dutchoven
Well-Known Member
Solder is fine ... Won't impart any off flavors. Just be sure to use lead free solder and flux made for drinking water use.
Here is a "ribcage" style I just made this afternoon. I will try it out next weekend.
Made last night, have not tested yet. 50' of 3/8" copper coil. Each coil is 4" wide, 7" tall (in my kettle 5 gallons fills up to right under 8"). I was able to bend it all into shape without any joints/welds or kinks.
Is everyone using a pipe bender? I tried a beer bottle and other small round objects and kinked every bend. I'm talking about the smaller bend to take the bottom up to the top.
Hmmm I may go out and try this. But then I still need a bend over the kettle.
I just got into the home brewing recently... but im nuts about trying to improve the process...
Here is the wort chiller i just built, as you can tell im neither a plumber or an engineer...
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its 5 x 10ft of 1/4" copper tubing connecting to 3/8" pipe as feed and collector...
with tap water at about 68F it took about 7 minutes to hit 77F with a half batch boil.
next batch i did with it was the next size pot i was able to get my hands on without spending money... which turned out to be a 60 quart pot... so i did a double batch boil. chiller still did a fantastic job... cooled the wort in about 15 minutes with a lot of stirring and an awkward fit on a much larger pot.
i left some space on top of the 3/8" pipes and im thinking of adding another coild or two of 1/4" to allow for more surface area and water flow.
actually planning on doing a kind of step by step with all the ideas and mistakes as a guide or inspiration source for someone who can do it better... or even possibly to save someone the trouble and just do a single coil.
the output hose might be restricting flow, i'd take it off and use a normal hose and see if it cuts down times at all.
If this was a cake id eat it...sweetness .well done.50', 1/4" ID, not pictured are brass compression fittings, 90° turns, garden hose in and hose barb out.
Went with a kind of hybrid ribcage design I liked how the ribcage keeps the coils from touching each other and thus "wasting" surface area, but wanted to preserve the crude counterflow feature (coolest water against coolest wort at the bottom of the chiller/kettle) of a single coil. Might be overthinking it a bit, but I get down to 75° in fifteen minutes without a pre-chiller, so, I'll take it!
120 ft of madness.Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder
HAHA Im stealing this LOLFixed it for ya.