Another Immersion Chiller Build

[lombard]

Well today I threw together a quick immersion chiller and tried it out on a brew this evening.

Due to the price of copper, I went with a 20' roll of 1/2" OD tubing. I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone (short coil of copper, and tap water around here in the summer's not very cold) and bought a small fountain pump as well. Filled up one of my coolers with a couple of gallons of water and 20lb of ice. Cycled this ice water from the cooler, through the chiller, and back to the cooler. Cooled my 5 gallon brew from boiling temp to 80 degrees in about 20 minutes. The last 10 degrees took another 10 minutes. Think maybe next time I'll start with more ice...

Everything purchased from my local home depot:
20' coil of 1/2" OD copper: $42.66
Fountain pump: $23.86
2ea Female hose to 1/2" barb adapter: $7.99 each
2ea 1/2" Compression to 1/2" FIP adapters: $3.34 each
2ea 1/2" MIP to male hose adapters: $3.22 each
2ea Stainless steel hose clamps: $0.95 each
Small roll 1/2" ID vinyl hose: $6.67

 

[P-J]

Good Job!

Suggestion for next time: Start you chill wirh plain hose water until you hit wort temp of about 110 -120°. Then switch over to your ice/pump water. Things will go much faster with far less ice. Oh, and keep the wort (chiller) moving so that your heat transfer is most efficient.

You did good.

 

[Flomaster]

I've heard that pumping the chiller in your wort cools faster. think of lifting it up up out of the wort and pushing back into it. seems to help alot since that last "10" minutes takes forever... start your pumping then

-=Jason=-

 

[FishFace]

I used my coil as an immersion chiller, but then made a reverse flow and decided to use the IC as as a heat exhanger - pre RF. The heat exchange takes most of the heat, I then can control the flow of the hose water through the RF, The RF output goes into the the heat exchange bucket and the overlow of the HE is captured for cleaning. (water is already heated), just add a PBW and onto the next batch. I have cut my cooling time in half, and made things a lot easier.