Saturday, January 21, 2012

DIY Wort Chiller

We here at Curious Souls H.Q. are always looking for ways to save a buck or two. So, when shopping around online for a wort chiller for home brewing, we found the following prices:

So, off to the hardware store...
  • 3/8" (internal diameter) Vinyl Tubing (10 feet) = $4.15
  • Sink to hose adapter (varies based on your type of sink) = $4.79
  • 3/8" X 20' Copper Tubing = $24.13
  • Vinyl Hose Coupler = $2.49
  • Hose clamps (x2)  = $1.70
  • Band-aids (x2 or x3 or x4) = $1.00
For a total of $38.26 (pre-tax, no shipping), we decided to roll our own.

Here's how it went down...




And, of course, there is the joy of having made something all by yourself! Priceless & fun!



Posted by Jonathan at 10:10 PM

2 comments:

  1. Very cool!

    Could you maybe bend the ends of the copper pipe down a bit further, so if you did get a slow leak at the clamp it would only dribble onto the counter, instead of leaking back into the wort?

    Also a tip for bending copper tube: roll it around something else with the radius you want, like a beer bottle or can of soup. That's what the techs at work do for rigid RF cables, works great.
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  2. Good idea! I bent my input tube down around a Nalgene bottle and now it is below the rim of the brew kettle. I'm afraid to fiddle with the output pipe anymore since it has the kink in it. But, I'm hoping that since it is flowing from a smaller to a larger diameter, it won't be a problem.
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