For the past 16 months I've been cooling my wort with what I've had available, that was a metal washtub and a garden hose. I'd curl up the garden hose in the wash tub (outdoors), put my brew kettle in the tub and turn on the hose. The water would circulate around the brew kettle cooling it from 212 to 70 in about 30 minutes. This worked fine but in the middle of a Minnesota winter it made working with a garden hose and a washtub a pain, plus I had no way of capturing the excess water as it spilled over the sides of the washtub onto the ground. Wasteful!
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| Taken from BYO Mag. Dec 2011 |
The December 2011 edition of BYO magazine (click link to purchase)had a great article on chiller performance by Chris Bible. The chart on the left was my inspiration to build my own chiller.
I went to my local big box home improvement store and bought a coil of refrigeration grade copper tubing. It's important to know that two grades are available, one with thicker walls and one with thinner walls. You want the grade with the thinner walls, you will not be putting anything under pressure, so no need for tubing with a thick wall. Plus, the thin walled tubing is easier to manipulate. Per the chart above, I decided to go with a 50 foot coil of 3/8" inner diameter copper tubing. I spent about $45. Then...
