Up to this point we've been chilling our wort by placing the kettle in a water bath - which worked - but time is money and time is more than money! Hopefully this project will save us at least a few minutes a batch! First, I must say, this isn't the most economical setup out there, we're sure this could be done for much less. Second, if you're concerned about water consumption, you'll need to make some adjustments to this design as we're not recirculating any of the cooling water.
Instructions for the fabrication of our Wort Chiller are as follows:
Bill of Materials:
1 - 10' of Braided Nylon Tubing, $
3 - 3/4" Female Hose Fitting, 1/2" Barb, $
2 - 3/4" Garden Hose Adapter, $
1 - 20' 3/8" Copper Tubing, $
2 - 3/8" Compression to 3/4" Garden Hose Adapter, $
1 - Faucet to Garden Hose Adapter, $
Construction:
Step 1: Cut the Braided Nylon Tubing to Length
Not sure that we really need to say much here. With our current setup we can bring the hot wort directly over to the sink, so we really only needed 5 feet of tubing on the inlet and outlet of the wort chiller. Thus, we bought a 10 foot section of nylon braided tubing ... and we cut it in half.
Tip: When you cut the tubing try to make your cuts as square as possible. It'll help the ensure the tuning seats all the way on the barb of your fittings.Step 2: Insert Barbed Adapters into your Tubing (x3)
Again, not much to say here. Insert your barbed fittings into the tubing. The barbed fitting should be snug in the tube but should insert smoothly with only slight force - however, they should be difficult to remove. You're going to need to do this at least three times. If needed (or for an extra safety factor), you can put a hose clamp on the tube before inserting the fitting and then tighten it down. Viola, now you've built yourself an inlet and outlet hose!
Step 2a: Add Your AdaptersWhile we're here, we may as well insert one garden hose fitting into the end of each tube. These connections can be tight, they shouldn't ever need to be taken apart.
Step 3: Time to Form Some Copper
The more surface area the better for a chiller like this. Sure we could have used 40 feet, but we went for 20. We're only chilling ~10 liters (~2.6 gallons) of wort since we're still brewing partial grain recipes and we haven't made the jump to all grain quite yet.
The tubing came nicely coiled right out of the box so it only took a few minutes of hand work to even the coil out to a diameter about 2-3 inches smaller than our kettle. You'll want to connectors to stick out of the kettle at least a few inches when the chiller is completely submerged, we though 8 inches sounded like a good number.
For the inlet and outlet of the chiller coil we used dishwasher fittings to go from the 3/8 inch copper to the 3/4 inch hose fittings we installed on the tubing back in Step 2. The fittings we used are simple compression fittings, installation was a breeze.
Step 4: Put it All Together & Test for Leaks
If you're going to use this with a typical kitchen/bathroom faucet, you're going to need an adapter.
To test your rig, put it all together and turn on the tap! And don't forget, waters not coming out of the tap anymore!
We were able to chill 1o liters from boiling to 30°C in under 7 minutes. A welcome improvement from chilling the kettle in a tub of cold water.
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