Adding onto Wort Chiller

I made myself a 5/8 OD copper immersion chiller with 20ft precoiled copper, its not cooling down my 6 gallon batches as quick as I expected 20ish minutes, I'm wondering if I can add onto this coil and maby make a double coil, like one inside and one outside, have the water go down thru the 5/8 20ft coil to the bottom then go into a reducer and come back up and out in a 3/8 25ft od coil, if I sweat the pipes will it be ok in the harsh enviroment of 60 degree water running thru it while being exposed to 212 degree wort, expecially since it'll be boiled for 15 minutes

 

Actually it cools more like 30 minutes and the water comming out is still cold, running my hose 30 minutes can become expensive!

 

Maybe slow the flow a little will save on water. And use a paddle mixer or spoon to circulate around it. The more wort you can get to move around that coil the faster it'll cool. 5/8 is pretty big. Most people use 3/8 I think.
I use a sweat joint in my BK with no problems. Lead free.

 

Try running the water flow slower. The end goal is the have a heat transfer as efficiently as possible. The water coming out should be very warm. Your very lucky though, here in Florida we are lucky to see 75 deg water.

 

If you're wanting to save on some water and you've thinking about adding more copper, I'd build a counterflow chiller instead. Much more efficient than an immersion chiller because you have true counterflow and turbulence in both hot and cold fluids. If you slap a valve on the wort outlet you can even adjust the flow to make sure it's getting down to the temperature you want.

 

To save water I used a two 5 gal pail method. When I start with a smaller pond pump in the bottom of one bucket fulled with ice water. I run the outlet of the chiller into a spare bottling bucket also filled with ice. Have the 2nd bucket higher and use the valve on the bucket to pour into the 1st. I was able to get down to less than 10 gal of recirculating water in the system.

 

I'm seriously thinking of sweating a reducer to 20ft of 3/8 od pipe onto what I've got already its like 20 bucks more but its enough piping to get the wort cold fast

 

To add to a previous post......You need to stir your wort while you are running water through your chiller, especially if the water coming out is still cool. Also, something I did was create a pre-chiller, basically just a smaller IC that I place in ice water to get my tap water chilled to a good temp in the months in which it is too hot. It really works great if you have a brew buddy or two. Last time I brewed I had one guy stirring the wort and one guy agitating the pre-chiller in the ice water. Absolute fastest chilling I have achieved yet. Maybe took 10 minutes.......and that was with a couple of breaks to drink beer.

Just a thought, stirring the wort will definately help you out a ton. Maybe worth a try before you spend money on more copper.

 

thanks I guess I never stir mine, ill try that idea first since its cheaper lol

 

Do try it. It makes a huge difference that will be readily apparent...

Cheers!

 

+1 to all of the above suggestions.

Also, if the water waste is an issue (or just makes you feel bad) re-use it. If you brew in the house, you can route the warm water to your washing machine. I brew in a seperate shed, so I save the warm water in a trash can, add some PBW, and there's my water for cleaning equipment and recirculating through my pump, etc...

Alternately, you could run it into a bath tub and get those nooks and crannies clean while your beer cools! :cross:

 

+1 to collecting the hot water for reuse. Especially when brewing outside in the winter, it's very nice to have a ready source of hot water to clean with. Never been more uncomfortable brewing than when I was wasteful and had to use cold water out of the tab to clean with.

 

Rather than adding to the length of the one you have, consider adding another length and a tee to have them both flow independently.

 

I second MrZ2u's comment. If lower flow, stirring or pre-chill don't work. You can make a rib-cage style cooler. same size, different size, whatever. do a search thru the DIY forum for "Rib Cage" style and you'll see what I'm talking about. would be MUCH easier/reliable than trying to extend the existing loop.

 

slow your flow and coil your hose in a tub full of ice water. It cut my cooling time in half.