Immersion chiller upgrade and Redneck fermentation

I have a More Beer 3/8 25' immersion chiller and needed to upgrade it. It takes a while to chill 5 gallons and now have increased size to 10 gallons. I wanted to increase the surface area for both 5 and 10 gallon boils. What I ended up doing was to get 20' of 3/8 copper tubing and made a coil around a paint can. I soldered the two ends together, hose clamped the new smaller coil to the original, and connected the 2 coils together with hose.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=28053&stc=1&d=1308596947
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=28054&stc=1&d=1308596947

It worked much better than before. After cleaning it I used it on a 12 gallon boil. The wort fell over 100 degrees is 10 minutes.

When it came to transfer this Heff to secondaries I did not have enough space. I am cheap and hate to waist beer so I tried this. I had a empty 40 bottle of Bud, I said this was redneck and I know since I am one. :rockin: This was just big enough to hold the last of the beer and a 1" blow off tube fit perfectly over the neck of the bottle.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=28052&stc=1&d=1308596947

Now I have to see if it works.

I would rig a blow off tube asap to both those carboys. Unless you like cleaning your fridge... Way to save the beer too in the 40 oz. I hate wasting beer too.

The Heff was in primary for over a week, it is pretty much done activity wise. Otherwise, I would agree with you.

Ahh I thought u just pitched your yeast, I was thinking to my self "good god thats gonna be a mess" haha.

Cool idea. I am in a similar boat (25 ft IC doing 10 gallon batches) and its a pain to wait close to an hour to get down to pitching temps. I have debated between purchasing a new IC and just going no-chill. I think I will try this though, I can pick up another 25 feet of copper for 30-40 bucks. The only thing I think I would try is to create some sort of hard connection between the two. I'm thinking some sort of U-shaped copper fittings soldered on.

that chiller would be even more efficient if, instead of looping the two coils in series, you wyed the in and out so that the water goes thru each coil in parallel. as you have it now, i would bet the water flowing thru it reaches max temperature before it even gets half way thru the coils.

this is the same reason those ribcage chillers arent all that great. it looks cool but it doesnt matter if you have 50 feet or 500 feet of tubing if the cold water is only cold for the first 5 feet. get it going concurrently and you will see a big drop in cooling times.

btw- when i have an extra gallon or so that i cant fit into the carboy, i just put it in any old clean and sanitized plastic juice container (that doesnt still smell like juice). put a piece of sanitized plastic wrap loosely over the top, and cover that with tinfoil and crush it down around the lip. works almost as well as an airlock.

audger said:

that chiller would be even more efficient if, instead of looping the two coils in series, you wyed the in and out so that the water goes thru each coil in parallel. as you have it now, i would bet the water flowing thru it reaches max temperature before it even gets half way thru the coils.

this is the same reason those ribcage chillers arent all that great. it looks cool but it doesnt matter if you have 50 feet or 500 feet of tubing if the cold water is only cold for the first 5 feet. get it going concurrently and you will see a big drop in cooling times.

btw- when i have an extra gallon or so that i cant fit into the carboy, i just put it in any old clean and sanitized plastic juice container (that doesnt still smell like juice). put a piece of sanitized plastic wrap loosely over the top, and cover that with tinfoil and crush it down around the lip. works almost as well as an airlock.

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Good point. So its a better idea to tee of your supply and return lines. Would probably be simpler to construct too.

I will try that. I will time how long it takes with the current setup and then time how long it takes with it set up as you suggested.

I did notice a HUGE difference when I added the 20', it was like night and day. If I can make it more efficient then that is a added bonus. Thanks for the idea.

cfrazier77 said:

I will try that. I will time how long it takes with the current setup and then time how long it takes with it set up as you suggested.

I did notice a HUGE difference when I added the 20', it was like night and day. If I can make it more efficient then that is a added bonus. Thanks for the idea.

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I am interested to hear your results on this! The only inkling of a reason I think series could work better than parallel is the fact that my output water is not always as warm as I think it should be (ie the flowrate is too fast for the max heat transfer to occur), especially when the wort temp gets down under 120ish. If you increase the amount of time the cold water is in contact with the wort via the copper, you can possibly get maximum efficiency. I guess its either that or turn down the pressure.

Parallel would most likely bring temps down faster in the early stages, but would become less efficient as the delta T decreases. I guess that is when you need to swith over to a recirculating pumped system.

Its been too long since thermo classes. Any fresh ME's care to chime in>?

kpr121 said:

I am interested to hear your results on this! The only inkling of a reason I think series could work better than parallel is the fact that my output water is not always as warm as I think it should be (ie the flowrate is too fast for the max heat transfer to occur), especially when the wort temp gets down under 120ish. If you increase the amount of time the cold water is in contact with the wort via the copper, you can possibly get maximum efficiency. I guess its either that or turn down the pressure.

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I noticed that the output was not as hot as I thought it should be either. I don't think that 25' of 3/8 is enough surface area to accommodate the entire temperature transfer.

I am leaving town for a week in a couple of days. When I get back I will run a couple of tests and post the results. If I feel like blowing a bunch of propane I will try 10 and 5 gallon boils.

I also had a 25' IC and waiting for it to cool down sucked. I bought 50' of 3/8" and built a ribcage style IC chiller and as you said it cut my times in half. I also use my 25' old IC as a pre-chiller that goes in a water bucket filled with ice bottles after the temp goes below 100. I can chill 5.5 gallons to pitching temp in about 10-13 minutes.

I did the test this afternoon and wrote it up in another thread.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/im...-tests-series-vs-parallel-252956/#post3029018