Copper Coil Chiller Question

HopSong · Nov 4, 2011

I have a copper coil chiller that I bought years ago. It's about 10" in diameter and about 10" high before the "ears" for the in/out. All in all, it's about 12" tall.

So, my question is.. how well will something like this work in a tall aluminum pot.. like a turkey frying pot? If I can get the coils below the surface of the hot wort.. it seems like the cooler wort will drop the bottom of the pot and the hot rise.. thermodynamics, right? I'm just concerned I'll really need a different chiller.. one of the really tall ones.

Suggestions?

I guess I've thought about straightening out the "ears" and sweating on a couple of lengths of tubing to make the ears go over the top of the brew pot. Might be the most inexpensive solution.

Hopper450 · Nov 4, 2011

I had a similar issue in that I had purchased a short wort chiller but then later also bought a large 20 gallon boil kettle. Eventually I will probably get a new wort chiller, but in the meantime I was able to stretch the ears to fit over the pot (kind of like stretching a spring out) and then I condensed the coils back down to the bottom as much as possible. I probably lost some cooling power, but it works for now.

Jbear · Nov 4, 2011

HbgBill said:
I guess I've thought about straightening out the "ears" and sweating on a couple of lengths of tubing to make the ears go over the top of the brew pot. Might be the most inexpensive solution.

I am moving to a keggle but my current chiller probably wouldn't even reach the wort in a 5gal batch, so that is exactly what I will be doing this weekend. While I am at it, its going to go from 20' to 30-40' also.

rico567 · Nov 4, 2011

There are threads on HBT -somewhere- that deal with the thermodynamics of ICs. There are a lot more variables than I imagined, and the results of simply adding diameter or coils to your chiller DO NOT yield linear results in terms of shorter cooling times. What I found out was that my 25' of 3/8" diameter copper IC is pretty much optimum for 5 gallon batches.....

Jbear · Nov 5, 2011

Well my chiller can now reach from the bottom of the keggle up over the side. Its also about 35' now. I had a roughly 5' piece laying around then I bought a10' coil and a few couplers. Probably overkill for 5 gallons, but now that I have the keggle I plan to do a few 10 gallon batches also and it should handle those reasonably well.

I was able to cut one of the uprights as long as I could (I just cut right after the bends, rather than trying to straighten them), and cut the other as short as possible - combined they worked for the outlet. The inlet I just hand bent out of the 5' piece and extended the coils off the bottom with the rest of that piece and the 10'er.