Charlottesville Area Masters of Real Ale

I'm making my own monster immersion copper chiller for about $30-$60 less than More Beer and Northern Brewer. 50 feet of 1/2" O.D. soft copper, a few inexpensive fittings from Lowe's, and about ten minutes of easy labor.  About $75 or so. The only problem with buying equipment is that I tend to exhaust my brewing budget. Oh well. Anyone have any suggestions from their chiller construction experiences?

I made mine with 50' 3/8" od soft copper tubing. I was thinking that I'd need that much because of my brew keggle. Way over kill. Even now, only about 1/2 of the coils are immersed and they're too dense too. My advice would be to make sure you have enough space between your coils so the hot wort can flow around it easier.

I also bought and installed quick disconnects from McMaster-Carr. I'll dig up the part numbers if anyone's interested.

I would agree that 50' of tubing is overkill.  You could be quite cheap about the connectors and make a system that works.

My chiller is 50', and it cools a boiling 5 gallons of wort to about 80 F in about 15 minutes.  It is effective enough that the thick base of the pot is significantly hotter than the wort. I bought 50' of 3/8" O.D. copper tubing, some hose clamps and vinyl tubing.  I coiled the tubing by hand in such a way that it would fit in the two boil pots I have (2.5 gal and 5.5 gal, Tramontina brand).  My coil is 'springy' for better or worse.  The in and out ports of the tubing gently bend over the side to avoid condensation, etc contaminating the sanitary wort.  I use the hose clamps to attach the vinyl tubing to the ends of the copper coil.  I used several short lengths of vinyl tubing jammed into each other and clamped onto my kitchen sink to neck down water into the coil.  This system works OK, but I don't really recommend it unless the goal is to make a seriously minimalist and cheap setup.

It's "in action" in this shot, and you can see that the 50'completely fits in the kettle :
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=34736072&l=a8665&id=1518533

I think one thing to consider with immersion chillers is convection.  The orientation of the cold water in and hot water out may help create convection and aid in cooling the wort faster.  I ensure that the coils at the top of my pot receive the coldest water by orienting my input and output ports.  The premise is that hot wort rises, while cooler wort falls, so theoretically the hottest wort should always be in contact the coldest water because of convection.  I don't know if the differential is significant enough to actually create convection.

Great info guys. I went ahead and twisted the copper by hand and didn't have any problems until the very end when I kinked the last 3 feet and had to cut the length off. Hmmn... I guess I have a 47 foot wort chiller. I tend to get into projects, forget to eat and get a tad low blood sugary and mess things up. On the bright side I used a brass compression fitting and threaded a swivel hose attachment to the cold input (top coil heading downward) without too much cursing or flailing about. Remembering what Christopher said about half of the chiller sticking out of the wort, I spun the coil into larger sweeps of about 13 inches or so. That way I can hopefully have all the coils submerged in a 5 gallon or 10 gallon batch assuming I by a 10 or 15 gallon brew kettle. I'll probably use the tubing and clamps on the water-out end like Mr. H. Allusions alludes to. I get i've ended up with overkill. Better than underkill and nasty coldbreaks. Thanks for the ideas. Now what to do with my 3 foot length of copper tubing? Maybe a garden ornament of some sort.

I have seen people make drip-based sparge arms out of that length.  You basically take the pipe and bend one end of it into a circle that is a diameter that is half the diameter of your mash tun.  Then you drill small holes all around that circle of pipe and have the other end of the pipe have a fitting that connects to your hot liquor tank.  You suspend the pipe over your mash tun somehow and then drain sparge water into the tube and it sprays out of the circle, which diffuses the total volume and you don't get tunneling through your mash.

The other idea would be to make a recirculator for your immersion chiller.  Jamil's page has a good write up of this.  It is basically just an angled return for your wort if you ever recirculate it with a pump.  Here is the write up:

http://www.mrmalty.com/chiller.php

 

Good ideas.
I'm a batch spargin' sorta guy so a sparge arm wouldn't be necessary and at the moment gravity is my pump so JZ'z whirlpool is out of the running. Maybe I'll just leave the copper length standing in my brew closet to remind me not to be so hasty. On another note I'll probably make the recirculating immersion chiller from BYO to speed up my wort cooling. You simply attach your immersion chiller tubing lengths to a small pond pump submerged in an ice bath and continuously pump chilly water. If I find the link I'll post it or I'll bring the article to the meeting on Tuesday.

I do exactly that, Greg.  I got my pump from Lowes for about $15, it was the smallest one they carry.  You don't need much of a pump to make it work.  It came with a plastic fitting that I permanently attached to my chiller, so I have the pump fitting on one end and the faucet hook-up on the other.  I use normal water out of the faucet to chill the wort to about 100 degrees.  Then, I put ice and water in my hot liquor tank, and submerge the pump with the fitting in the ice water.  The water pumps through the same chiller, only backwards.  Works like a charm.