Any experience making Counterflow Wort chillers?

Does anybody have any experience building a tube-in-tube counter flow wort cooler. I once interned at a company that builds refrigeration compressors, and built myself a tube-in-tube condenser for a computer chiller, but I had access to the company's workshop that had all of the torches, benders, and solder I needed.

Working in a condo in the middle of Chicago, is there a simple way to make one of these? I was thinking of coiling a small diameter copper tube (similar to an IC) then fitting a garden hose (or maybe even larger diameter copper tube) over top the smaller diameter tube. The only issue I see with this is getting the smaller tube out of the larger tube at either end.

Any thoughts or experience anyone can share?

Thanks!

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/counterflow-chiller-tutorial-51793/

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/cheycos-cfc-9395/

Thanks Chumprock, I saw that first thread, and was initially turned off by the soldering, but after doing a little research, and finding out my neighbor has a torch, I think I might try to make that first one.

I have a general CFC question. To keep the price down and simplicity up, I would like to just be able to siphon my wort from my kettle to my fermenter through the chiller. Obviously, this depends on my tap water temp, but do I have to pump my wort through the chiller a couple of times to get it down to pitching temp? Or can I typically just run it through the chiller once or twice to get it close.

If I have to run it through multiple times, it seems to me like you risk contamination if you're not extremely careful. What are your guys' thoughts on this? I know for someone of my experience, it is generally recommended to use an IC, but for my own reasons, this doesn't seem like the most efficient way to cool your wort (I am open to thoughts and arguments to this conclusion.)

If you go the garden hose route use dish soap as a lubricant. Makes it a lot easier to feed that copper through!

My CFC is gravity fed and it only takes one pass to bring it from 210 to 74 degrees even in the summer from the garden hose outside, but like you said, it depends on your water temp

Are you using 50' of copper tubing, perhaps 25'? What is the Internal Diameter **edit - Outer Diameter** of the copper tube? Are you using the 3/8" as recommended in this tutorial?

Troubs said:

My CFC is gravity fed and it only takes one pass to bring it from 210 to 74 degrees even in the summer from the garden hose outside, but like you said, it depends on your water temp

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Wow, really?

I need to build one of these now... great.

DRoyLenz said:

Are you using 50' of copper tubing, perhaps 25'? What is the Internal Diameter of the copper tube? Are you using the 3/8" as recommended in this tutorial?

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Its just your standard 25', 3/8th". Nothing special



I have been extremely happy with it

This is great, exactly what I would like to hear. I will probably be making a 50' version, just because I have less control over the temperature control of my tap water. I have noticed great differences in the temperature of my "cold" water depending on the season. My thought is, better safe than sorry.

DRoyLenz said:

This is great, exactly what I would like to hear. I will probably be making a 50' version, just because I have less control over the temperature control of my tap water. I have noticed great differences in the temperature of my "cold" water depending on the season. My thought is, better safe than sorry.

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I'm not trying to dissuade you from making a 50' but i think that if you plan to go with a gravity feed it would be overkill. I have never taken the temp of my hose water but it is nothing out of the ordinary. I actually have to keep the flow of the water at 75% to keep it between 70-75 degrees! Most people here buy a 50' coil of copper from CopperTubingSales.com :: ICS Indsutries ::, make 2 and sell one of them. Just a thought

I made a version of this:

The Zymico El-Cheapo Chiller

It works great - one gravity pass and wort is down to 72 degrees. I use a 2l frozen bottle in the middle to assist.

It is easy and cheap to build. It the future i might look at a more polished counterflow chiller.

I made my own 25' counterflow chiller while prices were still high and it's worked great. More length would have added to both the overall cost and resistance to the flow of water. My tap water comes out at about 58F here in portland oregon and it drops my wort temp down to 60+. I haven't timed it, but the wort probably drains at about a gallon per minute. I, too, have turned down my water flow quite a bit and still had good temps.

One thing I would recommend to ease the threading of the copper through the hose is to forget about the soap and do the following. Carefully unroll the copper into a straight line. It doesn't have to be perfect, just do it slowly so you don't accidentally kink the line. It is easier than you might think. After it is rolled out, thread it through your garden hose. Now roll this around a cylinder to get the final shape; I used a corny keg. This worked great for me after I tried unsuccessfully to get it through the hose while still in its original 2 ft diamater shape. Good luck.

An alternative to the tube in hose design:

+/- 20 feet of 1/2" hard copper in 4" PVC jacket

Total cost: under $50

I like the way that looks, can you provide more details? It looks clean and relatively efficient as well. I'm not sure I understand what is going on. Is the PVC pipe filled with chilled water as the wort runs through the inner tubing? It looks like this is fed in with a pump. Is that true? What kind of pump did you use? How well does this work? How quickly can you cool?

Any more details you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

DRoyLenz said:

I like the way that looks, can you provide more details? It looks clean and relatively efficient as well. I'm not sure I understand what is going on. Is the PVC pipe filled with chilled water as the wort runs through the inner tubing? It looks like this is fed in with a pump. Is that true? What kind of pump did you use? How well does this work? How quickly can you cool?

Any more details you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

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Yes, the cooling water runs through the outer PVC jacket. It enters at the bottom and exits at near the top. The wort is pumped through the interior copper pipe. I have a Little Giant pump which is nearly identical to the more popular March pumps. It works very well and this was originally designed on the fly as a rough prototype.

I circulate the wort through the chiller as fast as possible and back to the boil kettle in a continuous loop while chilling. It will drop the wort temp from near boiling to 140 F in less than three minutes. The time from 140 F to 75 F pitching temp varies considerably depending on your tap water temperature, but it's somewhere around 15-20 minutes during summer conditions. I will chill with ice water near the end of the process when making lagers.

The trick to making the tight U-turns with the copper pipe is to use one street elbow together with one plain elbow. It makes for a compact return loop.

I need to run some more time trials with this as there were water pressure problems the last time I timed it and I think it can chill even faster than that. I'm also going to build a shorter 2 ft long model with 10 interior pipes for a length of +/-25 ft in a shorter jacket. The current one is 30 inches long and that's no problem, but I think I can increase the pipe length and decrease the overall size of the chiller easily. Like I said, the intitial build was just a quick testing prototype.

The advantage of this chiller is a very high max flow rate for both the water and the wort.

I use a 25' homemade CFC that is gravity fed... 10 gallons from flameout to 70*F or below in one pass, using a submersible pump and a cooler of ice water...

Catt22, I was just about to suggest a similar design (used by a longtime friend and even longer time homebrewer) when I scrolled and saw your pictures. Great job!

Yuri_Rage said:

Catt22, I was just about to suggest a similar design (used by a longtime friend and even longer time homebrewer) when I scrolled and saw your pictures. Great job!

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Thanks Yuri,

The basic concept is not new at all. I've seen similar designs that use a coil of tubing within a larger 6" dia PVC pipe. The details are in a book called, "Brew Ware", by Mark Stevens and Karl Lutzen written back in 1996. Here's a link to the book:

Amazon.com: Brew Ware: How to Find, Adapt & Build Homebrewing Equipment: Karl F. Lutzen, Mark Stevens: Books

What's different with mine is the use of the large 1/2" ID hard copper pipe which permits a high wort throughput. The Brew Ware design used 3/8" soft copper and I think this was mostly because it's very difficult to bend the copper to such a small diameter. I think it might be near impossible for a DIY'er to coil 1/2" ID soft copper to fit inside a 6" diamter pipe. The 1/2" ID soft copper is actually 5/8" OD. It's fatter and more difficult to coil than one might guess and that's what led me to the hard copper alternative.

I haven't tried pumping ice water through it yet. Up to this point, I've filled my elevated HLT with ice and water and gravity fed the chiller to do the final cooling for lagers. Pumping and recirculating the ice water could speed the process even more, although I think this might only be significantly advantageous in the warmer months or for lagers. I can get to ale pitching temperatures fast enough without the ice under most conditions.

This is great! I'm an avid DIYer (well, at least I used to be before I moved to the city) and I DEFINITELY plan to check out that book you recommended.

+1 on the Brew Ware!

Thanks Catt!