Charlottesville Area Masters of Real Ale

Jamey had a problem with his wort chiller getting a whole in it a while back. Well, I can personally sympathize now.  After an otherwise smooth brew day, I went to chill my wort and, lo and behold, the liquid coming out of the chiller looks a lot like the color of my wort.  Plus I'm hearing bubbling in the pot.  Sure enough, there's a 1/4" lengthwise split in the copper about 1/2 way round the 50' length of coil.  I was so panicked that I called Bruen who advised me to chilled the pot in my bathtub w/ 40lbs of ice. The weird thing is that my chiller is little more than a year old, so I certainly didn't expect this to happen so soon.  Beware of copper tubing breaks!!!!

I’m sorry to hear that, Spidey. I was lucky enough to notice mine before I threw it in the pot.

For me, I’m 100% certain that my burst was from ice. I’d had my wort chiller for, easily, 12 years and I never had an issue with it. But we’ve had some absurd temperatures this winter, and if you aren’t actually inverting your chiller and getting all the water out of it after you are done chilling, there will be water in there with the potential to expand and burst your copper.

Everyone – Learn from our stupidity.