Draining your IC?

How you drain the water from the immersion chiller after the wort is cool? Is it even an issue?

I kinda hold the thing upside down, with the hoses in the sink, and rock it around. I feel as though I look quite foolish doing this. So do I need to even bother?

Just lift one end higher than the other, gravity does the rest

It doesn’t really matter from a sanitation standpoint. The water inside won’t ever come in contact with your wort unless you have a leaky fitting. In addition, neither copper nor SS will suffer from prolonged contact with neutral tap water.

On the other hand, it will be lighter to carry and store and won’t split if you accidentally let it freeze.

I’d say it’s down to personal preference.

I drain mine so it doesn’t spit hot water as it heats up the next time I use it.

I just flip mine upside down until it drains. Its not necessary from a sanitation standpoint, I just don’t want it to leak.

The main reason to drain your IC is so it doesn’t take your boil forever to return when you put it in to sanitize. I still use mine from time to time and blow the water out. I will use a compressor, or sometimes just my mouth.

I see you boil yours in wort. I let mine sit in the San star and then just stick it in the kettle. I actually start it before I put it in to get the temp down to ground water temp.

I usually spray mine with Star San and twist it around in the run off to clean it before putting it into the boil. Star San will dissolve copper so I wouldn’t soak it for too long. I put the wort chiller in for the last 5 mins of the boil to sanitize. I like it to be shiny before I put it into the boil.

[quote=“Loopie Beer”]The main reason to drain your IC is so it doesn’t take your boil forever to return when you put it in to sanitize[/quote]That’s why I do it, especially since I built my new chiller, it has 90’ of tubing in it:

That’s nice Mont, how many feet of tubing?

It’s roughly 2 45’ coils from the couplings below where the tubing splits.

I mainly built it for my 30 gallon pot but I designed it so that it would fit in my 15 gallon boiler. It will bring 22 gallons from boiling to low 60s in ~30 minutes with a pump whirlpooling.

Same here. I keep it inside, so freezing isn’t an issue. I use a ball valve with a male garden hose fitting on one end and a male QD on the other for
my compressor. It also blows the water out of the hoses, which is nice if it does freeze.