My DIY counterflow chiller

[GreenEnvy22]

I built a counterflow chiller today for a little under $100 CDN.
20 feet of 3/8 tubing, 20 feet of 5/8 garden hose, and some fittings.
I let some water drain through it until it stopped, then blew out what was trapped inside, only about 1 Tbsp, so I'm happy with that.
Nothing leaks.
I'll plan to mostly use pool water to pump through the jacket, but may use the house water supply as well from the garden hose.

In the past I've used an immersion chiller but mine was too small (25 feet) to cool quickly. This style, even at just 20 feet, should be plenty. If it ends up that one gravity powered drain through it isn't enough, I'll recirculate for a bit.

 

[ABI Brewery]

looks awesome, I did the same thing with my CFC and a 25 ft camper water hose the we had left over, but I found out that my 3/4" PEX fit perfectly over the hose so I used that for connecting the pieces and for the part that "T"s off for the water i used a short 2 or 3 inch and used PEX crimps that way I can rotate them and still be water tight

 

[brewtodrinktobrew]

I just made a counter flow chiller as well, have you tested it yet. What is your cooling time? I went with two 25 foot lengths of 3/8” copper and 50 foot of rubber garden hose. Mine came out to 200 USD.

The idea of mine is that I will have both coils cooling at the same time. I know the wort and water will be trapped with my design but it was the best I could come up with for this idea. I will be checking for leaks today and if that goes well I am going to boil 12 gallons of water to sanitize it and test out cooling times. I am hoping that I can get down to 175 quickly for whirlpool. Then recirculate down to 120ish and single pass to pitching Temps.

My previous chiller was two separate 20 foot immersion chillers with a single input. It worked really well on 5 gallon batches but took close to an hour to reach pitching temps in 11 gallon batches.

My old whirlpool arm was just a piece of pipe attached to old immersion chiller so I ordered some stuff on BF to add a dedicated whirlpool arm to my BK.

Let me know what you think. Please don’t judge my solder joints! Lol.

 

[GreenEnvy22]

Mine worked really well. Just gravity draining through it, with some cool water running through the cooling loop, it cools down to pitching temp in the time it takes to drain the boiler.
Batch side shouldn't really matter with this type of cooler, unlike a immersion cooler where it sits inside the wort. Since the wort is just passing through, as long as your cooling water is cool enough, it will constantly be cooling your wort to the same temp.

 

[brewtodrinktobrew]

That’s great. I ran 12 boiling water through mine yesterday. Tap water from the hose was 54 degrees. I recirculated at first. I dropped the kettle to 175 in 2.5 min. I dropped the temp to about 120 in about a total of 4 min. The output of a the new chiller was about 68 degrees. So I can easily whirlpool then transfer straight to the fermenter in a single pass. I am using a March 2 pump to transfer and recirculate.
I am very happy with this addition to the brewery. I may have to recirculate a bit longer in the summer or just wait to pitch after the fermenter chiller gets it down to pitching temp.