Homemade wort chiller?

[FullThrottle64]

How hard is it to make a wort chiller? These things look like little more than a pack of copper tubing and the requisite fittings...plus the labor to form the coil. Am I missing something difficult?

 

[pdcm]

No, I think you've got it. I haven't made one, or bought one, so I am not speaking from first hand experience, but it seems pretty simple, and it gets sanitized at the end of the boil, so other than being copper and not stainless, you should be good to DYI. Like Larry of Beer-n-BBQ :

 

[myndflyte]

That's pretty much it. Now I will say that a single coil chiller is nice but I can't recommend enough the Hydra immersion chiller. It's more expensive but I think the way it performs more than justifies the cost. Just throwing my 2 cents out there.

 

[KeizerBrewr]

I built mine from 20' of 3/8" HVAC copper tubing, a dishwasher connector, a length of vinyl tube and a hose clamp(tubing and clamp are discharge line). I hook it up to my wash sink in the garage or hose faucet in the back yard. Works great for my 5 gallon batches. Only cost just under $40 at Home Depot.

 

[KeizerBrewr]

I should also note, I used a gallon paint can to build the coil around, which fits perfectly in my 8 gallon Bayou Classic brew kettle.

 

[jrgtr42]

I built mine from a 50' coil of 1/2" copper tubing I got for $20 (yes, I know... I went back and got another coil...)
I built mine into a ribcage design, so each 25' into a coil, then interleaved together. I don't know if it's any more effective than just one coil, but with my groundwater I can get from boiling to pitch in 20 minutes.
I do need to adjust the upper arms, they go further up than I really need (yeah, I've been saying this for 8 years now, I think.) I need to cut them down to about the height of the kettle and make sure they're angled downwards out of the kettle - I get a bit of leakage past the tubing that drips into the beer. No issues so far, but I don't want to push my luck.

 

[AJinJacksonville]

It is a piece of cake. I built mine using a 50' coil, again like others...wrapping around a paint can. To get the sharp bends at the top, I broke down and bought a tube bending spring set from one of the big box stores. Tube bender cost about $10, and I'm sure I'll use it to either build a new wort chiller or to let a friend borrow to build their own wort chiller. The thing works great, and is yet another DIY project I've undertaken to spend more money on grains, hops, etc.

 

[Spartan1979]

I've made two. The last one was a 50' coil and I wrapped it around a corny keg.

 

[firerat]

I've made a few one of which I turned into a worm for a still.

Pretty straight forward.

 

[stfinder]

Looking at the Hydra and King Cobra, it looks like a reducer coupling is used to connect the 1/2" water-in/water-out tubing to the three 3/8" coils. Any idea how that could be duplicated DIY? I figure everything is silver soldered together, but you'd need some filler material to fill in the gaps in the reducer coupling.

 

[jimyoung]

I made mine... You have to be really careful of kinking. If you don't have a roller (who does?) there are tricks. I live in a cold climate so I made mine in the middle of winter: filled it with water and let it freeze, then formed with the ice providing lateral support. I've heard others use sand - seems impossible to me, too long, so I'd probably break down and buy a roller instead of that.

 

[AzOr]

Jaded brewing has diy kits for sale. Seems like an easy option.

 

[ChiknNutz]

Looking at the Hydra and King Cobra, it looks like a reducer coupling is used to connect the 1/2" water-in/water-out tubing to the three 3/8" coils. Any idea how that could be duplicated DIY? I figure everything is silver soldered together, but you'd need some filler material to fill in the gaps in the reducer coupling.

I was thinking it could be done simply with silicone caulking. If you wanted to a more solid connection, could be done with epoxy...either liquid or the putty-style that you kneed and jam it into place. J-B Weld has several options that I think would work just fine.

 

[FullThrottle64]

Looking at the Hydra and King Cobra, it looks like a reducer coupling is used to connect the 1/2" water-in/water-out tubing to the three 3/8" coils. Any idea how that could be duplicated DIY? I figure everything is silver soldered together, but you'd need some filler material to fill in the gaps in the reducer coupling.

It's easier than that. You can buy reducer fittings that are basically a thick piece of copper tube - at just about any big-box home store. You solder it in place like anything else, and it lets you put the 3/8 tube into a 1/2 fitting. Super easy.

 

[ChiknNutz]

Maybe not talking about the same thing. I am looking at the Hydra model that has three small tubes going into one single larger tube. I imagine if those are 3/8" dia, the larger one has to be close to 1" diameter at the large neck, where it then necks down. I don't know of any OTS fitting that accommodates that arrangement.

 

[stfinder]

Agreed, Chikn.

I like your idea of the caulking/epoxy putty. I think that could work well.

 

[mirthfuldragon]

As an avid DIY-er, woodworker, mechanic, etc., who has made his own wort chiller, just buy a Jaded Hydra. It's right there next to my Bosch router in tools that over-perform my expectations. It's built like a tank, the bends are tight and no kinks, and it's sturdy enough that I let my heavy duty 3/4" garden hoses just hang off of it without tipping or melting the hose on hot metal. It's performance is nothing short of amazing. The only thing I added was a metal shut-off valve on the supply side, because walking over to the hose bib would cause me to miss my whirlpool temperature.

 

[ChiknNutz]

They don't really say, anyone know how much tubing is used in the Hydra?

 

[mirthfuldragon]

They don't really say, anyone know how much tubing is used in the Hydra?

I just went and measured mine. The top coil is ~30", and there are 3 sets of 9 coils, so making some assumptions, ~60'. But also note that the three coils run in parallel. In a 50' single pass chiller, equilibrium with the hot wort probably comes in the first 15' or 20', so the rest of it matters a lot less.

 

[stfinder]

As an avid DIY-er, woodworker, mechanic, etc., who has made his own wort chiller, just buy a Jaded Hydra. It's right there next to my Bosch router in tools that over-perform my expectations. It's built like a tank, the bends are tight and no kinks, and it's sturdy enough that I let my heavy duty 3/4" garden hoses just hang off of it without tipping or melting the hose on hot metal. It's performance is nothing short of amazing. The only thing I added was a metal shut-off valve on the supply side, because walking over to the hose bib would cause me to miss my whirlpool temperature.

That's good advice. The only reason I'm considering a DIY version is because I only brew 2.5 gal batches. With my current BK, there would be about 2" of coil above the surface of the wort. The goal is to achieve similar chilling efficiencies while scaling it down for my batch size.

Looking at your hydra, any guesses on how the three 3/8" tubes are fit into the reducer coupling so that it's watertight?

 

[mirthfuldragon]

That's good advice. The only reason I'm considering a DIY version is because I only brew 2.5 gal batches. With my current BK, there would be about 2" of coil above the surface of the wort. The goal is to achieve similar chilling efficiencies while scaling it down for my batch size.
Looking at your hydra, any guesses on how the three 3/8" tubes are fit into the reducer coupling so that it's watertight?

The tubes are all soldered together. Also, the top bit of coils are above the wort line in my keggle on a 5g batch, or just about, and it doesn't seem to hurt anything.

 

[pdcm]

If I was going to make this I'd probably use a copper 3/4in cap and drill some holes to fit the bent tubing tightly, then solder them into the cap. I guess it would be 3x3/8in or 2x1/2in lines to maximize the volume of the 3/4in incoming line.

 

[Transamguy77]

I made a 1/2”x50’ one and I wrapped it around a keg and for the vends I just soldered in elbows that way I didn’t have to worry about kinks. I also bought mine as a DIY kit and it was like $70 shipped.

I think somewhere online I’ve seen that 3 to 1 fitting that jaded uses to make theirs, so it is totally possible to make your own if you can solder it yourself.