Quick and inexpensive chiller

[trainfever]

I am new to brewing but I have always liked to tinker and build things. Reading on here about chiller and how expensive they are, I came up with a faster chiller. It sill uses copper tubing though. I had a coil of 1/4 tubing that I used. I bent that to shape and had both ends coming out over the pot. I bent one end downward, this will be the exit side. I then hooked up a small powerhead to the inlet side of the tubing. I just used a small piece of clear tubing that fit over the end of the copper tubing and the end of the powerhead. A powerhead is a submersible pump used in fish aquariums. A small one can be purchased for less than 20 bucks. The one I used is smaller than a fist. I placed about 10 soda bottles filled with water into the freezer. I didnt need to buy anything because I had everything around the house.

To test, I boiled a pot of water, then placed in the sink full of cold water and the frozen soda bottles. I then hooked the powerhead to the tubing and pumped the ice cold water through the hot water. I didnt need to hook up to the faucet. I just kept pumping the ice cold water through the hot water. This cooled the hot water down in about 5 minutes.

It works basically the same as a regular chiller, it just pumps a lot more colder water through the chiller a lot faster.

 

[Bobby_M]

Great idea but pumping icewater through chillers is not new. If you step up how much wort you're trying to chill, you'd benefit from collecting the first gallon or two of output water so that it doesn't go back into the icewater. That water is typically in the high 100's and I'd rather dump than add that much heat back to the icewater.

Take some pics of your handy work!