Unfortunately, that’s not practical for me at the moment. I have thought of that idea, but I’d need a dedicated area to set up. I may come back to that idea at a later point. I did start to think of “well, if I would get an engine crane for working on my vehicles I could use that to lift the bag…” But I don’t have a hard surface to roll it around on right now. Kinda wish I could just say the heck with it all and build myself a proper brewing area… Maybe I should take a stab at winning the lottery… lol
They claim that King Cobra immersion chiller cools an 11 gal batch to 65° in under 7 minutes with 60° groundwater. That’s pretty damned good if you ask me. I wouldn’t take the word of whoever wrote that but I’d love to talk to someone who’s bought one. You could probably set it in your left over sparge water and then when you dunked it in the mash tun it wouldn’t be such a shock to the wort. My plan was to go with an expensive copper CF chiller but after searching there are so many options out there including several CF chillers under 100 bucks but made from rubber hose. I’m also thinking about making one of my own. Has anyone here made a CF chiller?
The outer tube is just circulating water so I don’t think the copper in copper adds much but expense. My son in law is supposedly making me a copper in copper we will see. If you do make one I heard if you wrap the inner tubing with 12aug copper wire to agitate the water it increases the cooling efficiency.
I saw that on youtube. The guy straightens out the copper coil then solders a bunch of 12 gauge wire around the tubing, that looks like a serious pain in the arse. I was simply thinking about getting a 25’ coil of copper tubing and running a good quality rubber hose around it. You could lube it up with dish soap and maybe heat it up in some hot water first to ease it on the tubing. You would need to cut off the fittings on each end get a larger copper T with a pressure fitting or some other way to seal around the end where the hot wort enters and exits. I already am good at soldering and am actually learning to braze, so I’m thinking sealing around that end won’t be an issue. The way I figure if it’s a total failure I can always take it back apart and reuse the hose and the copper tubing.
