wort chiller

I was looking into making a worth chiller, and was wondering if I can use soft copper pipe? If I need to hard pipe can I use fittings or does it need to be one long price of pipe? Any help would be great.

Plans on my web site for a CFC.

http://gnipsel.com/beer/equipment/CFC.htm

John

Making an immersion chiller yourself is so easy - the soft copper tubing is already coiled in the pack! Probably the best and one of the easiest things you can do to speed up your brew day.

I wrapped mine around a kitchen pot that was about the right size to get the coils stacked up, and used hose clamps with the cheap vinyl clear tubing to hold it together. Add the right fitting for hose outlet or whatever you need and you’re done. Mine was 3/8" OD copper and it works great, cools about 4 gallons of wort down from boiling to 75 degrees in less than 15 minutes.

I made my own IC from 1/2" copper tubing, a few 90° elbows, 1/2" copper pipe and garden hose connections. It cost a bit more than buying one, but half the fun is building your own equipment.

thing looks like you could drive a car over it and it wouldn’t bend. Nice and watertight???

Nice and sturdy. Works really well.

How did you get the fittings to go from soft tubing to the rigid stuff? I made mine out of 3/8" tubing, but can’t find anything that will fit it so that I could get some 90’s or to get hose connections etc.

I used 1/2" tubing to build mine. Much easier to find those connections.

I didnt want to start a new thread, so i will ask if mine looks ok here

built this last night

it started to kink in one spot but i stopped bending before it happened, ran the water threw it last night and it worked fine no restriction of flow from the semi kinked spot.

cant wait to try it in a brew and see how quick it cools the wort

also looking at others, maybe i should bend the inlet and outlet up to so it sits in the pot better…

That should work. Did it leak when you tested it? I can’t see if you have clamps on the hoses, to be safe you might want to clamp them. The outlet hose will get near boiling when you first start it up, and that might loosen the hose on that side.