To Build or Buy?

[HopKeller]

A wort chiller. I've watched a few videos onlline on how to build your own, looks pretty easy and I like the idea of saving the about 50%. Anybody have a strong opinion one way or another?
Also, what would be the ideal length? I was thinking about getting 25' of 1/2" copper tubing. Would it be enough for 5 gal. all grain wort? Am just now transitioning to AG - so I would hope to make this wort chiller work for my 3 gal Extract brews on the stovetop as well as 5 gal. AG, once I'm set up.

 

[Mpavlik22]

I made my own chiller. I used 25' flexible copper with connections for a garden hose. I used a paint can to form the shape. 25' works good for me but remember the more surface contact you have the quicker you can cool your wort.

 

[Kahler]

I'm all about the DIY.
Right now i am using 25ft of 3/8in copper. I am also using a sump pump as opposed to a hose/sink. I would love to have a 50ft, but i dont think my pump would be as effcient.

 

[HopKeller]

Did you solder or crimp the connections?

 

[Chia]

I like the DIY myself, gives me something to do when i am not brewing

 

[mrduna01]

I have a DIY chiller with 20 ft of 1/2 inch or 3/8... Don't remember at the moment. I used worm clamps on the hose connections. I average 45 minutes or so to pitching temp in the summer heat.

 

[Erroneous]

Check around for copper prices before going DIY. Might end up being about the same. Also, it isn't too much difference to make a cfc especially if you can find the rubber hose. My work throws them out on occasion when the get too beat up.

 

[HopKeller]

Check around for copper prices before going DIY. Might end up being about the same. Also, it isn't too much difference to make a cfc especially if you can find the rubber hose. My work throws them out on occasion when the get too beat up.

cfc?
Sorry, I'm a newb.

 

[Homercidal]

I say DIY if you are even slightly handy. Sweating the fittings is very easy, and you can even go with compression fittings if you don't have the torch and soldering stuff on hand.

 

[birvine]

I made my IC with 20' of 3/8" Cu. I bought one washing machine hose and cut it in half. It snugly slipped onto the ends of the Cu but I also used some clamps to make sure. Our water is very cold and we are not on a meter so I just run the water through and in 15 to 20 minutes the wort is cool. Even though there is no meter, I DO save as much of the water as possible to water the gardens, yard, hops, etc. If our water wasn't so cold I would adapt the system to use a sump to recirculate ice water.

B

 

[Homercidal]

cfc?
Sorry, I'm a newb.

CFC is counterflow chiller. It's like an Immersion Chiller (coil of copper tubing) but inside a coil of garden hose. The cold water flows over the tubing, while the wort flows inside the tubing.

It's just a piece of old garden hose and a couple more fittings.

 

[BrewThruYou]

A wort chiller. I've watched a few videos onlline on how to build your own, looks pretty easy and I like the idea of saving the about 50%. Anybody have a strong opinion one way or another?
Also, what would be the ideal length? I was thinking about getting 25' of 1/2" copper tubing. Would it be enough for 5 gal. all grain wort? Am just now transitioning to AG - so I would hope to make this wort chiller work for my 3 gal Extract brews on the stovetop as well as 5 gal. AG, once I'm set up.

25' of 1/2" sounds good. The problem with going to 50' is that so many of the coils would be out of the wort when doing 3G batches. I do 7G boils to get down to around 5.75G and my 50' 3/8" is just barely fully submerged. I made sure to do some measurements on my pot beforehand.

 

[HopKeller]

CFC is counterflow chiller. .

Gotcha. Know what it is, jut not familiar with the abbreviation.
I see a lot of you use 3/8", is that because it's more common or it's easier to find fitting for connections? Both?
The larger the diameter of the tube, the quicker the cool-down, right?

 

[mojo_wire]

DIY.

I just bought the stuff for a 25' 1/2" IC this weekend, total cost was about $40. I'm going to solder all the connections, but you could get away with nothing more than hose clamps.

 

[Mpavlik22]

Did you solder or crimp the connections?

I used compression fittings from Lowes.

 

[MichaelBrock]

Faced with the same decision as you I ended up buying one. I found a 25', 3/8 copper tubing chiller with soldered-on garden hose connectors for $48 shipped (learntobrew.com). I couldn't find the tubing for less than $30. Add to that the cost of the brass garden hose connectors, bending tool (probably optional), solder, etc. It came down to a pretty close call.

 

[PIGMAN]

I used 50ft of 3/8 copper, and clamped on pvc tubing. I attached a 3/8 garden hose connecter to the intake side. It wound up costing about $75. Copper isn't cheap nowadays.:fro:

 

[birvine]

The larger the diameter of the tube, the quicker the cool-down, right?

Not 100% on my fluid dynamics, but I would say "to a certain extent". It is based on surface area of cold Cu with the wort. I would think that bigger diameter at some point becomes too large to be effective since there would be some cold water at the centre of the Cu that would not come in contact with Cu.

B

 

[goodgodilovebeer]

DIY is a great way to go if you're handy. My advice is if you're planning to upsize your kettle to a larger one (ie: 10, 15 gallon) anytime soon, do yourself a favour and build your chiller to accommodate that size pot. I made the mistake of building a chiller first when I began brewing to chill a 3 gallon stovetop batch and when I upped the size of my kettle, I found it too small to quickly chill a full 6 gallon boil volume. I'd suggest 50 ft. since it's better to have more cooling power than not enough.

 

[PIGMAN]

Get a pipe bender if you go DIY. I found that a 1/2 inch bender worked best on the 3/8 inch copper. The 3/8 inch bender kept getting hung up.

 

[BetterSense]

Here in Texas our tap water is 24-26C in the summer, plus we are often on water restrictions, so I assume an immersion chiller using tap water would not work very well unless I used an ice water reservoir.

For those that use counterflow chillers, can you cool adequately in one pass, that is, do you run the hot word through the CFC directly into the fermenter, or do you run it back into the boil kettle in a loop until the whole volume is cool enough to put in the fermenter?

 

[TopherM]

I have a DIY chiller with 20 ft of 1/2 inch or 3/8... Don't remember at the moment. I used worm clamps on the hose connections. I average 45 minutes or so to pitching temp in the summer heat.

Geez....I cooled 5+ gallons from 212 to 80 in 18 minutes in an Ice Bath with 23 lbs of ice on Saturday. The 23 lbs of ice cost $1.75. I don't see the point of a IC if it takes 45 friggin minutes to chill.

 

[sburggsx]

I made a counter flow chiller using the following instructions for brewing my first batch.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/How_to_make_a_Counter_Flow_Chiller

I think the total cost was ~$25 and the only piece I had was the 1/2" copper pipe for the 6 - 2" pieces. I will also say that I only used 20' of 3/8" but that's because HD doesn't sell 25' anymore, only 20'.

As fast as I could get the wort to flow through it and it was still coming out at 83 degrees (my water temp). I didnt' time it exactly but it was 10 mins or under to cool 5 gal.

Video of first test.

 

[passedpawn]

I really really like my plate chiller. I was on the edge of building one of those garden hose CFC's, but on impulse bought a Therminator. Glad I did, it is very compact and works well, and is an indestructible block of stainless steel.

 

[HopKeller]

Okay, just got back from Lowe's. They want $40 for 20' of 3/8" copper tubing. Ouch!
Man, I knew copper was high, but that's silly. With hardware, & such I figure it'd be $50 total for a wort chiller of that size...which sounds way undersized for the 5 gal. batches I hope to soon be brewing.

 

[MichaelBrock]

I used my 25' 3/8" chiller yesterday for the first time. In a 5 gallon batch it cooled the wort down to the temperature of my tap water (~80 degrees) in under 20 minutes (lost track of time but it was at 80 degrees when I checked it at the 20 minute mark). I then switched to re-circulating ice water through the coil (a 10 lb bag of ice in a 40 quart ice chest using a pond pump I had on hand) and it got it down to 65 in less than 10 minutes. My boil pot is bit wider than most (14") and even a 25' chiller coil is sticking out the top of the wort. A 50' coil of that same diameter wouldn't be much use.

 

[kapbrew13]

Here in Texas our tap water is 24-26C in the summer, plus we are often on water restrictions, so I assume an immersion chiller using tap water would not work very well unless I used an ice water reservoir.

For those that use counterflow chillers, can you cool adequately in one pass, that is, do you run the hot word through the CFC directly into the fermenter, or do you run it back into the boil kettle in a loop until the whole volume is cool enough to put in the fermenter?

Works great and you recirculate the water. Ice bath in the pump container.

 

[HopKeller]

BTW - You all are talking about 3/8" inside diameter, not outside, correct?

 

[BigTerp]

DIY.

I just bought the stuff for a 25' 1/2" IC this weekend, total cost was about $40. I'm going to solder all the connections, but you could get away with nothing more than hose clamps.

Same here. 25' of 1/2" copper. I used hose clamps as well. I got my first batch down to <70 degrees in 12 minutes with the temperature being near 100 out.

 

[BrewThruYou]

Okay, just got back from Lowe's. They want $40 for 20' of 3/8" copper tubing. Ouch!
Man, I knew copper was high, but that's silly. With hardware, & such I figure it'd be $50 total for a wort chiller of that size...which sounds way undersized for the 5 gal. batches I hope to soon be brewing.

I bought my wort chillers from nybrewsupply.com.

For $43.99, you get 25ft of 3/8" with vinyl tubing, brass hose adaptor, and clamps (I think).

 

[boomtown25]

Okay, just got back from Lowe's. They want $40 for 20' of 3/8" copper tubing. Ouch!
Man, I knew copper was high, but that's silly. With hardware, & such I figure it'd be $50 total for a wort chiller of that size...which sounds way undersized for the 5 gal. batches I hope to soon be brewing.

This is rediculous. I bought the exact piece of copper about 3 weeks ago from Lowe's in Mississippi and it cost $20 bucks.

 

[TopherM]

Here in Texas our tap water is 24-26C

I didn't know they had Celcius in Texas (of all places!!)

 

[BetterSense]

I only know what the temperatures are in Celsius because I have to cool the water down to 20C for my darkroom work.

 

[HopKeller]

This is rediculous. I bought the exact piece of copper about 3 weeks ago from Lowe's in Mississippi and it cost $20 bucks.

Was your's 3/8" inside or outside dimension? The piece I looked at was 3/8" inside and 1/2" outside.

 

[MichaelBrock]

Apparently the price of copper tubing varies a great deal from location to location. In some other thread someone posted a link to Lowes.com where they were seeing some particular cheap copper price. Everyone that checked it was seeing a different price.

 

[ZamaMan]

I thought about making my own a couple weeks ago but it was gonna cost too much so i bought one from learn to brew for like 65 bucks it was a 50' 3/8 inch. I do want to make a huge one out of 3/4 inch 50 ft roll one day. Chilled my 7 gallons from 212-80 in maybe 25 min which was nice not havjng yo watch iit or mess with it. Next up the ice water set up

 

[dnslater]

Made my own last weekend from parts purchased at Lowes. Total price, $24. This includes 20' of 3/8" copper tubing, a cheap washing machine hose, 10' of rubber/vinyl clear tubing and a few clamps. Works great, just not as pretty as store bought.

 

[dshaggy]

I got a 50' 1/2 inch chiller from nybrewsupply.com for less than $100 shipped. You might be able to build it for a little cheaper, but everything is soldiered and ready to go. It chills 6 gallons down to pitching temps in 10-15 minutes. Plus I wont have to worry if I ever start doing 10 gallon batches.

 

[tnshurtm]

I made my 50' 3/8" and it is just barely all submerged with a 5 gal batch in my pot. I went from boiling to 80 in about 12 minutes. I move mine around when it gets cool enough to handle. When I do, I notice the outbound pipe gets hot again so I have to let go. I keep repeating until when I stir with the chiller, I don't feel the temp difference between inbounda and outbound.

 

[h22lude]

I am looking into making one too. It seems like it wouldnt save me all that much if I did DIY. Im going to check out HD and Lowes today to see what they have.