My diy chiller

Nothin special... 50 ft of 3/8 od copper, $40 at lowes. Odd combo of essentially useless fittings and a ball valve. Don't need em, but I had em, so why not use em! Coiled top to bottom, then back up the middle with one coil stretched the whole length to the top and soldered to every outside coil. Overkill? Probably. Perfect? No. But cost me a hell of a lot less than buying one!

 

looks good! i bet you'll make great beer with it!

 

Hopefully! Tested it with water (trial run with new pot and a borrowed burner) got 6 gal from boil to 70 in 9 min using 25 gallons. Not bad... I think?

 

That's fantastic! What is the secret? Ice cold tap water, constant stirring? I have a 50' 1/2" copper wort chiller and don't get near those results.

Please share!

 

40$ for 50ft? is that 1/4" inner diameter, 3/8" outer?

 

Well done!!

 

Correct 3/8 od, 1/4 id...

My tap water is usually 60-62 so I'm sure that helps. I've read horror story's on here of groundwater temps. Texas comes to mind.
I did gently stir for most of that time.

 

Cool. Thanks. Ground water gets pretty warm here from May through mid November. I've read some of those horror stories too. I think my area qualifies.

EDIT: I guess I don't have it that bad after all. Never seen close to 100 degree ground water.

 

Ground water temp here on the Texas/Mexico border is about 110 in June, July, August, and September. That's a nice coil by the way. A lot more consistant then when I did it.

 

110!!!!!!!!!!!!!! lol wow... the actual temperature barely hits 95 here up in Canada on the warmest day of the year...

waterlines here are barried much deeper to keep them from freezing in the winter... so we always get nice cold tap water all through summer... maybe 55 at the warmest...

 

I'm also one of those Texas guys with 100+ temps in summer. I use ground water for my chiller until the wort temp reaches 100F and then I switch over to a tub of water and ice with a pond pump. This gets me in the mid 60's in about 15-17 mins..

 

I may build a pre-chiller this summer if necessary. We use one on 10g. batches at a buddy's house and it has helped a lot.

 

I recently got a CFC chiller so I am going to use the old immersion chiller as a pre chiller. I wish our water lines were buried a lot deeper. The underground at 4 feet of depth is supposed to be 55 deg. We get our water from the Rio Grande (yuck I know) it's just hot I guess. In the summer the lakes around here feel like taking a bath.

 

that kinda sounds pretty nice lol.. here we swim in mid summer but it's cold... and of course in winter people drive their cars and trucks on the ice...

anyway - sorry for getting off topic...

but that is some nice numbers with that IChiller.. i built a CFC from day 1, but sometimes i wish i would have went with imersion... like this one... what i like about them is you can leave alot of the cold break behind