Making A Wort Chiller

[cmack15]

I think its time for me to make an immersion wort chiller. The chiller looks fairly simple to make as far as get some copper tubing shape it around a soda keg etc. The trouble I am having is my kitchen faucet has like a shower head on it and the spout slides out and has the metal tubing so you can move the faucet around as opposed to old faucets that had a seperate spray head with the tubing to spray around the sink. Hopefully that explanation makes sense to somebody out there. I need to find or rig something up to conect the faucet head to the copper tubing thats my problem any info or input on this greatly apprecited thanx.
Cory

 

[Duckfoot]

I know what you are referring to, and I have no idea how to resolve it using the aforementioned sink... You could get a small submersible pond pump, fill your sink with ice water and recirculate it... You can find them cheap at Harbor Freight - sub. pumps...

Good luck...

 

[Nightbiker]

Perhaps I can offer a better solution? I made my immersion chiller like you plan to do, but instead of using (and wasting) loads of water from the faucet (honestly, the water coming out of that thing isn't very cool in the first place and is an awful waste of water since the exhaust water goes down the drain). I used a pair of vinyl hoses, the 'exhaust' goes into a mop bucket full of ice, the 'intake' is attached to a cheap pond-pump (from Lowes, but any hardware store and probably walmarts' fish tank area should have them) -the pump is submerged in the ice water, this recirculates the water and melts the ice as it goes along. It cools the wort much faster than the faucet water does, and doesn't waste gallons of water.

Now, for your particular problem, however, one thing that MIGHT work (depends on how large the outlet is on your faucet) you might try looking for a drain adapter for dishwashers (I had to get one of these for my dishwasher, it was at the local Lowes store) -this thing is a rubber coupler that is just soft enough to slip over the outlet nozzle of the water pump on the dishwaser, the other end steps down to be clamped inside the drain hose that leads to the drain under the sink. It MAY be large and soft enough to fit over your sink faucet, if it does, it should allow you to connect it (If you don't want to cut off the coupler on your chiller, then use an adapter to connect the chiller to a vinyl hose, and slide that over the rubber adapter I'm talking about).
Hope this helps.

 

[Bobby_M]

My faucet is similar and I'm pretty sure there's still a threaded aerator on there that can be spun off. The faucet adapters should thread on. However, the idea slutino would be to add a tee to the cold water side under the sink and had a hose bib.

 

[MoRoToRiUm]

I can search for a post I did on this before, I believe I included part numbers from lowes as well, if you are still interested in doing it that way. I don't pay for my water (rent), it is really cold, and I don't have the room for the setup I really want to do, so it works for me. A pump and ice water bath would work much better, but may not work for you. Let me know if you still want to explore this route and I'll dig up more info for you.

 

[madewithchicken]

I have not done this yet but when I build a wort chiller this is my plan.

If you do not have this stuff lying about your house then it may be cheaper to buy a pond pump.

1. Refrigerate (or sit outside if it is cold) as many corny kegs as you can filled with water.
2. Hook your air compressor up to the corny keg like you would a co2 tank. They sell a little adapter that looks kind of like a funnel that a hose slides on nice. (You could use co2 but that costs money.)
3. Hook the other "OUT" side of your corny up to your wort chiller with another plastic hose.
4. When you run out of cold water in the kegs you can switch it ice water in the kegs.

I use this idea for pumping sanitizer through my beer lines. I have the faucet drain into another corny. Then I pressurize that corny and repeat.

 

[cmack15]

I think that using a pump to recirculate ice water is probably the best route for me to go and sounds like it works better then a faucet style chiller. Thanks for the ideas and feedback. My followup question now is what size pump do i need?

 

[Duckfoot]

I have the 190 gph one on the link i posted earlier... worked great w/ my IC... i am going to upgrade to at least 245gph w/ my CFC..

 

[MoRoToRiUm]

Depends on the tubing- smaller OD, faster pump. If you have a larger OD, faster won't hurt, but the heat won't dissipate as well. Just check out pet supply place and get a good pond one.

One word of warning, I got a ceramic bearing one that had an INSANE rate/overhead, but even after proper priming and running awhile, would heat up the out going water.