New immersion chiller

Finished this up this weekend. It just needs a cleaning and a boil, and it’s ready to go. I decide to upgrade my old 20' coil of 1/4" tubing. I had a leftover 10' length, dismantled my first attempt at a semi-counterflow and sometimes pre-chiller for another 10’ and added 20' more.

So I now have 60’ of tubing held in two coils in a 1/2” copper frame.



I will be looking to get a pump to recirculate ice water once the domestic water gets to it’s normal 75 to 80 degrees in the summer.

I kept the height fairly low, as I typically do five gallon batches. But it should work fine for ten gallons. The center coil sits about two inches higher than the outer. The diameter allows it to fit in a standard five gallon bucket for cleaning and storage.

The support arms are standard 1/2” plumbing copper and fitting. I took the idea of drilling the supports from keelanfish’s design in the thread https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/immersion-chiller-alternate-design-98181/#post1069585, which is tad more elaborate than I had the inclination for. Only the two supports are drilled to support the bottom and top, and I added a handle to carry it without grabbing the actual tubing.



The lowest cross-bar sits on the side of the domed bottom of my keggle and leaves a pretty good gap. If it encounters too much of the hot break, I’ll add some kind of feet to lift it up a little.

Wow verry nice. I think I may have to coppy youre design when I put together mine

Well done. I like the use of the tees to simplify my idea of drilling all the holes in the support pipes. Let us know how it performs!

love the 2 coils and the support system with handle. i will definately be loking at this again when i make my chiller

Man that's a lot of copper... Well done! Love the design! I'm almost as anxious as you to see how it works- Happy brewing!

how much did it cost you for the whole project?

Cost is a tough to figure because I already had 40' of the tubing, and the 2 to 3 feet of 1/2" pipe and elbows were leftover from some plumbing work on my house.

All told I spent about $35 for 20' feet of tube, the compression fittings and copper T's and coupling for the tubing.

The tubing is most of it. I think all the fittings and 1/2" pipe would run about $20 total.