will this wort chiller design work?

[slyjeremybrewer]

I was thinking about taking a 5 gal bucket with a drain valve in the bottom. filling it with ice and water. Then letting the wort slowly gravity feed through some plastic tubing that is coiled up inside the bucket ( maybe about 10 to 15 feet worth ?) the tube would be attached to the drain valve in the bottom so the wort could pass straight through to a separate vessel. what do you think, efficient enough? I think it would be pretty cheap and easy to build.

 

[day_trippr]

I was thinking about taking a 5 gal bucket with a drain valve in the bottom. filling it with ice and water. Then letting the wort slowly gravity feed through some plastic tubing that is coiled up inside the bucket ( maybe about 10 to 15 feet worth ?) the tube would be attached to the drain valve in the bottom so the wort could pass straight through to a separate vessel. what do you think, efficient enough? I think it would be pretty cheap and easy to build.

The relatively poor thermal conductivity of plastic tubing coupled with the rather short length isn't going to give you a reasonable efficiency, so you'd either have to run the wort really slowly, or recycle it through the chiller a few times...

Cheers!

 

[JayWeezie]

I was told to only use copper for something like this because it will transfer the heat much more than plastic tubing.

Also you might need much more than 10-15ft of copper. IMO it would travel thru it to fast to transfer as much heat as u would need.

Just my dos pesos...

 

[Catt22]

I was thinking about taking a 5 gal bucket with a drain valve in the bottom. filling it with ice and water. Then letting the wort slowly gravity feed through some plastic tubing that is coiled up inside the bucket ( maybe about 10 to 15 feet worth ?) the tube would be attached to the drain valve in the bottom so the wort could pass straight through to a separate vessel. what do you think, efficient enough? I think it would be pretty cheap and easy to build.

I've seen a hybrid CFC chiller using copper tubing similar to what you have described. IIRC, the tubing length was 20 ft and the ID was 3/8". You would need to stir the ice/water mixture or maybe circulate it with a pump, but it should work OK.

 

[Bobby_M]

People with smart math brains have done some figuring and it takes about 40 pounds of ice to chill 5 gallons of boiling wort. If you have less than that in the bucket, the ice will be melted before the full 5 gallons is done draining.

 

[jrnyenhuis]

I just tried something like that on my last batch, and it was an utter and complete failure. The ice in the bucket didn't even melt; the plastic tubing just will not shed heat at any reasonable rate. I gave up and got a 50-ft coil of soft copper tubing. Will be fashioning that wort chiller soon.