Which size immersion wort chiller?

[darkmatter14B]

I've got a 10 gallon brew pot and plan on doing mostly full boil, 5 gallon batches once I get a chiller. Most commonly, I see immersion chillers in two lengths, 25' and 50'. Which one should I get??

 

[Schumed]

I have used a 25 ft for 5 gallon batches for well over a year...I can usually cool my wort in about 15 minutes with it. The more surface area the quicker it should cool in theory. If you can afford 50 go for 50.

Actually if you can afford a 50 you might consider a 25ft counterflow chiller

 

[william_shakes_beer]

I have a 25' cooler that works just fine for 5 and 10 gallon batches. The commercially made ones usually have a copper wire braided between the coils to keep the whole thing together. If yoyu have a deeper pot, gently pull the coils apart so the wort can get between them, until the top coil is just below the surface of the wort. Its all about surface area.

 

[Hammy71]

If you can swing the 50' go for it.

 

[tre9er]

I have 50' and it takes 20 minutes for 5.5g. batches. The last 20 degrees are the hardest. It goes from 207 to 90 in under 10 minutes.

 

[ak-71]

50' must be better but I made 25' and it works just fine in my 10gal pot / 5.5-6 gal batches. If I move it around a bit it works much faster too

 

[BrokenArmBrewing]

I made a 50 with copper wire holding the rings about a half an inch between ...boil to pitch in about 10 minutes. I gently stir the wort opposite the glow if the coil, sorta the idea of a counter flow chiller. And that's with Florida's warm tap water

 

[tre9er]

I stopped stirring during chilling because I whirlpool and want the cone to adequately settle since I don't screen or strain my wort.

 

[Bigcorona]

If you ever think you will go to 10 gal batches get the 50 ft. If not stick with the 25 ft. I do 10 gal, and have the 50 ft. It takes me 5 minutes to get back to a boil after putting that hunk of metal into the brew pot.

 

[BrokenArmBrewing]

I stopped stirring during chilling because I whirlpool and want the cone to adequately settle since I don't screen or strain my wort.

Im risking sounding dumb, but could explain whirlpooling.... I'm assuming it has to do with stirring and getting all the junk into the middle at the bottom, nut what's the process

 

[tre9er]

Im risking sounding dumb, but could explain whirlpooling.... I'm assuming it has to do with stirring and getting all the junk into the middle at the bottom, nut what's the process

Yep, just stirring vigorously in the center to create a whirlpool effect that spins the trub and hop junk towards the center of the pot. I get some junk into my fermenter at first when opening the valve, and at the end of racking, too. I don't care though. Just trying to leave the majority of it behind. Generally you need to let the wort sit a while afterwards until it clears, so I do it while chilling. I know stirring brings temps down quicker, but then I'd disturb the cone and have to wait anyways.

 

[BrokenArmBrewing]

Ok that's what I thought, I just put it all into the fermenter and let it settle out there, most times go into secondary

 

[BetterSense]

To a first approximation, and considering only copper chillers, two main factors should affect how fast an immersion chiller works. 1. total surface area and 2. temperature delta between the water and the wort.

On point 1, 3/8" tubing is about 60% the area of 1/2" tubing, so a 50ft 3/8" chiller is actually more surface area than a 25ft 1/2" chiller.

On point 2, the idea is to have the water be as cool as possible for as long as possible so the heat transfers faster (Newton's law of cooling). So you want to pump water through it as fast as you can. The question is how to quantify 'fast' for the purposes of comparing 3/8 and 1/2 tubing. A 1/2" chiller contains more water volume per length, so at the same LINEAR flow rate, a 1/2" chiller can be expected to work better. However a 1/2" chiller is about 3.5 times as cross-sectional area as 3/8" tubing, What kind of flow rate you will get with a 3/8 versus 1/2" chiller depends on your water pressure and some nasty fluid dynamics, but a few quick experiments would be nice.

Note that most people don't use their chillers to max temporal efficiency, because they want to save water. If you don't run your chiller full blast, because you want to save water, then chiller tubing size doesn't matter as much and the equation becomes tilted in favor of larger surface area and thinner tubing wall thickness.

 

[pixelhussar]

What kind of flow rate you will get with a 3/8 versus 1/2" chiller depends on your water pressure and some nasty fluid dynamics, but a few quick experiments would be nice.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I remember if a thinner pipe is after a thicker one, the same amount of water has to flow through. This means that the water flows faster in the thinner pipe. Makes sense right?
Consequently the same amount of water brings the heat away.

The real question is: on what length can the cooling water warm up to the wort temperature. Obviously if it's the half of the pipe length, the other half is just unnecessary. I think this depends on the temperature difference. So you need the length when the wort is hot, not at the end of cooling.

 

[Jayhem]

I have 50' and it takes 20 minutes for 5.5g. batches. The last 20 degrees are the hardest. It goes from 207 to 90 in under 10 minutes.

Same here. You really need a 50' for 10+ gallon batches. Mine will chill 10 gallon batches in about 25 min, 5.5 gallons in 15 minutes as long as I whirlpool slowly for the last 20-30 degrees or so. It's MUCH faster than this in the winter when my well water comes out at 55F!

 

[FreshZ]

Another possibly dumb question. I'm in the same boat as the OP. I believe I need a 25 footer with garden hose attachments, due to my kitchen faucet being the newer fancy kind.

Where does the water go after the chiller? Just spurts out the other end? Attach a hose and divert the water away from you?

 

[rossi46]

Where does the water go after the chiller? Just spurts out the other end? Attach a hose and divert the water away from you?

I hook up a hose to the other end and fill two 5 gallon buckets with the warm water. i use that to clean with.

 

[tre9er]

Another possibly dumb question. I'm in the same boat as the OP. I believe I need a 25 footer with garden hose attachments, due to my kitchen faucet being the newer fancy kind.

Where does the water go after the chiller? Just spurts out the other end? Attach a hose and divert the water away from you?

Yep, you'll want to do chilling near a sink or somewhere you can dispose of VERY hot water. The initial water coming out of the chiller will be nearly boiling and gradually cool as the wort does. There are all kinds of converters out there to attach to modern faucets. In fact, if you have a sprayer you can usually unscrew that and find something that will thread onto it. That's what a friend of mine does.

 

[wfowlks]

I've got a 10 gallon brew pot and plan on doing mostly full boil, 5 gallon batches once I get a chiller. Most commonly, I see immersion chillers in two lengths, 25' and 50'. Which one should I get??

You can buy 50' of 3/8 tubing and make it yourself for about 60$. Just wrap it around a corning keg, and skip the bending tool.

Its a lot cheaper than the commercial ones

 

[ak-71]

I permanently attached some 1/2 tubing to the chiller discharge side and the other side of the tubing I attach to an old garden hose I can through over the fence (nothing there), put in a bucket, or water my trees and shrubs once water is a bit cooler. It's cheaper and easier to store that way with a shorter tubing.

 

[rico567]

There are a couple of threads buried somewhere here on HBT that discuss this issue at GREAT length. Some of the variables have been mentioned here, but not others (e.g., stirring the wort to constantly bring the warmest possible wort in contact with the metal of the chilling coil). I cannot recall all the considerations, and have no pretensions to being knowledgeable enough about the thermodynamics of this question.

In my experience of 5 years of homebrewing with Midwest's basic 25' copper chiller, it does a perfectly good job of chilling my wort from boiling to <70F in around 15-20 minutes, using about 25 gallons of water. Given my level of brewing, this is optimum.

There is little doubt that counterflow chillers and plate chillers do the work much more rapidly, at greater cost and with cleaning / sanitizing issues that simply do not exist with immersion chillers.