My cheap jaded hydra clone

This is my cheap jaded hydra clone I thought I would share, I spent 80 dollars on this thing.

3 × 20 ft 3/8" copper =$75
4 plastic T's = $5
About 2 ft of 1/2" vinyl rubbing
6 hose clamps

I coiled the tubing up separately and then mingled them together, connect the 3 outpost with 2 of the t's and the same thing on the in post. I am in the middle of a mash right now and will report pack on cooling capability

 

Pics

 

Got my wort down to 85 degrees in 10 minutes with 80 degree ground water, Berri pleased with the results

 

Nice! I'm contemplating the build of a parallel immersion chiller too. I like your use of (inexpensive and easy) plastic tees! Sounds much quicker and easier than soldering. However, since this is going into boiling wort, it'd probably be better in the long run to use silicone tubing instead of vinyl, and to check the heat tolerance of whatever plastic is used in those tees. I've seen vinyl tubing degrade after regular exposure to heat, and it'd be a big bummer to have this tubing fail and spray hose water into a perfectly good batch of beer! A few feet of silicone tubing and some stainless steel hose clamps to secure it onto your tees seems like a worthwhile precaution.
One thing that's been debated here in the past is whether water is flowing equally through all the available parallel tracks, and how much that matters. Generally, it seems that most of the water (or the highest flow rate) will go straight, if water has that option. So with your setup as photographed, it seems that one of your coils would get fast flow, and the other two would get reduced flow. It might take another few tees, but could you rearrange this so there isn't a straight path to any single coil, so water flows ~equally through all coils? I've attached a quick drawing of my idea for that.

All that said, as long as cool water is getting through all the coils, it might not make much real-world difference how the tees are arranged! If you have an infrared thermometer, it'd be interesting to whether there's much temperature difference between the coils while in use.

Thanks again for sharing - now I'm re-thinking the specifics of my chiller plans...

 

I have to agree with treeguy on your tee setup. I think you could just rearrange the tees you have now though. Just be sure to set the exit tees up in a similar pattern. You may squeak another minute or so, although 10 minutes with 80F ground water is pretty impressive.

 

I actually would like to solder these at some point and will later down the line. The vinyl and plastic never actually touch the beer, however I would hate for one to pop and spill hose water all it.

I would like to see if the t setup does change cooling efficiency

 

Just know that if you put that chiller in at 15 minutes to go to sanitize it, what initially comes out will be nearly boiling in temperature.

So even if on average the temp is well within the expected performance of the tubing, what comes out at first is not.

I'd also consider tubing clamps on the T connections, and try to do something so the tubing hangs over the side of the kettle so any drips don't go back into the wort.

PS: I have a Hydra. It's a beast. Two large men wielding crowbars couldn't pry it away from me.

 

So just an update,
Did a test last night where I took off the exit waters hoses to see how flow was affected (I have not rearranged my t's).
There was one hose that had a slightly higher flow rate but all of them were still flowing just fine, happy enough for brewing purposes.

I am in the middle of a mash right now so looking forward to see how it goes today. It's been closed hear the past week so I would imagine the ground water is roughly 65 now

 

I'm not so sure the straightness of the path through the tees has as much to do with flow, as the resistance through the coils. If you have tee#1 that feed resistance-of-coil-1 off one side of tee, but resistance-of-coil-2-and-3 off of the other side of the tee, then the water will flow more easily, by half, through the first coil than through the other two. That being said, I have no easy solution other than making a manifold with one input and 3 outputs.