Made myself an Immersion chiller

Went to Lowe's and picked up 20' of 3/8" copper tube, some clamps, tubing and one hose end adaptor. It took some effort but I bent it by hand. Tried it for the first time tonight. I had 4.5 gallons in the pot at a rolling boil. It cooled to 62 degrees in just over 16 minutes.

 

I've been curious about how much tubing to use for this. Water is very expensive in my neighborhood so using the least amount of water is key for me. I guess I'll try this as I can only boil 2.5 gallons at a time right now so maybe I can get the temp down quickly. 10 minutes or less would be ideal.

 

Tindel,

Not sure what your budget or brew system is, but the absolute most efficient wort chiller is a plate chiller, followed closely by a counter flow chiller. If you do use an immersion chiller you can always collect the outflow water for cleaning or for a load of laundry.

 

You could get something like this and recirculate the water from a sink filled with ice water. I would think 2.5 gal would cool fairly quickly.

 

just skip a shower on brew day and it equals out. I bet you use close to 15-20 gallons of water cooling wort.

-=jason=-

 

I bought a $20 aquarium pump at Wal-Mart and sealed up the connection between the pump and hose with rubberized tape. Fill my sink with ice water, drop the pump in and the "exhaust" of the immersion chiller, and I have a recirculating chiller.

However: it still takes me over an hour to chill a 5.5 gal batch. What am i doing wrong?

 

My guess is that as the hot water from the immersion chiller heats the water in your sink the difference between wort temperature and cooling water decreases therefore reducing the efficiency. When using an immersion chiller you want to run the cooling water at a flow rate slow enough to remove heat from the wort. If the water is exiting the immersion chiller cold there is very little heat transfer.

 

I'll second everything these guys are saying. Grab a water pump and a coulpe bags of ice from the local grocery and recirculate water from your sink