Home-Made Wort Chiller

I've been lusting after a wort chiller for a while now. For what I do, I don't need a counterflow or plate chiller (although I wouldn't mind having either) so I'd been checking out immersion chillers. However, commercial versions are ridiculously expensive for what they are - copper tube and some plastic tubing. So, I decided that it couldn't be terribly difficult to build one.

I have had some experience working with copper tubing bends, so I knew that all I really needed was a spring bender. This is a tool that is literally just a spring. It slips over the copper tube in the area that you'd like to bend. The spring spreads out the force of the bending action, which is done with your hands, and helps prevent the tube from creasing. Creasing reduces the cross section of the tube, sometimes to zero (which is bad). That and a flathead screwdriver are literally the only tools you need. The spring bender is less than $5

I went to Menard's and picked up:

• Spring Bender
• 20 feet of 3/8" copper tubing
• 10 feet of clear plastic tubing (inside diameter 3/8")
  
• 10 foot washer supply tube (inside diameter 3/8" - may not specify on the package, so try to test fit if possible)
• Adapter to allow a garden hose type attachment to hook up to my kitchen sink
• 2 hose clamps

At home, I found a cylindrical shaped item that was about 1/2 the diameter of my boil pot, in this case I used a 1 gallon glass jug. I then carefully bent the tubing around the jug, taking my time not to crease it, into a coil, bending the two ends upwards to meet at the top. I used the hose clamps to attach the input and output tubes to the two ends (cold water input to the bottom of the coil). I then attached the two copper tubes with a length of wire, but that step is optional. After screwing the faucet adapter onto the supply tube, I was done.

In all, this took all of about 20 minutes to fabricate, two tools, and only about $22 in materials. It's not quite as long as some commercial offerings, but it works, and it's not quite as beautiful, but I like it.

It cooled 5 gallons of water to 90 degrees in about 7 minutes. It seems to do the same to 5 gallons of wort in about 20 minutes. That's fine with me, and a lot better than messing around with ice baths in the sink.

20 feet was the longest length of copper tube that Menard's had in stock. If they has something longer, I would have gone with that. It's possible to attach two pieces together, but I would have had to purchase more materials and tools (flare tool, coupler, caps) and upping it by another 20' to shave approximately 5 minutes off of cooling didn't really seem worth all of the trouble.

The finished chiller:


Chiller in action:



The cloudy yellow-green thing is the hops and everything in the cold break coming to the surface as the chiller is removed.