A new chiller idea

New to me that is. The Jagemeister thread made think of the cold taps we used in high school. You know, a chest cooler with a aluminum plate with the tap lines running into it. You fill the cooler with ice and presto.

What I'm thinking is similar to what I use now but more to the point. I would use a copper line, at least 25', and coil it flat with space between each tube. Like the tubing in a radient floor system. Put this in a cooler or something with a wide open drain. Fill with ice and drain wort through. The melt water would run off to keep the copper in contact with ice.

Any thoughts? Been done?

I don't know if draining the water is what you'd want to do. The ice will melt away from the copper and you'd have free air between the ice and the copper. You'd lose most of your cooling effect that way. You need the cold stuff in contact with the hot stuff, and preferably you want both the cold and the hot moving, which will prevent a buffer of warm water between the cold water and the hot line from forming. This is why stirring your wort while you have an immersion chiller in the kettle and counterflow chillers work so well.

Yeah you're right, I should adjust the out flow to keep it wet. Right now I do this in a bucket with a standard coil IC and need to repeatedly drain water and add more snow/ice.