Newbe tip from a newbie. We made a "two-stage" immersion wort chiller. Basically two separate copper coils. Once goes into a cooler, with 2 bags of ice. the other is immersed in hot wort. Garden hose feeds stage 1, coollng it thru the ice chest, then goes to "stage 2" coil, immersed in wort. Yesterday I cooled 5 gals to below 80 in about 20 minutes. I'm a newbee, so this may be old hat, but it was "new to us" & works great. I noted that the wort is segreated by the immersion coil, with the liquid inside the coil cooler than the liquid outside the coil. I found by working the chiller back/forth trhough the wort, you get big, quick temp drops.
