My wort chiller adventure

[McCall St. Brewer]

Today I decided to try out my new turkey fryer from Walmart AND my brand new copper chiller from my LHBS.

The new fryer worked really well (SWMBO really loved it that I was outside instead of filling the house with the lovely aromas of brewing).

When I set up the chiller and tested it, it seemed to work fine. I put it in the wort for the last 10 minutes of my boil and then turned on the water. When I came back from the faucet I noticed that my hose had a nice little sprinkler going on next to the fitting and it was sprinkling right into my rapidly cooling wort. I put the cover over it to try to keep as much as possible out and managed to put a towel over the hose to stop it, but I'm sure that a certain amount of hose water rained into my beer.

I guess we'll see what happens. The chiller did work really fast-- I think it took less than 15 minutes to get it cooled down into the 70's-- but the whole experience seems like a potential weak link in the whole sanitation process.

 

[John Beere]

Yeah, it seems as if I have to tighten the screws on my wort chiller every time I use it...

 

[Blender]

That happened to me too. Now I use a pliers to tighten the dang thing and no more leaks. My guess is that your beer will be fine.

 

[Grimsawyer]

...(SWMBO really loved it that I was outside instead of filling the house with the lovely aromas of brewing)...

I got rave reviews with my SWMBO for brewing outside too... Too bad it was so !@#$ cold and windy...

 

[Brew-boy]

Same thing happened to me, Now I have son #1 turn on hose as I watch the fittings on the chiller.

 

[ajf]

SWMBO really stands for She Wants Me Brewing Outside.

I never used to bother with checking the clamps on mine until the day the outlet hose popped off, causing me to get sprayed with a jet of very hot water as it exited the chiller. Ever since, I checked the hose clamps for each brew.

-a.

 

[JnJ]

Yup, been there done that. But, mine got a little screwy.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=18770

 

[Don]

On my second batch the clamp on the hose was loose and I got some water into my worth before I could get around to the faucet to shut it down. Didn't seem to hurt anything. Since then I have a brass garden hose Y with shutoff at the end of the hose so if it happens again I can shut it down quicker

 

[McCall St. Brewer]

I got rave reviews with my SWMBO for brewing outside too... Too bad it was so !@#$ cold and windy...

Here in Wisconsin we are the happy recipients of an El Nino winter. The last one we had like this was 97/98 I think. If this year continues to be like that one was, we can expect the rest of the winter to be extremely mild. At bit cloudy and rainy, but very little snow or cold.

Others (such as Colorado) may be suffering from terrible weather, but we are basking in daytime temps in the mid to high 40's, sometimes even low 50's. Our grass is still green. (I'm afraid to look at it too much for fear I may have to mow it). Anyway, brewing outside on my deck yesterday was very pleasant (for January in WI at least). I wore a sweater, but no jacket and was comfortable.

 

[Bobby_M]

Let me give you a hint. Use a pistol sprayer on the end of your hose that has male threads on the output. You attach your chiller to that and use the sprayer as a cheap valve. I never have to run to the hose bib to turn the chiller water on or off. Of course, you could also rig a ball valve with hose fittings, but you'll always use a sprayer.

 

[Bobby_M]

My pistol sprayer, as most I've seen, has a little metal ring that you flip over once you pull the trigger to hold it in the "on" position. You can also use the knurled thrumbscrew on the back to dial in the flow you want.

 

[Dustin_J]

I had the exact same problems with the inlet on my immersion chiller. I took the hose off, put it in some boiling water to soften it, then slipped it back on, only this time I put it on about 3". Then, I took 3 different worm-drive clamps and clamped it down at different points. This was about 4 batches ago and it's worked perfectly ever since.