Is this copper chilling system viable?

I am planning to buy soft copper tube...and bend it into a spiral shape. To chill my wort....I think I'll merge it into a bucket full of icy water and let the wort run through it.

Do you guys think that it will be effective and work well to chill my wort really fast?

It will require about 35 pounds of ice for 5 gallons.

Elysium said:

I am planning to buy soft copper tube...and bend it into a spiral shape. To chill my wort....I think I'll merge it into a bucket full of icy water and let the wort run through it.

Do you guys think that it will be effective and work well to chill my wort really fast?

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That will work. How are you going to pump the wort through the chiller coil?

Its just a pre chiller

Bobby_M said:

It will require about 35 pounds of ice for 5 gallons.

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Well...icy water....I just buy 10 or 15 bricks of that plastic thingy filled with liquid and re-use them anytime I need them.

You only need about 8 bags of ice to take beer from boil to 75. I stop there and let it cool the rest of the way down as I transfer into primary and pitch the yeast

b-boy said:

That will work. How are you going to pump the wort through the chiller coil?

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I thought gravity could take care of that. I could use an auto siphon to start the flow and have 3 different levels (1, wort on top of a chair on a table 2, chiller on the table 3, fermenting bucket on the floor).

Ma23456 said:

Its just a pre chiller

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Why is it only a prechiller in your opinion?

OP didn't propose it as a prechiller but rather a reverse immersion. The math has been done and its at least 35 lbs of ice. The cooler packs will not take enough heat away fast enough. The water will heat up very fast and the wort will pour out in the mid 100f area.

Why? The plastic on the packs act as an insulator.

A pre chiller is the best option because it's easier to chill 75 degree water than 200 degree water. You will end up using less ice.

Elysium said:

I thought gravity could take care of that. I could use an auto siphon to start the flow and have 3 different levels (1, wort on top of a chair on a table 2, chiller on the table 3, fermenting bucket on the floor).

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There is one flaw in this idea. The boiling wort will melt your auto siphon.

Isn't this also less preferable than a typical copper chiller because you will now be burdened with cleaning and sanitizing the *inside* of the copper tube that has had sticky wort run through it.

With a normal chiller you only need to clean and sanitize the outside and you can accomplish that by submerging it in the boiling wort.

depending on your ground water, why dont you build 2 chillers, use one as a typical immersion chiller, and use the other as a prechiller if your tap water isnt very cold. Then all you have to worry about is the immersion chiller going in the last 15 minutes of the boil. What you propose with gravity would be more difficult to clean imo.

MotorcycleMatt said:

depending on your ground water, why dont you build 2 chillers, use one as a typical immersion chiller, and use the other as a prechiller if your tap water isnt very cold. Then all you have to worry about is the immersion chiller going in the last 15 minutes of the boil. What you propose with gravity would be more difficult to clean imo.

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I use this set up in the summer months here. I built a pre-chiller out of about 10 fet of copper that I spared when I built my immersion chiller and I put that into cooler filled with ice and salt water. Works great for chilling the wort even on a hot summer day. Kind of sucks because I'm not recirculating the water, but I run it on to the lawn that needs water anyways.

I like the immersion chiller method the best because it simply is the easiest to sanitize. I usually put the chiller in the wort at my 15 minute addition and bingo, that's all I need to worry about. I just make sure and clean it pretty good before I put it away and it's always ready to go when I need it. The pre-chiller adds that extra umph during the summer and works well to help you get the wort to around mid to low 60s.

Any chiller where the wort moves inside a tube, coil, plates, etc. is viable, providing that there is some way to reliably clean AND sanitize the surfaces contacted by the wort. This is not the easiest thing to accomplish. As someone here points out, the attraction of an immersion chiller is that this is not really an issue, as it is simply popped into the boil kettle 15-20 minutes from the end.