Counter-flow wort chiller (home-made convoluted 1/4")
Posted: Wed May 09, 2012 5:28 pm
I have a CFC wort chiller that I made a few months ago. Best offer gets it. It cost me about $80 to build, and 7 hours of labour. Name your price.
Here are the plans, with a different sizing...
http://www.thegatesofdawn.ca/wordpress/ ... t_chiller/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
It consists of 25 ft of 1/4" soft copper with 1/32" copper wire sweated in alternating helical strands onto the outside of it. The copper strands serve to enhance the heat transfer, in the same way as the convolutus does.
This chiller will chill boiling wort to the same temperature as the water you are feeding into it. It is sized to deliver the maximum delta T (temperature difference from kettle to primary fermentor), at a cost of being slower than other CFCs. It takes about 45-55 minutes to gravity drain a 40 L batch through this thing. My typical usage scenario for this was over the winter, when I would be putting 3 C degree water into it and getting 5 C wort out of it. I ended up reducing the flowrate of the cooling water to a crawl in order to boost the temp of the wort at the outlet to around 10C (pilsners).
I would imagine that in the summer city water would be closer to 8 C or more, meaning you would have to open the tap to get a higher coolant flowrate to get down to pilsner temps.
The reason for selling is that I have since built a new version of the same wort chiller, but scaled up (my new mockup uses a 1/2" wort tube... drains 40 L in about 25 minutes, down to around 27 C from boil).
Here are the plans, with a different sizing...
http://www.thegatesofdawn.ca/wordpress/ ... t_chiller/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
It consists of 25 ft of 1/4" soft copper with 1/32" copper wire sweated in alternating helical strands onto the outside of it. The copper strands serve to enhance the heat transfer, in the same way as the convolutus does.
This chiller will chill boiling wort to the same temperature as the water you are feeding into it. It is sized to deliver the maximum delta T (temperature difference from kettle to primary fermentor), at a cost of being slower than other CFCs. It takes about 45-55 minutes to gravity drain a 40 L batch through this thing. My typical usage scenario for this was over the winter, when I would be putting 3 C degree water into it and getting 5 C wort out of it. I ended up reducing the flowrate of the cooling water to a crawl in order to boost the temp of the wort at the outlet to around 10C (pilsners).
I would imagine that in the summer city water would be closer to 8 C or more, meaning you would have to open the tap to get a higher coolant flowrate to get down to pilsner temps.
The reason for selling is that I have since built a new version of the same wort chiller, but scaled up (my new mockup uses a 1/2" wort tube... drains 40 L in about 25 minutes, down to around 27 C from boil).
