A wort chiller was one of the pieces of equipment that I felt really improved the quality of my beer. I have an older version of the Copperhead - without the fittings to connect the tubing.
At the end of cooling my Ace of Spades Black IPA yesterday I noticed that a leak had formed and I was getting a steady, small stream of tap water, via a dirty hose into the wort. Pretty disappointing.
Here’s to hoping magic happens!
I’ve had something similar before, where the tubing fittings loosen up due to the thermal expansion and contraction from the copper. I’ve never had a stream but had dripping. Fortunately never had it ruin a beer yet and I get more careful every time trying to ensure the fittings are snug.
Keeping fingers crossed!
You’ll almost certainly be fine if you pitch a good amount of yeast. The stuff that might be living inside of a hose isn’t going to live in an alcoholic environment. The stuff that can survive in an alcoholic environment isn’t going to want to live on the inside of a hose.
Now if you underpitch your yeast and run into a 72-hour lag period, then you might have an issue…
that happened on my last batch, beer tastes fine, green, but fine… Sneezles61
Was your hose green? Maybe that’s causing the green flavor.
I thought we were supposed to be using blue?
Exactly… The blue flavor stays in the equipment better.
Thanks! Good news is that there was active fermentation at ~24 hours.
I only use a GREEN garden hose to the chiller, everybody knows that! Silly, Blue? Sneezles61
