Vinyl Tubing Wort Chiller

[deewilliam17]

Okay, so I was thinking of getting a few feet of vinyl tubing, putting it into a coil, and then put the coil in a cooler of ice and running my wort from the kettle through the chiller and out the other end into the fermenter. If its too hot and will melt the tubing, I can use my immersion chiller to bring it down, but living in Georgia, its hard to get it down below 80F with tap water. Thoughts? Do chillers have to be metal?
Thanks in advance!

 

[TheMadBrewster]

Okay, so I was thinking of getting a few feet of vinyl tubing, putting it into a coil, and then put the coil in a cooler of ice and running my wort from the kettle through the chiller and out the other end into the fermenter. If its too hot and will melt the tubing, I can use my immersion chiller to bring it down, but living in Georgia, its hard to get it down below 80F with tap water. Thoughts? Do chillers have to be metal?
Thanks in advance!

I have only used my home made copper immersion chiller while making beer, so I'm not an expert on your question. But, I don't believe that the vinyl tubing will provide you with adequate heat transfer while its running through the ice. And if you did get an adequate amount of heat transfer, because you used a metal coil instead, you'd probably end up melting through this ice pretty fast. I think if you want a good heat transfer that you're going to want to use a metal coil for a good heat transfer.

 

[TheMadBrewster]

I have only used my home made copper immersion chiller while making beer, so I'm not an expert on your question. But, I don't believe that the vinyl tubing will provide you with adequate heat transfer while its running through the ice. And if you did get an adequate amount of heat transfer, because you used a metal coil instead, you'd probably end up melting through this ice pretty fast. I think if you want a good heat transfer that you're going to want to use a metal coil for a good heat transfer.

Forgot to mention, I also have hot tap water. I made another copper coil that sits in front of the immersion chiller. I stick this coil in a bucket of ice water. It's mostly Ice but I add water so there's more contact with the chiller. This allows the water to flow into the first coil and be cooled to a cold temperature before going into your immersion chiller in the wort. This should allow you to take the beer down to your pitching temperature. I use a '10 coil of 3/8 copper tubing for the ice bucket.:rockin:

 

[Sudz_Makenzie]

I tried a pre-chiller using a coiled up vinyl hose in a bucket of ice water and it just didn't transfer heat fast enough or efficient enough. What I ended up doing was to run tap (outside) water through the copper immersion chiller until the wort temp was down to 100 F or so. Then use a pond pump in a 5 gal bucket of ice water to pump and recirculate the ice water. Works quite well

 

[TheMadBrewster]

I tried a pre-chiller using a coiled up vinyl hose in a bucket of ice water and it just didn't transfer heat fast enough or efficient enough. What I ended up doing was to run tap (outside) water through the copper immersion chiller until the wort temp was down to 100 F or so. Then use a pond pump in a 5 gal bucket of ice water to pump and recirculate the ice water. Works quite well

Yeah. The vinyl tubing just won't transfer the heat like copper or stainless. On my set up I have two copper coils. Water flows into the fist 10' copper coil that is in ice bucket. Out of that coil and through a vinyl hose into second 25' copper coil that is in wort. So I have two copper coils.

 

[acidrain]

Vinyl tubing is a horible heat conductor.
Were you thinking of using food grade vinyl? Even those will give off unpleasant flavors at high temps.
You would be better off using copper... it very high in heat transfer, and food safe at al wort temps.
I wouldn't use vinyl at all.

 

[outside92129]

That vinyl will add a little something-something to your beer because the warm coolant water won't be able to cool the wort enough by the time it hits the vinyl tubing. I would just use the chiller you have as is, it'll take longer but in summer time in GA you're stuck.

 

[boat_eggs]

if you use just ice in a little bit of water it takes over 60 pounds of ice (tried it and dont do it anymore even though i get free ice from work). High temperature and plastics usually have a bunch of bad side effects (flavor and chemical leaching).

what i do anymore is i converted my copper immersion chiller into a herms coil and put it into a bucket of water/HLT and recirculate the wort through the chiller and back into the boil kettle. once the wort gets down to ~120* i change out the water in the bucket/HLT, add 20-30 pounds of ice and pump the wort through the chiller into the fermentor.

in the summer (75* water) it take about 5 minutes in the first pass and then the second pass i have a ball valve to regulate the flow until the inline thermometer reads 70*. works good for me, although more complex than what you asked about.