller. Then freeze the contraption overnight in my deep freezer, this way, the wort will literally travel through a block of ice.

I am very new to this hobby, but I have read alot on this forum and a few books on the processes used for chilling. This seems like it could yield some fairly effective results and be very cheaply made.

My only concern is can the tubing handle boiling wort, and the extreme temperature shift from below freezing to a boil temp. If this is a problem, I could do a hybrid ice bath/ice block method.

What are your thoughts?

You'd get better heat transfer using copper tubing. I'm not sure how your idea would work. Your chiller coil would be encased in ice at first, but as wort travels through it, won't the ice that is immediately surrounding it melt, thus causing a gap to appear between the hot wort at the ice?

I just learned a cool trick that works a treat: buy two gallons of water at the grocery store (the kind that comes in milk jugs). Freeze them overnight, and then when you are done boiling your wort, instead of adding it to two gallons or so of water, add it to the two gallons of ice (cut them out of the jugs first, of course). When I did that, the temperature dropped to pitching temp within five minutes.

For clarification.... You are going to run your worth through the tubing that you froze in ice?

Are you pumping it through the tubing with something? (Just trying to understand how it's going to work.)

It seems like it *might* do the trick *if* the plastic can handle freezing temps on the outside and boiling temps in the inside. It might crack.

-walker

Ryan_PA said:

I will be doing my second batch tomorrow, and I do not want to have to wait as long as I did for my first batch to cool in the ice bath. My though was to take plastic tubing 1/4 - 1/2 in. and coil it much like an immersion chiller. I would use zip ties to hold the form and put it in a bucket with the water line above the top of the coil, leaving both ends of the hose out of the bucket, again like an immersion chiller. Then freeze the contraption overnight in my deep freezer, this way, the wort will literally travel through a block of ice.

I am very new to this hobby, but I have read alot on this forum and a few books on the processes used for chilling. This seems like it could yield some fairly effective results and be very cheaply made.

My only concern is can the tubing handle boiling wort, and the extreme temperature shift from below freezing to a boil temp. If this is a problem, I could do a hybrid ice bath/ice block method.

What are your thoughts?

Click to expand...

Walker-san said:

For clarification.... You are going to run your worth through the tubing that you froze in ice?

Are you pumping it through the tubing with something? (Just trying to understand how it's going to work.)

It seems like it *might* do the trick *if* the plastic can handle freezing temps on the outside and boiling temps in the inside. It might crack.

-walker

Click to expand...

That was the thought. It would be gravity fed, so the outlet tube might have to be plumbed out the bottom somehow...

Ryan_PA said:

That was the thought. It would be gravity fed, so the outlet tube might have to be plumbed out the bottom somehow...

Click to expand...

Unless you use a lot of tubing, it might not come out the other end cooled enough, but.... it might just work! GO FOR IT! :rockin:

If I were you, I'd probably give this a test run with plain old boiling water to see if it works. Make sure you completely melt everything afterwards and check out the tubing for fractures when you are done. Hmmm... maybe put some food coloring (or iodine) in the boiling water so that any leaks into the ice are more obvious at the end.

-walker

Yeah, I am going to try this, but I will have to plan it out a little better, so I might not do it for tomorrows brew. If it works I will do a wirte up.

Thanks walker.

I have a friend who is Macgyver and Scottie from Star Trek all rolled together. I went to his house one Saturday afternoon and He was about 4 or 5 hours into Beer tasting and he was pretty ripped. He was sitting there boiling a wort. I showed up just in time for the cooling part. I typically use frozen water/partially frozen water to cool my wort by just adding it to the wort and it works like a charm every time.

He had 10 ft of 1" ID Copper tubing coiled like an immersion chiller with some sort of funnel soldered on one end and the other end was completely naked and open. The open end went up and over the side of his brew pot and went out about a foot then up about a foot. I said "What the hell is that?" He replied that it was his Fast Chiller. He proceeded to pull out a small silver tank and remove the lid. A fog instantly poured out of the tank. Oh crap! Liquid Nitrogen!

He proceeded to pour Liquid Nitrogen into the Quick Chiller. Of course it spwed and popped and fogged like crazy. He laughed and by the time he put the nitrogen tank up, his wort was frozen completly.

I laughed like crazy and he was pissed for a min then he started laughing too. We put the pot back on the flame and slowly warmed it back up to 70 again. No harm done. But we both agreed that his Fast Chiller works a little too well

Another concern will be sanitation - it may be a bit tricky. If you use cold sanitizer, it'll probably freeze, and if you use hot, you'll beging to lessen the effectivness of your wonderful ice-block. Have you thought of submerging your plastic hose in a saltwater and ice bath? This may also work a little better because the heated water won't be trapped inside the ice, against the wort.

Let us know which way you go either way!

dougjones31 said:

I have a friend who is Macgyver and Scottie from Star Trek all rolled together. I went to his house one Saturday afternoon and He was about 4 or 5 hours into Beer tasting and he was pretty ripped. He was sitting there boiling a wort. I showed up just in time for the cooling part. I typically use frozen water to cool my wort and it works like a charm.

He had 10 ft of 1" ID Copper tubing coiled like an immersion chiller with some sort of funnel soldered on one end and the other end was completely naked and open. The open end went up and over the side of his brew pot and went out about a foot then up about a foot. I said "What the hell is that?" He replied that it was his Fast Chiller. He proceeded to pull out a small silver tank and remove the lid. A fog instantly poured out of the tank. Oh crap! Liquid Nitrogen!

He proceeded to pour Liquid Nitrogen into the Quick Chiller. Of course it spwed and popped and fogged like crazy. He laughed and by the time he put the nitrogen tank up, his wort was frozen completly.

I laughed like crazy and he was pissed for a min then he started laughing too. We put the pot back on the flame and slowly warmed it back up to 70 again. No harm done. But we both agreed that his Fast Chiller works a little too good.

Click to expand...

THAT'S AWESOME!

Where can I buy me some liquid nitrogen?....

the_bird said:

THAT'S AWESOME!

Where can I buy me some liquid nitrogen?....

Click to expand...

Uh, your local cryogenics parlour (sperm bank)?

I'll pick some up the next time I'm there...

UH... I mean, the next time my FRIEND is there... that's it...

What you could do is to get a 10 gallon fish aqarium and fill it with ice water, then loosely coil your tubing and drop a good section of it in the aquarium. Pump the wort through the tube and hope that the ice-water bath does the trick.

Personally, I use about 8 pounds of ice. I put the ice in the bucket, then pour my wort through a strainer directly to the ice. This causes the solids to quickly seperate while cooling the liquid. By the time the ice melts you're ready to pitch (after topping off with cooled water).

I'm no physicist, but I think that an actual melting ice bath will be colder than a solid block of ice. Sounds counter-intuitive, but think about it. If you have ever made ice cream, you know that simply putting ice into your ice cream maker will not get the cream cool enough to ice up. Instead, you throw a bunch of salt into the ice, and the chemical reaction of melting creates a colder environment.

Wouldn't your chiller idea work better if you immersed that coil into a large bucket in which their is ice chunks, salt, and melting ice (i.e. water) so that every square centimeter of that coil is in contact with the cold solution?

I may be way off base . . . just a thought. . . let us know how it goes.

Make sure that you get your connections good and tight because that plastic tubing stuff gets really soft when it is hot.

I use a pre-chiller with my chiller. The pre-chiller goes into a cooler with ice and water (I'm going to add some rock salt next time). I'm able to get 5.5 gallons down to 75 degrees in about 25 minutes with my immersion chiller this way.

It would take forever since my tap water is about 85 degrees during the hot summer.

"Marge, can we set the oven to cold?"
-Homer J. Simpson

I don't think this would work very well. Plastic is an insulator, while copper is a conductor. That goes for heat, too, not just electricity.

sonvolt said:

I'm no physicist, but I think that an actual melting ice bath will be colder than a solid block of ice. Sounds counter-intuitive, but think about it. If you have ever made ice cream, you know that simply putting ice into your ice cream maker will not get the cream cool enough to ice up. Instead, you throw a bunch of salt into the ice, and the chemical reaction of melting creates a colder environment.

Wouldn't your chiller idea work better if you immersed that coil into a large bucket in which their is ice chunks, salt, and melting ice (i.e. water) so that every square centimeter of that coil is in contact with the cold solution?

I may be way off base . . . just a thought. . . let us know how it goes.

Make sure that you get your connections good and tight because that plastic tubing stuff gets really soft when it is hot.

Click to expand...

You may actually be on to something. I remember seeing a Mythbusters episode where they discovered that an ice/salt/water mixture was a very good method of cooling down a six pack. Here is a link to a blog with some of the results:

http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2005/03/mythbusters_cooling_a_sixpack.html

ablrbrau said:

I don't think this would work very well. Plastic is an insulator, while copper is a conductor. That goes for heat, too, not just electricity.

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I see what you mean, but the cost to potential benifit ratio at least makes this a worthwhile experiment. With the high cost of copper today and the relative low cost of plastic tubing, I could eiter waste like $10-15, or find something that cools my wort. Even if it is only a little better than the ice bath, I have improved my breing process.

I have often wondered about pouring water (or ICE) into a concentrated boil (at the end) to cool it down.

Doesn't the store bought water contain some bacteria which could contaminate your beer? They never claim that water is steril.

Even if you dump water into your wort, the fact that the wort instantly drops in temperature reduces it's ability to steralize anything thats in it now.

I always boil any water which goes into my wort.

Is that overkill?

Ryan_PA said:

I see what you mean, but the cost to potential benifit ratio at least makes this a worthwhile experiment. With the high cost of copper today and the relative low cost of plastic tubing, I could eiter waste like $10-15, or find something that cools my wort. Even if it is only a little better than the ice bath, I have improved my breing process.

Click to expand...

I built my wort chiller from copper coil. The whole thing costed less than 35 bucks. $15 puts you about half-way there . . . with a slim chance of success, IMO.

If you build a wort chiller from copper coil, you sill spend double that, but you will have a guaranteed workable product.

My .02

Um, you see the price of copper coil these days? How about four times that, at least?

the_bird said:

Um, you see the price of copper coil these days? How about four times that, at least?

Click to expand...

yeah copper has gone through the roof lately. Guess the Chinese like copper as much as they like gas.

the_bird said:

Um, you see the price of copper coil these days? How about four times that, at least?

Click to expand...

I bought mine days before Austin caught up with the rise in price and raised the price of thier chillers. It's still cheaper to buy them now though. Regardless.... I dont think this idea is going to work... if this was an option you think you would have seen it a dozen times in literature allready. As mentioned before, plastic is a terrible conductor. This is what your trying to do when you use one of these... transfer the heat away from your wort and in the drain. The tubbing is cheap... what will not be cheap is the beer going bad because of the procedure.

i use two immersion chillers. one chiller is placed in a cooler with ice and water and the other obviously in the pot. I have a hose running water into the first chiller that is immersed in the cooler and more tubing connecting it to the the other chiller in the wort. The water gets really cold before running through the second immersion chiller and of course helps cool the wort very quickly. It works very well. The only thing coming in contact with the wort is the second immersion chiller which is sanitized byt the boiling wort.

How much do those Oxygenating systems cool the wort? Oxygen is very cold when it comes out of a tank.

tdriver said:

Doesn't the store bought water contain some bacteria which could contaminate your beer? They never claim that water is steril.

Click to expand...

I use Ozarka spring water in my beer. I do partial boils cool the wort in the brew pot, and never boil the water I use to top off a batch. I haven't had any issues with contamination (knock on wood).

How about just pitching a chunk of dry ice into the kettle? How much dry ice per gallon? It would have to make a heck of a cold break!

You would fill your strainer/funnel with ice and pour the wort on top of it.

If you buy store-bought ice, most of it is made in a pretty sterile environment. The yeast will overtake the baddies and your chances for contamination are slim.

I have done this by adding basically a 2.5 gallon boil to about 2 gallons of ice, but I preboil the water for the ice and freeze it in old cool whip tubs or tupperware that I sanitize first. I don't trust storebought ice touching my wort.

I've seen the guy from Sam Adams suggest two one-gallon milk jugs where you peal the plastic off the ice. It's just easier to pop out the smaller pucks of ice using my method and it exposes more surface area too which cools the wort faster. Besides, pealing off the plastic gives you more opportunity to infect the ice.

I'm so close to making an immersion chiller, but I'm on the fence because a counterflow is almost as easy to make. Once you go to a full 5 gal boil, you kinda wanna have a spigot anyway which is a requirement for using the counterflow. I'm just not there yet.

Regarding the orginal idea, I agree that plastic/rubber is just a poor conductor of heat. Even after a little time, the space just outside the coil will become plain water which will probably hover around 35-40 degrees. If you took that same coil and dropped it in a bucket full of loose ice, water, and a cup or two of sea/rock salt, your water temp around the coil could be around 10 degrees lending much more cooling power. Even so, you're already in the realm of complexity as the counterflow method, which is already less messy.


Bobby