wort chiller construction

I am getting ready to make my immersion wort chiller. I have 50 ft of 3/8 tubing and a tubing bender (not a spring bender). I want this to look good, and I know you only get one chance when working with tubing. My question is, how do you get the tubing riser from the bottom of the coil to go up INSIDE the finished coil? The only way I can figure is to wrap the coil around a ridgid cardboard tube with a notch cut out at the bottom so that the vertical riser goes up inside the tube, then you wrap the tubing around the tube. I'm sure if I looked long enough I could find an 8-10 inch cardboard tube, or maybe a short piece of plastic drain piping would work. Any ideas?

 

Your idea sounds good. Try a Sono-tube from Home Depot. They're used to make concrete footings or posts. Should be only a few bucks.

 

Even if you run the riser down the outside of your circular form (I like corny kegs for this), the winded coil would only have the slightest "egg" shape, hardly noticeable.

 

I just got done building one according to and it worked well for me.

If I did it over, I would probably just have my bottom coil bend up along the outside of my chiller. Just wind your copper around the keg, pot, bucket whatever, and pull the bottom coil up through the middle when you are done.

I used a solder elbow. However, the solder joint is a great place for a leak to occur, and that will not be noticable until it's too late. On the plus side, that bottom elbow give the coil a bit of strength.

Either way, happy brewing!