New Brunswick Craft Brewers Association
Brewing => Equipment => Topic started by: fakr on September 28, 2011, 01:41:33 PM
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Only one piece was missing from my brew setup....a decent wort chiller...so I gathered all the parts last night and started at it.
Parts list:
1 x 25' 3/8" copper spool
1 x 25' 5/8 heavy rubber heater hose
2 x 1/2" copper Tee
1 x 12" 1/2" copper pipe
1 x 1/2" copper end caps
for those who've made one, the parts list is probably the exact same.
Got all the parts and was back home at 8pm. by almost 9:30pm I was done. I couldn't believe how easy it actually was. Very excited to try it.
One little piece of information I'm missing though...how the hell do you use it?! What water source are you using?what hookup are you using form your kettle to the small copper tube that carries the wort? hoses? clamps? quick disconnects?
In my setup, my kettle and burner are in my detached garage with no water source. I did buy a impeller pump just like a march pump and thought maybe I could fill a big rubber maid garbage can with cold water and pump the water through the hose and into another garbage can of equal size....I really don't know. Right now, while the weather is good, I can hookup a garden hose, but I can't really run that in the winter months....Also, carrying 23+ liters of boiling wort into my house and up the stairs into the kitchen isn't really an option either.
Any help appreciated.
oh, and here are a couple of pics of the chiller. By the way, thanks to JohnQ for showing me his and planting the seed that I could build one myself.
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parts
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finished product.
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another
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one small thing I forgot to mention...I mixed up a very soapy water solution and poured it in the rubber hose before inserting the copper tube, and I also used a keg to coil the finished product up into a nice neat package.
AND I had a buddy with me to help slide the copper through the hose.
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How much that cost you in parts? Would like to grab the same and do a run myself :D
Also a total n00b question: what solder / iron do you use for that? I assume lead-free and any old iron will do?
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I'll grab the receipt and let you know, but to be honest, I didn't spend long shopping around for deals on each of the parts. I went to kent's. the copper was $1.59 a foot, so about $40. I got the heavy rubber heater hose that was $1.59 a foot as well...but could have gone with the $0.69 standard hose...but I wanted black and not see through green. The Tees were somewhere around $1.50 each, and the 2 feet of copper tubing was $6, when I only needed 1 foot. The end caps were about $0.50 each...all together with tax was about $110 taxes in. Like I said, I could have easily reduced that down to about $80 easy, and if I had have shopped for the copper spool, could have maybe made it for $65-$70.
I used a propane torch...which is the only way I know how to solder copper. I used lead free silver solder, but because beer doesn't touch a solder joint, you could use any type of solder.
If you don't have silver solder, flux, or a torch, I don't mind loaning you mine for a couple of weeks, not a problem.
Honestly, I think now that I did the job once, this could be done in under an hour for sure.
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I'm considering reverse-engineering my immersion chiller to get at the copper in that, rather than buying new stuff. Will have to measure how long it is...
... I don't have any of those things, no; could you bring them to the meet perhaps and give me a real quick demo? :D That would be most awesome.
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Sure, I can definitely do that. I can even buy the 2 Tees and two end caps you'll need, give you the 1 foot copper pipe I have left over, and we can solder up the hardware ahead of time. all you'd have to do is buy some hose, slide your immersion chiller copper in, coil it up and you'll only have 2 solder joints to solder yourself. like I said you can borrow my gear to do that and I'll pick it up next meeting.
I think the two Tees, and two end caps will cost about $5-$6 bucks.
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Bloody excellent mate... I'll go grab some hose from Kents later this evening :D
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I got one more thing to add to my chiller...I picked up a 12V impeller pump from princess auto for $69. it's the same as a march pump, but not too sure it can handle high temperatures so going to stick it on the end of the chiller and use it to pump cold water from a large bucket.
I guess why spend $125+ on a pump if its not going to be used for hot stuff. This also resolves my issue of no running water in the garage.
I made a 15V variable power supply back in my electronic engineering days so I'm going to use that to regulate the flow of water though the chiller. Worst case, the pump doesn't like variable DC, I'll find the sweet spot for the cold water temp and adjust with ice.
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another pic.
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its rated for 240 gallons per hour.
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Excellent work fakr, very impressive package. Bring it along on Saturday, would love to see it.
JQ
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John: are you at all intimidated by this? Another Mcguyver in the group ... I smell competition :lol:
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Nice work fakr - I really like the CFC - lowers the temp of my wort below the temp of the garage on a 22 C day...
Dean had an interesting thought a while back as well - use the guts from a de-humidifier to cool the 3/8 copper - I bet a person could cut the length of the copper down to a few feet if it was run inside some sub-zero cooling apparatus...
One day when I'm richer (like after a few years of 100K brewing...) :party:
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That looks like a great set up! How is the water flow through the hose? I always thought the diameter listed was the inside diameter, so 3/8 inside diameter would mean darn close to 5/8 outside diameter, or am I completely off base on that? I look forward to seeing it at the meeting, thanks for posting.
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The inside diameter of the rubber hose is 5/8" and the inside diameter of the copper is 3/8" but it's a thin soft copper that can't be more than 1/16" so there must be almost 1/8" clearance between the two. I hooked it up to the garden hose and it poured out the other end quite well...like the end of a garden hose.
Oh and John....no need to be threatened....my build was all from your build! :rock:
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fakr, very impressive package. Bring it along on Saturday, would love to see it.
Really? Really? Is nobody else childish enough to pick up on that? :banana:
We always got room for more McGuyvers... JQ just gets to be the first :D
Very nice fakr; I want one :rock:
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I saw it but I've been warned in the past ...plus this is a thread that needs to stay out of the private folder :) Speaking of which, I thought we were going to have a folder specifically for "equipment"?
Fakr - you could use your garden hose in the winter ....just disconnect and drain it when you're done. The colder it is outside the more efficient that chiller will be.
Richard - For future reference, I gots me some tools man ...you need to come peek inside my garage sometime
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JQ just gets to be the first :D
:rock:
I always thought the diameter listed was the inside diameter
That is correct for hard copper, once you go soft copper, it changes to od, who knows why...some geek in a standards office somewhere?
Oh and John....no need to be threatened....my build was all from your build!
Always thrilled to bits to see something recreated and continued on, no threat there! Wait until everyone starts coming up with improvements and mods to the spunding valves, that will be fun to see.
(PS, I've already got my first amendment to the spunding valve, just not sharing it until I see if it works...an inline krausen trap!)
JQ
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"That is correct for hard copper, once you go soft copper, it changes to od, who knows why...some geek in a standards office somewhere?"
Depends on whether it is TUBE or PIPE, not necessarily whether it's hard or soft (but that's usually the case with what you find in Kents). Most copper tube/pipe is designated type K,L,M (there are more) which refers to the wall thickness and all 3 can be had in soft or hard. The colour of the lettering on the pipe/tube will indicate which type it is
here ...easier than me typing it all out ... http://www.plumbinghelp.ca/articles_typ ... r_pipe.php (http://www.plumbinghelp.ca/articles_types_of_copper_pipe.php)
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tada. Equipment forum.
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ok, this might sound crazy, but it's worth a try...watch out John...Fakrgyver is here!
Purpose: use my chiller in the garage in the winter without having to run a garden hose from my outside tap into my garage. It would also resolve the need for 2 buckets (one for cold water the other to drain the hot water).
Create a closed water system to flow through my chiller.
Parts:
1 x impeller pump (already posted the pics)
1 x keg sealed and filled with ice water
2 x 10' lengths of garden hose.
1 x 3' lengh of garden hose.
1 x 50' spool of 3/4" copper tubing (used during a previous fakrgyver build of a pool heater for a $79 wallmart 12' pool)
Hook the pump up to the chiller's intake. Hook up 10' garden hose from chiller exhaust, run it outside and attach it to the input of the 50' copper spool (shoved in the snow). Attach the output of the 50' copper spool to the IN valve of the keg. Attach 10' garden hose to the OUT valve of the keg and attach it to the inlet of the pump....
Make sense? this would in fact create a closed loop for the water to transfer through. the hot water leaves the chiller and goes through 50 feet of copper buried in the snow, then dumps into the ice water in the keg, then is fed back into the pump...
Check out the 50' spool of copper I used in the pool heater:
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have I gone too far. probably....lol! but this stuff is laying around my garage so I might as we try it.
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damn I'm good with mspaint!
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Only thing that comes to mind is whether the heat capacity (latent and specific) is enough, including any inefficiencies. I can run the numbers some time when I'm not siting on a damp carpet with a smartphone :)
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yeah, there are quite a few shortcomings to the setup, like the hose size going into and out of the keg, etc. gotta have good flow and proper cooling. I used to use a big galvanized garbage can that I coated with fiberglass resin and sealed up with an intake and exhaust for a pool heater...mayb I could use the same thing for a water tank instead of a keg.
If it worked, it would save on water....I can see it now...make a batch of beer and have a skating rink in my back yard from the chiller exhaust water.
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packing in snow isn't good, as the snow in immediate contact will melt, and the rest of the snow will act as a thermal insulator (I think) however, the coil in a bucket with a mix of snow and very cold water could work
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Probably need to keep an open vessel for chucking more snow in as it melts, and yeah - there'd be overflow. Interesting idea, though. So long as you could keep the temperature of the water in the cool vessel low enough whilst you ran the thing it should work pretty well.
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I think you'd be very disappointed with a coil-in-snowbank for reasons already mentioned as well as the possibility of no snow on brew day. If you had a 50 gallon drum full of water and added a few gallons of enviro-friendly RV antifreeze, on the coldest day it would be a slushy gel (and below freezing) ...throw your coil and as much hose as you can in that and you may be on to something.
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Great idea on the barrel & antifreeze... could just leave it in the cold and it'd provide all kinds of thermal mass to mop up after boil.
Now I definitely want one :D
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One thing to keep in mind with this setup guys, is if the water in the resevoir is too cold (close to zero), the wort will be way too cold to pitch as well...but if the water warms up over the span of cooling the wort, perhaps the final temp of the wort will be very close to pitching temp. ex. first half too cold, second half too warm.
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so is pitching too cold a bad thing?
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Yeast wont wake up if its cold.
Longer time to ferment = more chance of infection.
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Ah I see - yes I had put one of my batches in the fridge to cool it down to below 70, didn't get back home until that evening and it was getting below 50 - I took it out and pitched, took 24h for the yeast to start, and for an S-04 batch it didn't get out the blow off tube - which was nice... but it only really added a day or so to the ferment...
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Actually unless you're *really* cold that shouldn't be a major issue. It's recommended to pitch below fermentation temperature (albeit not quite as much as to retard the yeast), as that minimises the production of all kinds of off-flavours or precursors to same. It's certainly true that you want the yeasties to get down to work and outcompete any bacteria, but you should be concerned for pitching rate and temperature at pitching, both of which have goldilocks zones.
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there's no way a DIY chiller is going to get it that cold
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at least not in our warm winters, look what you can do where I'm from:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkFeTduJUDI (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkFeTduJUDI)
note that was boiling water
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*begin pedantic mode*That's at least partially because there is zero humidity and the fact it was boiling probably helped it freeze because it split the water up into itty bitty pieces with almost no heat capacity each*end pedantic mode*
I figure if it was room temperature it would have hit the ground.
Still... very cool ( :banana:).
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Got all the parts and was back home at 8pm. by almost 9:30pm I was done. I couldn't believe how easy it actually was. Very excited to try it.
One little piece of information I'm missing though...how the hell do you use it?! What water source are you using?what hookup are you using form your kettle to the small copper tube that carries the wort? hoses? clamps? quick disconnects?
CFC's are fun to build, eh? Did you unwind your copper to be straight-ish in order to thread it into the hose, or did you thread the hose on with the copper in its curled state?
In my brewery I have standardized on having all pieces of "equipment" (eg kettle outlet, pump inlet and outlet, chiller ends, etc) to present a 3/8" male flare fitting. All of my hoses (braid reinforced PVC) have female 3/8" swivel connectors. In this way I can connect any piece of equipment to any other piece of equipment.
The easiest way I found to terminate the 3/8" copper tubing was to take a 3/8" male flare coupling (a brass fitting with a 3/8" male flare at each end) and drill out one end with a 3/8" drill. Then solder this over the end of the copper tube.
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Hey Daniel,
I straightened out the copper and ran it through the rubber hose. it was quite easy as I had drained a good amount of carwash and water through the hose first. I think it would be killer hard to try and wind hose around coiled copper pipe.
I used a keg to re wind the copper and rubber hose.
funny you mention the disconnects, I just ordered a bunch of cam lock disconnects so all my equipment will be consistent.
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I straightened out my copper as well - used the el cheapo $12.99 hose from Home depot. I like copper unions, and use 1/2" where i can... they are pretty cheap at Home Depot as well - not quite as nice as the quick disconnects, but the unions are local and they are cheaper... for my water supply I used the PVC quick connectors (Kents) - they just slide on and slide off the 1/2" copper - I found them a little more convenient than the screw on hose ends...