mwill07
Well-Known Member
so I recently built a CFC from SS tubing. I detailed the build here and testing here. In summary, I purchased the tubing and fixtures from stainlessbrewing.com. The coil is 25', terminated with stainless tee fittings and using bushings and JB Weld.
total cost: $90.25, plus the cost of the hose (which I already had).
Why stainless? I may choose to go LoDo one day. I'm trying to future-proof myself a bit here. Plus, stainless is easier to clean, it's shiny, and the loss in thermal conductivity is negligible (I think), especially for a 25' chiller.
Here are some pics:
hose and tubing:
feeding the hose over the tube: this took about 2 hours to do.
Dry fitting the hardware:
JB welding on the bushings:
mounting the chiller (hard-plumbed to my rig with copper pre-chiller):
thermocouple to track wort exit temp:
Performance: (T1 = thermocouple - external temp of ss tube, T2 = directly measured temp discharging from CFC)
In summary, with ~60 F tap water, I can start draining into the carboy at pitching temp within 5 minutes of the end of the boil, which is pretty great. I can have the entire 5 gallons in the carboy at pitch temperature within 10 minutes. This is comparable with my old plate chiller, which could do the job in less than 7 minutes. In my opinion, the extra 3 minutes for the CFC is more than worth it, given the cleaning requirements of the plate chiller.
total cost: $90.25, plus the cost of the hose (which I already had).
Why stainless? I may choose to go LoDo one day. I'm trying to future-proof myself a bit here. Plus, stainless is easier to clean, it's shiny, and the loss in thermal conductivity is negligible (I think), especially for a 25' chiller.
Here are some pics:
hose and tubing:
feeding the hose over the tube: this took about 2 hours to do.
Dry fitting the hardware:
JB welding on the bushings:
mounting the chiller (hard-plumbed to my rig with copper pre-chiller):
thermocouple to track wort exit temp:
Performance: (T1 = thermocouple - external temp of ss tube, T2 = directly measured temp discharging from CFC)
In summary, with ~60 F tap water, I can start draining into the carboy at pitching temp within 5 minutes of the end of the boil, which is pretty great. I can have the entire 5 gallons in the carboy at pitch temperature within 10 minutes. This is comparable with my old plate chiller, which could do the job in less than 7 minutes. In my opinion, the extra 3 minutes for the CFC is more than worth it, given the cleaning requirements of the plate chiller.