Immersion Chiller Build

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ivorm
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Immersion Chiller Build

Post by ivorm » Sat Nov 28, 2015 11:07 pm

I was wondering if anyone has any advice on a the best dimensions for making an immersion chiller? I bought a 50'x3/8 copper line from Dave today to go in my 19 gallon kettle (Also from Everwood, 17.5" high x 17.5" wide). I bought the 19 gallon kettle so I could do 10 gallon batches but I'll probably do a mostly 5 gallon batches right now, I just wanted the option to go bigger. I hear most people just bend them around a corny keg but I thought that might leave a lot of the coil sticking out of the water on 5 gallon batches. I have a few other things I could use to bend it around:

fermentation bucket: ~12" diameter
5 gallon bucket: 10.5" diameter
Corny key: 8.5" diameter

Would I be better of going with a wider diameter bend for my immersion chiller to keep more of it submerged? When I look at pictures online I see all kinds of other configurations too, rib cage, double coil, ones that tee off and have two 25' coils etc. Does anyone have any experience on what works best?

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Re: Immersion Chiller Build

Post by Bluefin 774 » Sat Nov 28, 2015 11:19 pm

I would think the wider and lower you can make it would be best. Hopefully others with more experience with this will chime in. I bought one instead of making it. I think I should have made it myself. :cheers:
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Re: Immersion Chiller Build

Post by Keith » Sat Nov 28, 2015 11:34 pm

I wrapped it along a Pepsi keg. Kept a tight coil.
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Re: Immersion Chiller Build

Post by ivorm » Sat Nov 28, 2015 11:37 pm

Bluefin 774 wrote:I would think the wider and lower you can make it would be best. Hopefully others with more experience with this will chime in. I bought one instead of making it. I think I should have made it myself. :cheers:
Yeah that's what I'm thinking. I'm pretty new to this, I've only done extract brew in the past and chilled them in the kitchen sink in an ice bath and added sterilized ice to the wort (no full volume boils), that involved all kinds of cursing. I'll probably stir the wort as I'm chilling to speed it up, at least if the coil is bigger I can stir in the middle fairly easily.

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Re: Immersion Chiller Build

Post by chalmers » Mon Nov 30, 2015 9:11 pm

Sorry to weigh in late to this, but you'd likely want to go big in diameter, to keep a short height in the liquid, just as you suggested.

If the diameter of your pot is 17.5", then I'd aim to use the fermentation bucket to build your coil, as your 12" bucket would then have 2x3/8" extra diameter, so close to 13", depending on how perfectly you form it.

In a 17.5" diameter pot, 5 UK gallons (or are you doing US gallons?) would be roughly XXX cm high.

...... fuck, imperial sucks, and why the fuck did I spend my Monday night on this .....

Diameter= 17.5*2.54 = 44.45cm
R = 22.225
5 UK gallons = 23l = 22730cm^3

Height of 5gal in your pot is is about 14.6cm in your pot, so pretty short (total height of pot is 44cm, so less than a third)

Accounting for the Volume of 50ft 3/8" tubing (assuming it will all be submerged): ~1.0 litre. It would therefore raise the height of the wort to ~15.2cm.

Height of 50ft of 3/8" tubing, at 13" wrap, assuming perfect tightness between coil:
13" diameter = 33cm = 103cm circumference
50ft = 15.24m

#coils = 15

Height of 15 coils, assuming it sits perfectly flat on the bottom, and each coil fits perfectly = 14.3cm

You'd have all of the coil under the liquid, so no "wasted" cooling coils.

Because those coils would be fairly close to the kettle wall, you'd want to get a whirlpool going, for good wort circulation, and more efficient cooling.

If you went with a 10.5" wrap diameter for your coil, the coil height would be: 17.3cm. So a few cm above the wort level. Not bad. If you are using some of the 50ft to go in and out, this would probably work.
If you went with a 8.5" wrap diameter for your coil, the coil height would be: 21.4cm. A few more cm, feeling a little wasteful at this point.

Assumptions made: perfectly tight coiling & all 50ft was in the coil, which probably won't be the case, as you may bend the last few feet up for water in and out. Or you could solder elbows on to rigid copper, in which case the wort level will be a bit higher.

So, like you guessed, the bigger the better, less wasted cooling coils.

Other things to keep in mind are any bazooka screens or other dip tubes, etc in the kettle. Adjust coil diameter accordingly.


ps. 17.5" x 17.5" pot is 69l = 18 US gallons = 15 UK gallons

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Re: Immersion Chiller Build

Post by Celiacbrew » Mon Nov 30, 2015 9:28 pm

We should sticky charmers calculations.
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Re: Immersion Chiller Build

Post by ivorm » Mon Nov 30, 2015 10:03 pm

Thanks for the reply Chalmers. Sorry for ruining you Monday night with some math haha. I gave it try with the fermentation bucket after work today and it sits about 5.5" (140mm) high with a little space between the upper coils. So it seems like the coils will be below the surface of the wort on my 5 US gallon batches (volume at kegging) , I'll have a little extra wort for waste in the kettle and fermentor. I just have to get to Home Depot and pick up a tube bender to finish the ends.

I was wondering if I should be aiming to have gaps between adjacent coils though so that wort can flow all around the copper coils. I suppose it won't be the end of the world if a couple coils are out of the wort on 5 gallon batches since it should cool it off pretty quick anyway. I was thinking about soldering some copper pipe in there to keep the coils apart. I assume it's okay to have solder in my boil kettle.

Oh and I'm planning on doing bag mash in a cooler so I won't have a bazooka screen, a dip tube would probably be good to add though I guess.

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Re: Immersion Chiller Build

Post by chalmers » Tue Dec 01, 2015 10:18 am

I was mainly kidding about it ruining my Monday night, I mainly wanted to figure out if I could figure it out. Glad to hear my calculations were pretty close to reality (143mm vs. 140mm). Probably due to my initial estimate of 13" coil diameter, when it is closer to 12.75".

ANYWAY...

Leaving a bit of room between the coils to aid with wort flow is great idea. You'd want to maximize the ability for wort to move between the coils, and still have as many coils sit in the wort as possible. You probably don't need to solder anything to keep them separated, just have the coils be less than perfect. Adding an elbow and rigid piece to either end of the coils is a nice touch, bending copper at 90 degrees without crimping can be a pain, and I don't believe solder is going to be a problem.

Another option, if you want to get creative, is to bend it in concentric circles, which would leave it quite flat, and give you the option of manually moving it up and down, while still in the wort, to increase movement. I think yours will work out great, however, and that plan would not allow for a nice whirlpool to deposit hops and crap in the middle.

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Re: Immersion Chiller Build

Post by mthibodeau » Tue Dec 01, 2015 11:25 am

On the sibject of keeping some space between the coils one thing I saw online was a guy using some wire to hold his coil together, the way he did it though he basically made an x between each coil layer, which also kept them slightly apart from one another
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Re: Immersion Chiller Build

Post by MitchK » Tue Dec 01, 2015 8:38 pm

These all look awesome and get good reviews on the brulosophy blog - Maybe borrow a few ideas from them? The King kobra looks like the style you might want to look into for doing smaller batches in a massive pot.

http://jadedbrewing.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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Re: Immersion Chiller Build

Post by ivorm » Tue Dec 01, 2015 10:07 pm

MitchK wrote:These all look awesome and get good reviews on the brulosophy blog - Maybe borrow a few ideas from them? The King kobra looks like the style you might want to look into for doing smaller batches in a massive pot.

http://jadedbrewing.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Yeah they have some pretty crazy chillers on there. I don't know how they connect those multiple runs of 3/8 into a single 1/2.

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Re: Immersion Chiller Build

Post by mcgster » Tue Dec 01, 2015 10:16 pm

chalmers wrote:Sorry to weigh in late to this, but you'd likely want to go big in diameter, to keep a short height in the liquid, just as you suggested.
So true, my immersion chiller from my keggle is half exposed in my 100L pot making it pretty useless, go as wide as you can!

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Re: Immersion Chiller Build

Post by bluenose » Wed Dec 02, 2015 9:46 am

I have a 50' x 1/2" immersion chiller from nybrewsupply (or something or other) but it ends up sitting on my element, leaving half of it above the wort. So basically useless and why I made a CFC
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Re: Immersion Chiller Build

Post by essenmein » Mon Dec 14, 2015 7:52 pm

An immersion chiller is something I need to build and been thinking about the design. I always figured a smaller diameter tightly wound and taller one would be better. As long as the top is under the surface to allow fluid to flow over it, the cold liquid falls and would create an inverse chimney effect circulating the fluid faster?

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Re: Immersion Chiller Build

Post by ivorm » Mon Dec 14, 2015 10:55 pm

I finished mine and brewed by first all grain batch yesterday. I chilled 12 gallons (US) to 70-75*F in 15 minutes with some stirring. Here are some pictures, I plan on soldering the 2 verticals together, I just have a hose clamp on them for now.

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Re: Immersion Chiller Build

Post by mcgster » Mon Dec 14, 2015 11:06 pm

Looks like it turned out great!

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Re: Immersion Chiller Build

Post by Bluefin 774 » Tue Dec 15, 2015 12:19 am

Nice immersion chiller. :cheers:
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Re: Immersion Chiller Build

Post by ivorm » Tue Dec 15, 2015 12:30 am

Thanks! Makes it easy when Dave sells all the parts in a kit.

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Re: Immersion Chiller Build

Post by chalmers » Tue Dec 15, 2015 8:23 am

essenmein wrote:An immersion chiller is something I need to build and been thinking about the design. I always figured a smaller diameter tightly wound and taller one would be better. As long as the top is under the surface to allow fluid to flow over it, the cold liquid falls and would create an inverse chimney effect circulating the fluid faster?
The key point you picked up on is the maximum number of coils under the water, for maximum heat exchange efficiency. I believe the chimney effect you mention is small compared to the stirring motion that many of us will introduce manually, or by a pump. For those of us who whirlpool, having a fairly large open space in the middle will allow for trub coning, which is an early step in removing particulate and cloudiness from your beer.

As has been referenced elsewhere in the thread, however, be sure to account for your kettle size and the fittings it may have inside. If you have a screen or tube jutting in a few cm, be sure to account for that in the design.

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Re: Immersion Chiller Build

Post by Lykathia » Sat Feb 06, 2016 12:42 am

I just finished one of these today -- if you're not picking up a kit from Dave, I'd recommend avoiding Canadian Tire, they had very limited stock on 3/8" connectors (checked two different stores before giving up and going to home depot).

Really easy/fun build tho, do recommend.

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Re: Immersion Chiller Build

Post by ajinthevalley » Sun Sep 11, 2016 9:32 pm

I need to make one of these. Did you all use a pipe bender or is that unnecessary?

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Re: Immersion Chiller Build

Post by Keith » Sun Sep 11, 2016 9:38 pm

I used soft copper and wrapped it around a keg to get the size. 90 degree bends I used a can but was tricky.
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Re: Immersion Chiller Build

Post by ivorm » Sun Sep 11, 2016 11:01 pm

I bought one of these for the 90 degree bends. It's pretty hard not to kink the tube and get a good bend without one.
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