Immersion Coil Wort Chiller Ideas

[Fil]

Ahh I had forgotten your nice shiny exterior filter, i watched the linked video in the your post about it and it didnt clog when used with a pump so lets hope your covered..

I admire many of the complex copper tube sculptures some have built but some that fill the whole area available would make stirring as a fall back impossible.

[barneey]

Finally started the build this afternoon, so far 25m of 10mm copper (390mm dia) wound round a former ready to be threaded with 3 copper support legs (25x4mm copper plate), these will be soldered to the copper in placed for support. Just a single pic today. (who said I didnt like copper? )

[barneey]

Just spent an 1/2 hour threading the 3 plates only to find that with the weight of copper I would probadly be better off with another support, so another hour spent making the support / unthreading the other 3 and finally threading the thing again with 4 bars, I hoping the chiller will become alot more ridgid once soldered. Will make the coils for the other two inner rings over the next week (need some more cooper bar).

Outer coil minus the tails..

[Kev888]

looking impressively regular!

It will definitely get much more rigid when the bars are soldered to the tubes.

Cheers
kev

[barneey]

Encountered my first small problem this evening with the soldering of the tube to the bar, as everything is copper its bloody difficult trying to get the solder to flow and stick where it should do.

I`m now thinking of other ways to clamp the tube to the bar, I`m open to easy straight forward suggestions.

The only thing I can think of at the moment is wind a copper wire either side of the bar and solder to that.

[Fil]

Encountered my first small problem this evening with the soldering of the tube to the bar, as everything is copper its bloody difficult trying to get the solder to flow and stick where it should do.

I`m now thinking of other ways to clamp the tube to the bar, I`m open to easy straight forward suggestions.

The only thing I can think of at the moment is wind a copper wire either side of the bar and solder to that.

perhaps if you can get a few 10mm yorkshire straight couplers you could cut 3 or perhaps 4 rings from each one, allowing you to slip these round to sit either side of the strips at 2 or 3 points per strip, if do-able without distorting the shape they should provide an ideal solder friendly fixing point either side to sandwich the strip in place if not feed solder to aid fixing the strip itself.

[Kev888]

I think soldering would be my favourite too, though I agree it wouldn't look pretty. In the past I've wrapped thick copper wire around/about joints, a little like fil suggests with his hoops, to provide more of an area for the solder to flow into. You probably wouldn't have to solder every single joint, just enough to keep it all in shape.

Alternatively, perhaps you could consider your spacers as just spacers and solder something else to the tubes to keep it all in place, perhaps flat against them rather than edge-on like the spacers are.

Failing that do you think your waterweld would do the trick?

Cheers
Kev

[Martin G]

What about not trying to join the vetical bars to the pipe, but instead joining the ends of the vertical bars together with a square shape and/or cross in a way that makes the frame a ridgid structure that the pipes are just threaded through? Could get a bit messy though.

[barneey]

Cheers for the ideas, I`ve ended up attaching the spacer to the coil with solder wires, which worked a treat.

I was going for the coil in a coil in a coil design as Scooby`s design but with the outlet and two kettle elements to content with I had to change things somewhat. Managed to get nearly 50m of tube in the 80 litre pot, just need to plumb in the feed and return to the 22mm manifold to get the thing finished. No idea how the thing will work but heres hoping.

A little more progress today...

[barneey]

Finally finished plumbing the chiller up today and experimented with the cooling of 60ltrs of boiling water.

Tap water @ 11 c, 1 solar pump, 60 litres of water @100 c.

Chilling started at 12.10, 100 c , cold tap on full bore, solar pump on full bore.
12.15 temp down to 56 c, cold tap then reduced to a trickle to conserve water consumption.
12.20 temp down to 47 c - various temps were then taken 5 mins apart until 12.50 temp down to 35 c - so trickle flow water supply not that fast (expected)
12.50 temp @ 35c, cold tap 3/4 bore for 10 mins temp down to 21 c pitchable temp.

Conclusion, if I were to keep the cold water flow upto a max / 3/4 flow rate the chilling should in theory be approx 30 to 35 mins. If I used a larger pump the to get more of a flow in the vessel again the time should be reduced. Will I use the chiller again or revert back to the plate? Although I can still use the chiller with the lid on (using the hop hole for the chiller feeds) its a bit of a pain to use with the lid in place so would probadly suit a no lid of approach (again difficult when you brew in doors) so for the time being will shelve the experiment or sell the chiller on (any offers for nearly 50m of copper?) .

Edit finally a picture of the thing, not my best work but it works.



One thing I do miss using a plate though was the ease of getting the wort to an exact temp with the IC chiller + you can see if the IC is clean .

[Kev888]

Interesting experiment - thanks for posting it!

I know there are a lot of variables but it kind of follows what I do in practice too (juggling water efficiency and cooling rate as the temperature differential changes), so its very useful.

Cheers
Kev

[barneey]

Yep for an immersion chiller (bearing in mind the tap water at the moment is cold) it works very well, much better than any single IC I`ve used in the past, but its thrown up another unexpected problem of the easiest way of cleaning the thing, whereas a normal IC I would bathe it in a cleaning solution then 15min boil time etc, with this being nearly 450mm diameter I dont really have a big enough pot to hold the required amount of cleaning solution unless I make a trough of some sort. 2 steps forward 1 step back me thinks.

Might come in useful later for somthing or at least for a back up, or the way copper prices are still rising a little investment

[Kev888]

I must admit that I don't normally clean my IC, aside from rinsing and blasting out/off any hops with a hose after use - it usually comes out of the hot wort pretty shiny. The only time I have had to clean it was after a particularly stubborn wheat beer that had stuck many times resulting in much stirring of the MT and subsequent fine crudd getting into the boiler and coating everything in sight.

I think the main restriction of an IC is the reducing temperature differential as time goes on - otherwise they are easy in terms of use and sanitation and work very well whilst the wort is hot. So I've been wondering about using my beer chiller to gradually make a big insulated reservoir of chilled coolant before brew-day to take over from the tap water once the wort becomes cooler. Probably not the most economical approach but 'could' potentially combine the benefits of an IC on brew day with speed and reduced water consumption...

EDIT: Possibly another way of achieving a similar thing would be to pass wort through a smaller chamber (which contains an IC) on route to the FV, like a cooling version of a HERMS, so the IC would always see new/hot wort. But I can't decide if thats practical - the chamber could be open-able such that you can check its clean (no hidden path for the wort) but it may not be fast enough or worth the effort; my feeling is that a CFC may be a better compromise.

Cheers
Kev

[nigelsch]

Kev,

thats what I do with my IC in the summer, in the winter the water is cold enough to not need it.

I have a beer chiller, and as the temp of the summer wort drops to about 30oc i switch from mains
water to recirculate the beer chiller water around my IC. It works a treat, so much so that I have plumbed
the beer chiller through the kitchen wall with a couple of 9.5mm pipes, so all i need to do is flip
a couple of taps under the sink.

My beer chiller has the pump on it, so i use that line to recirculate the actual chiller water directly
through the IC, giving the best temp difference. The only thing you need to watch is using the chiller
too early if you understand what i mean. But i'd defo give it a go fella.

[Kev888]

Interesting stuff! Thanks for that; I was thinking of the pre-cooled reservoir because my large-ish brew-lengths would probably over-stress the working rate of my beer cooler (if I run it within spec, anyway) but its good to know that the principle is sound.

Cheers
kev