DIY Interwoven "Rib-Cage" Immersion Chiller

[MW66]

Okay, my rib-cage chiller has a little different twist that I think will work well. I made two 25' coils and then connected them at the bottom. Instead of circulating water through the whole chiller, I thought why not take advantage of two cooling inlets that finally connect at the bottom and then out. I used 3/8" tubing, but I thought that it would work even better to use 1/2" where they join at the bottom and then to the outlet. I wasn't sure if the two water hose sources would be competing with their pressure to force water back up the other coil, so I figured that if I reduce the pressure at the outlet, certainly both would flow through each coil to the 1/2" "T" and then out the 1/2" outlet. Not, sure if it would have been an issue, but I figured that I couldn't hurt it by decreasing the pressure at the outlet. I haven't tried it, but it will be interesting to see how fast it cools. Also, with dual cooling coils both starting at the top, I could now solder the 3/8" inlets tubes together to stiffen them and not worry about heat transfer. I soldered them at both 90 degree fittings and once in the middle of the tubes. Give me your thoughts.

 

[weconway]

My thoughts?

That's awesome.

 

[Palefire]

Looks cool! Why not just use one input and split it with a T into two coils? Then you don't have to hook up 2 hoses.

 

[MW66]

Looks cool! Why not just use one input and split it with a T into two coils? Then you don't have to hook up 2 hoses.

I did it this way because with a single hose source spilt into two paths, I might have to worry about both sides being equally pressured with cold incoming water. Would one way flow faster than the other when split at the "T?" Not sure, plus I brew outside and have two hose bibs in easy reach. With two water sources I know both sides would be fully pressurized with cold incoming water. That's why I created two separate inlets. I need to run some tests and compare it to my single coil 50', 3/8" IC.

 

[RedIrocZ-28]

MW66, please do let us know how it works out for you. I'd wager you get 25-33% faster cooling.

 

[weconway]

I used mine for the first time today. Wicked fast cooling. I had my 2.5 gallons cool (70*) in about 7 minutes.

Next time, I'm going to prep my pre-chiller sooner. I filled my cooler with ice water and dropped the pre-chiller in right before turning the water on. I think it takes a few minutes to "cool soak" the pre-chiller. That definitely cut down on my efficiency.

Still, I had wicked fast cooling and I didn't have to spend $3 or 20 minutes futzing with ice!

 

[mattrobertson]

Looks like MW66 might be on to something here. I would like some opinions as to which direction chill water should flow. In other words, should the chill water flow from top-down or bottom up? If I recirculate/whirlpool and have a keggle return up high, the direction of the the hot wort is flowing top-down. So does that mean that the chill water in the IC should flow opposite that? Does this mean that chill water should flow from the bottom-up? Or is this splitting hairs? Also, has anyone tried MW66's idea but used a simple Tee as an inlet? This would only require one hose hookup... but would it work just as effectively?
Thanks!

 

[MW66]

Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to use my chiller yet. I just finished a few more add-ons onto my new brew rig and I've also been working on a keezer.

Matt: The top of the coil is 8.5" and in my keggle, that is exactly the height of 5 gallons, so it looks like the entire double coil would be submersed.

 

[phenry]

I used my rib cage chiller for the first time today (20' of 3/8" copper) and it had my 5 gallon batch down to 80* in probably about 25 minutes (that's what it seemed like at least, I should probably time it next time). It fits perfectly in my 8 gallon kettle.

 

[charlope]

I did mine a little different.

Instead of having only one in and one out I split the rib cage into two sections. I find that the setup cools much faster. (only requires one hose in and one hose out)

One rib side cools from the top down, the other cools from the bottom up.

Every time i see someone else's ribcage design I wonder how I could do it better. I hope you can get the same results I do from similar designs.

First time soldering so dont laugh, they can withstand "some" pressure with no leaks.

 

[SHOOK]

did this one on saturday:

 

[DarkNoonBrewer]

I have to drop in and give my ($2/100). I love thermodynamics. Ive gone to bed with a phsyc chart, steam table, and a calculator just for a last minute calculation to help me become sleepy. Anyway, I have to say, I love the Rib Cage Immersion Chiller design. Its design is a huge advantage to a tightly wound coil (TWC). Most of the time, the TWCs have no spaces between each coil. The RCIC is super ingenious and really looks like it gets the job done.

The biggest problem (BP) to overcome when chilling wort is when the wort approaches the cooling water temperature. (wort=90 and tap water = 70) When you are chilling near pitching temperature (NPT), the chiller with the largest surface area will prevail. If you think about what is going on when the wort is at 212, you will be confused. The average house-hold doesn't have enough water pressure to keep the temp of the waste water leaving the chiller (WWLTC) below the temperature of the wort. The WWLTC will be very close to the temperature of the wort, if the flow is low and the surface area of the chiller is also low. There may be quite a few stove-top-in-the-kitchen brewers reading this as well. If possible, try to increase your flow rate of chill water by running a hose from the water supply in the house, or from a garden faucet outside. This may give you much higher water flow than the kitchen sink.

So back to the problem of chilling the wort down to the chilling water temperature. The best way to accomplish this without using ice, is with larger surface area and agitation. Lets say you had a coil that was made from 50' copper tube (5/8") OD and about 3 feet were useless because they are the feed and waste water portions of the RCIC. Also, the water flow rate is 1.3 gpm at 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Area of coil= 50' - 3' = 47 ft
A= 47*(.625pi/12) = 7.7ft^2

T_2=50
mdot=(1.3gpm)*(231in/gal)/(1728in^3/ft^3)*(62.4lbs/ft^3) = 10.8 lbs/minute
(mdot is mass flow rate of water this time)

Lets also assume that you are down to 76 degrees Fahrenheit.
T_1= 76
Internal energy at @ T_2 is:
u_2 = 18 btu/lbm
T_1 (wort)
u_1= 44 btu/lbm

If we assume the RCIC is 100% efficient, it wil be removing this much heat per minute(Q_out is usually heat removed):

Q_out = m_dot(u_1-u_2)
Q_out = 10.8lbm/min (44btu/lbm-18btu/lbm)
Q_out = 280.8 Btu/min

Have you ever heard the term tons of cooling when hearing about AC units? A ton of cooling is 200 btu/min. Its pretty wild that a RCIC can chill at the rate of one ton with a mere differential temperature of 26 degrees.

This isnt fast enough though for 5 gallons of wort. (m=42lbm)
One degree in temperature change requires:
u @ 76 degrees: 42lbm*44btu/lbm = 1848 btu
u @ 75 degrees: 42lbm*43btu/lbm = 1806 btu

(its really one btu/lbm per degree at these temperatures)

So the energy needed to chill 5 gallons on degree is 1848 - 1806 = 42 btu/degree change of wort. If we are only able to exchange 280 Btu/minute with our 1.3 gpm flow rate, then we can find the temperature rate with those numbers:

Degrees/min = 280 Btu/min / 42 Btu/degree (Btu's cancel out and leave us with degrees/min)

=6.7 degrees / minute.

Not true, no? This is for a 100% efficiency assumption. You would have to stir your arss off, have 50ft^2 of area to achieve near perfect efficiency. This is food for thought. I figure I should jump on here take some numbers from real world, and talk about my lust for thrermodynamics.

Hail Purdue.

 

[charlope]

I was thinking the way you were when I first started to gather my materials for the Rib Cage Immersion Chiller (RCIC). I had experience with a 50' coil IC and was somewhat impressed so I knew there had to be a better way so I designed my RCIC [See post 130]. I used 50' of 1/4 in ID copper tubing. Instead of having the cooling water travel through the same 50' I split it into parallel coils. I used the smaller diameter to take advantage of the heat transfer benefits and multiple paths to assist in the flow rate. The way that I maintain a larger flow rate is to have the input and output support a flow rate greater then the parallel coils combined. I was going to add a third path but my engineering judgment pulled me away from it, at this point Im balancing building and maintenance ease with performance (The classic engineers juggling act)

It works really well. 5 gallons from boiling to pitching temp in 7 minutes using a garden hose. of course I havent done experiments using other temp water hoses, just my own.

Im an engineer so things are never good enough, but I must come up with a working design(Better then the last). Just like my job pays me.

Good luck. Maybe you will come up with a simple better alternative.

Thats over 200deg down to 70deg in 7min. Thats OVER 18 deg a min, with NO wort agitation or stirring.

I have to drop in and give my ($2/100). I love thermodynamics. Ive gone to bed with a phsyc chart, steam table, and a calculator just for a last minute calculation to help me become sleepy. Anyway, I have to say, I love the Rib Cage Immersion Chiller design. Its design is a huge advantage to a tightly wound coil (TWC). Most of the time, the TWCs have no spaces between each coil. The RCIC is super ingenious and really looks like it gets the job done.

The biggest problem (BP) to overcome when chilling wort is when the wort approaches the cooling water temperature. (wort=90 and tap water = 70) When you are chilling near pitching temperature (NPT), the chiller with the largest surface area will prevail. If you think about what is going on when the wort is at 212, you will be confused. The average house-hold doesn't have enough water pressure to keep the temp of the waste water leaving the chiller (WWLTC) below the temperature of the wort. The WWLTC will be very close to the temperature of the wort, if the flow is low and the surface area of the chiller is also low. There may be quite a few stove-top-in-the-kitchen brewers reading this as well. If possible, try to increase your flow rate of chill water by running a hose from the water supply in the house, or from a garden faucet outside. This may give you much higher water flow than the kitchen sink.

So back to the problem of chilling the wort down to the chilling water temperature. The best way to accomplish this without using ice, is with larger surface area and agitation. Lets say you had a coil that was made from 50' copper tube (5/8") OD and about 3 feet were useless because they are the feed and waste water portions of the RCIC. Also, the water flow rate is 1.3 gpm at 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Area of coil= 50' - 3' = 47 ft
A= 47*(.625pi/12) = 7.7ft^2

T_2=50
mdot=(1.3gpm)*(231in/gal)/(1728in^3/ft^3)*(62.4lbs/ft^3) = 10.8 lbs/minute
(mdot is mass flow rate of water this time)

Lets also assume that you are down to 76 degrees Fahrenheit.
T_1= 76
Internal energy at @ T_2 is:
u_2 = 18 btu/lbm
T_1 (wort)
u_1= 44 btu/lbm

If we assume the RCIC is 100% efficient, it wil be removing this much heat per minute(Q_out is usually heat removed):

Q_out = m_dot(u_1-u_2)
Q_out = 10.8lbm/min (44btu/lbm-18btu/lbm)
Q_out = 280.8 Btu/min

Have you ever heard the term tons of cooling when hearing about AC units? A ton of cooling is 200 btu/min. Its pretty wild that a RCIC can chill at the rate of one ton with a mere differential temperature of 26 degrees.

This isnt fast enough though for 5 gallons of wort. (m=42lbm)
One degree in temperature change requires:
u @ 76 degrees: 42lbm*44btu/lbm = 1848 btu
u @ 75 degrees: 42lbm*43btu/lbm = 1806 btu

(its really one btu/lbm per degree at these temperatures)

So the energy needed to chill 5 gallons on degree is 1848 - 1806 = 42 btu/degree change of wort. If we are only able to exchange 280 Btu/minute with our 1.3 gpm flow rate, then we can find the temperature rate with those numbers:

Degrees/min = 280 Btu/min / 42 Btu/degree (Btu's cancel out and leave us with degrees/min)

=6.7 degrees / minute.

Not true, no? This is for a 100% efficiency assumption. You would have to stir your arss off, have 50ft^2 of area to achieve near perfect efficiency. This is food for thought. I figure I should jump on here take some numbers from real world, and talk about my lust for thrermodynamics.

Hail Purdue.

 

[EdMerican]

I have to drop in and give my ($2/100). I love thermodynamics. Ive gone to bed with a phsyc chart, steam table, and a calculator just for a last minute calculation to help me become sleepy. Anyway, I have to say, I love the Rib Cage Immersion Chiller design. Its design is a huge advantage to a tightly wound coil (TWC). Most of the time, the TWCs have no spaces between each coil. The RCIC is super ingenious and really looks like it gets the job done.

The biggest problem (BP) to overcome when chilling wort is when the wort approaches the cooling water temperature. (wort=90 and tap water = 70) When you are chilling near pitching temperature (NPT), the chiller with the largest surface area will prevail. If you think about what is going on when the wort is at 212, you will be confused. The average house-hold doesn't have enough water pressure to keep the temp of the waste water leaving the chiller (WWLTC) below the temperature of the wort. The WWLTC will be very close to the temperature of the wort, if the flow is low and the surface area of the chiller is also low. There may be quite a few stove-top-in-the-kitchen brewers reading this as well. If possible, try to increase your flow rate of chill water by running a hose from the water supply in the house, or from a garden faucet outside. This may give you much higher water flow than the kitchen sink.

So back to the problem of chilling the wort down to the chilling water temperature. The best way to accomplish this without using ice, is with larger surface area and agitation. Lets say you had a coil that was made from 50' copper tube (5/8") OD and about 3 feet were useless because they are the feed and waste water portions of the RCIC. Also, the water flow rate is 1.3 gpm at 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Area of coil= 50' - 3' = 47 ft
A= 47*(.625pi/12) = 7.7ft^2

T_2=50
mdot=(1.3gpm)*(231in/gal)/(1728in^3/ft^3)*(62.4lbs/ft^3) = 10.8 lbs/minute
(mdot is mass flow rate of water this time)

Lets also assume that you are down to 76 degrees Fahrenheit.
T_1= 76
Internal energy at @ T_2 is:
u_2 = 18 btu/lbm
T_1 (wort)
u_1= 44 btu/lbm

If we assume the RCIC is 100% efficient, it wil be removing this much heat per minute(Q_out is usually heat removed):

Q_out = m_dot(u_1-u_2)
Q_out = 10.8lbm/min (44btu/lbm-18btu/lbm)
Q_out = 280.8 Btu/min

Have you ever heard the term tons of cooling when hearing about AC units? A ton of cooling is 200 btu/min. Its pretty wild that a RCIC can chill at the rate of one ton with a mere differential temperature of 26 degrees.

This isnt fast enough though for 5 gallons of wort. (m=42lbm)
One degree in temperature change requires:
u @ 76 degrees: 42lbm*44btu/lbm = 1848 btu
u @ 75 degrees: 42lbm*43btu/lbm = 1806 btu

(its really one btu/lbm per degree at these temperatures)

So the energy needed to chill 5 gallons on degree is 1848 - 1806 = 42 btu/degree change of wort. If we are only able to exchange 280 Btu/minute with our 1.3 gpm flow rate, then we can find the temperature rate with those numbers:

Degrees/min = 280 Btu/min / 42 Btu/degree (Btu's cancel out and leave us with degrees/min)

=6.7 degrees / minute.

Not true, no? This is for a 100% efficiency assumption. You would have to stir your arss off, have 50ft^2 of area to achieve near perfect efficiency. This is food for thought. I figure I should jump on here take some numbers from real world, and talk about my lust for thrermodynamics.

Hail Purdue.

WOW. Ummm... My mind is melting from that breakdown, but that is pretty awesome info. All I know is the last time I used mine, I got below pitch temp in less than 10 minutes. 50' 3/8 rib cage hooked up to the kitchen sink. Granted the water was coming out of the faucet @56 degrees F, but that was 10 minutes not touching anything but a beer. come summer it may take a bit longer, but i really dont think its gonna hurt me when summer water comes out about 65...

Slainte

 

[DarkNoonBrewer]

I was thinking the way you were when I first started to gather my materials for the Rib Cage Immersion Chiller (RCIC). I had experience with a 50' coil IC and was somewhat impressed so I knew there had to be a better way so I designed my RCIC [See post 130]. I used 50' of 1/4 in ID copper tubing. Instead of having the cooling water travel through the same 50' I split it into parallel coils. I used the smaller diameter to take advantage of the heat transfer benefits and multiple paths to assist in the flow rate. The way that I maintain a larger flow rate is to have the input and output support a flow rate greater then the parallel coils combined. I was going to add a third path but my engineering judgment pulled me away from it, at this point Im balancing building and maintenance ease with performance (The classic engineers juggling act)

It works really well. 5 gallons from boiling to pitching temp in 7 minutes using a garden hose. of course I havent done experiments using other temp water hoses, just my own.

Im an engineer so things are never good enough, but I must come up with a working design(Better then the last). Just like my job pays me.

Good luck. Maybe you will come up with a simple better alternative.

Thats over 200deg down to 70deg in 7min. Thats OVER 18 deg a min, with NO wort agitation or stirring.

YOU'RE AN ENGINEER! This is sweet! I just realized what equation is needed to map the cooling rate of the RCIC. Newton's law of cooling! We just need to plot the temp of wort at different points in time and take a logrythmic regression and we will have the exact plot of temp vs. time. Then, do what i did to determine rate of change in temp to compare it to ideal (100% efficiency) cooling and we can compare how efficient the IC's are. I dont have time right now, I have econ hw. I bet this will work. What do you say?

 

[amb1935]

YOU'RE AN ENGINEER! This is sweet! I just realized what equation is needed to map the cooling rate of the RCIC. Newton's law of cooling! We just need to plot the temp of wort at different points in time and take a logrythmic regression and we will have the exact plot of temp vs. time. Then, do what i did to determine rate of change in temp to compare it to ideal (100% efficiency) cooling and we can compare how efficient the IC's are. I dont have time right now, I have econ hw. I bet this will work. What do you say?

Isn't it cool when we get to use something that we learned in the classroom? I'm an ECE guy, but I would really have liked to get an ME as well. Oh well.

 

[DarkNoonBrewer]

Isn't it cool when we get to use something that we learned in the classroom? I'm an ECE guy, but I would really have liked to get an ME as well. Oh well.

Stick around, this could get interesting!

 

[RedIrocZ-28]

Whoa....

I never thought my design would ever spark this kind of debate. I know I have said this in here before but I believe the reason the dual coil design cools faster than a single coil is more wort coverage.

P.S. I have contacted TxBrew about becoming a vendor and I may just build these and sell them here to anyone interested in using one of these, but not wanting to take the chance at kinking a $50 coil of copper tubing in the middle I'm also looking at designing a very basic but highly ergonomic/intuitive grain crusher.

p.p.s. I'm a cell phone repair tech in case anyone wonders what I do for a living.

 

[charlope]

If your going to produce this it would be good to market with the best design. Using 50ft of continuous copper might not offer enough performance gain to get people to buy this over the traditional one-loop design.

I know that making two loops work in parallel really brought my heat transfer efficiency up quite a bit. Just something to think about. If your going to go all the way, might as well do it right.

Good luck.

Whoa....

I never thought my design would ever spark this kind of debate. I know I have said this in here before but I believe the reason the dual coil design cools faster than a single coil is more wort coverage.

P.S. I have contacted TxBrew about becoming a vendor and I may just build these and sell them here to anyone interested in using one of these, but not wanting to take the chance at kinking a $50 coil of copper tubing in the middle I'm also looking at designing a very basic but highly ergonomic/intuitive grain crusher.

p.p.s. I'm a cell phone repair tech in case anyone wonders what I do for a living.

 

[Quazado]

I really liked renthispace's take on the ribcage and decided to make my own. I live in Mississippi, so it's rare for us get water out of the faucet that is below 50*. We've had trouble with our cooling time in the past and having a pre-chiller seems like an elegant solution. It looks good at least, but the real test will come this weekend!

 

[charlope]

I really liked renthispace's take on the ribcage and decided to make my own. I live in Mississippi, so it's rare for us get water out of the faucet that is below 50*. We've had trouble with our cooling time in the past and having a pre-chiller seems like an elegant solution. It looks good at least, but the real test will come this weekend!

I too like the Pre-Chiller.

The Pre-chiller can be used for any immersion chiller setup though.

 

[MW66]

I finally got around to brewing this weekend. It only took about 7 minutes to get my 5.5 gallons down from boiling to 68 degrees with no stirring. I stirred after I removed the chiller to get a whirlpool and the temperature did not drop. I was pretty impressed at how evenly it cooled the wort. Instead of running two hoses from two separate hose bibs, I used a "Y" splitter at one hose bib and ran two hose lines into the chiller.

Okay, my rib-cage chiller has a little different twist that I think will work well. I made two 25' coils and then connected them at the bottom. Instead of circulating water through the whole chiller, I thought why not take advantage of two cooling inlets that finally connect at the bottom and then out. I used 3/8" tubing, but I thought that it would work even better to use 1/2" where they join at the bottom and then to the outlet. I wasn't sure if the two water hose sources would be competing with their pressure to force water back up the other coil, so I figured that if I reduce the pressure at the outlet, certainly both would flow through each coil to the 1/2" "T" and then out the 1/2" outlet. Not, sure if it would have been an issue, but I figured that I couldn't hurt it by decreasing the pressure at the outlet. I haven't tried it, but it will be interesting to see how fast it cools. Also, with dual cooling coils both starting at the top, I could now solder the 3/8" inlets tubes together to stiffen them and not worry about heat transfer. I soldered them at both 90 degree fittings and once in the middle of the tubes. Give me your thoughts.

 

[charlope]

Good job! Im glad it worked out for you.

Why are you splitting the input like that? why didnt you have one hose connector that slit using a T splitter like you did on the output? The input flow is going to be restricted by T on the output, it'll act like a bottleneck.

Are you using a garden hose, splitting the garden hose into two and then connecting it to the two inputs?

9 minutes, good job. It is so much nicer having an immersion chiller that cools down really fast, isnt it!?!

I finally got around to brewing this weekend. It only took about 9 minutes to get my 5.5 gallons down from boiling to 68 degrees with no stirring. I stirred after I removed the chiller to get a whirlpool and the temperature did not drop. I was pretty impressed at how evenly it cooled the wort. Instead of running two hoses from two separate hose bibs, I used a "Y" splitter at one hose bib and ran two hose lines into the chiller.

 

[MW66]

Good job! Im glad it worked out for you.

Why are you splitting the input like that? why didnt you have one hose connector that slit using a T splitter like you did on the output? The input flow is going to be restricted by T on the output, it'll act like a bottleneck.

Are you using a garden hose, splitting the garden hose into two and then connecting it to the two inputs?

9 minutes, good job. It is so much nicer having an immersion chiller that cools down really fast, isnt it!?!

I used larger diameter tubing and T on the output side. No restriction to worry about. Yes, I split the output source and ran 2 separate hoses. 7 minutes is definitely much faster than my previous IC, but Buffalo, NY water at this time of year is very cold as well. What I was most amazed at was the even chill that I got and didn't require any stirring.

 

[Adamb258]

made mine last night and it only took 15 minutes! Now to see how it works

 

[jimmayhugh]

First post, been lurking for a while...

Made mine today and yesterday. Used 50' of 1/2" refrigeration tubing, split into two coils and about 5' of additional 1/2" for the spouts. This thing dwarfs my brew kettle right now, since I'm only doing partial and extracts, but I'm hoping to get into a larger kettle and AG in the near future

Finding the tees and elbows was a bear, I finally found a HVAC wholesaler that would sell me the parts without a contractor's license. Formed everything by hand, which was a bear, and I haven't done any plumbing-type soldering in about 25 years. Water tested it just now, and am going to test with a kettle of boiling water. I also have to figure out some way to keep it standing upright on its own. Any suggestions appreciated.

 

[mcaple1]

Thanks for all the ideas fellow homebrewers, especially you RedIrocZ-28! This setup works perfectly for the 30qt turkey fryer pot.

Start by acquiring 50ft of 3/8" OD soft copper refrigerant pipe (coiled). You can un-slinky it (yes I know, very scientific terminology here) and find the location of the center point of the length of pipe. Once that is determined, start on one end of the pipe and coil it around a paint can (I was able to get enough coils from 25ft of the pipe to cover the entire surface area of the paint can. Once I got to the middle, I went to the other side, using either another paint can or the same one, start by coiling the pipe up again, except this time, go in the opposite direction as the first side (if you spun CCW on one side, go CW on the other, making sure the end of the pipe will both be on the top of bottom of the two coils when they are side by side. A good picture of this can be found on this youtube video posted by immolateus here.



Once that is done, take the two sections and mash them together, interlocking the coils. the straighten out enough length on both sides to create you input and output points (preferably outside of the brewpot). To make you life easier when doing this, you can use pipe benders (picture below)





To finish it off, I used 5/16" ID vinyl tubing (Lowes didn't have any 3/8" or else I would have used that) and then and connected two separate lengths of tubing to the two ends of the coil. On on tube, I affixed a nylon hose barb adapter WATTS A-300 and a hose adapter WATTS A-672.



All done! Thanks for the help guys!

 

[McDingleberry]

Just wanted to say thanks for the idea. I'm making mine right now. I still gotta get the tubing bender to do the uprights. I bent mine around a paint can and it worked perfectly.

Edit: The picture was too big, so here is a link to it- http://imgur.com/0kgcO

 

[MW66]

Just an update. I had a brewing session on Father's Day, 6/19/11: It was a pretty hot day here and I wanted to see how it performed. It took my 6.5 gallons of wort from boiling to 70F in exactly 20 minutes. The last few degrees I just bumped my kettle only once or twice to just slightly agitate the wort. I didn't do any stirring of lifting of the IC. I was very happy with the results.

 

[ACESFULL]

I have read thru this entire thread and I am inspired to make one myself. At LowesDepot the runs come in 20' and 50" runs. Now will a 20' be efficient to cool wort (extract brewer) to the desired pitching temp or should I just spring for the 50'??

Thanks for the idea's RedIroc!!