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1/2 in. immersion wort chiller ?

Polar Bear

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I was just over at my brothers helping him clean up his garage so he can move into his new house. I came across 21 feet of 1/2 in. copper tubing that he ended up giving me. I was going to make an immersion wort chiller out of it but I feel it may be to large of a diameter. I brew 3 gallon batches and was going to make a chiller out of 1/4 or 3/8 inch copper for effeciancy. Other than increased water usage does anybody have an opinion on this matter.  Build it 1/2 in. because its free ;D, make it a smaller diameter for more efficiancy  :-\  or it wont really matter due to the smaller batch size  ???
 
diameter of the pipe is less important than the surface area you total.

 
diameter of the pipe is less important than the surface area you total.


So you may have more surface area with 1/2" (read: better heat transfer) than you might get with 50 feet of 1/4" or 3/8" copper. As long as your brew pot will take it without spilling over, you will probably be better off with the 1/2".
 
Yeah - I made a 3/8" copper immersion cooler works great. Bending it was a bit of a bi-atch (good workout) --- go to you local HW store and get some copper tubing bending springs and leather gloves.
 
I upgraded from a typical 3/8" 25ft store-bought chiller to a handmade 1/2" 50ft chiller when I moved outside. 

I now break down the mash tun during the boil and use the first (hottest) run-off to fill the MLT with oxyclean, and also fill a fresh bucket with rinse water, and then switch to the pump recycling ice water, so there is zero water wasted.  Works well, and speeds cleanup. 
 
88Q said:
So you may have more surface area with 1/2" (read: better heat transfer) than you might get with 50 feet of 1/4" or 3/8" copper. As long as your brew pot will take it without spilling over, you will probably be better off with the 1/2".

Isn't  it hilarious that when you are googling around for this sort of information you almost always end up finding sites that use 1/4" tube  for the HEX and  5 gallon Gott type mash tuns that are under size?
I wonder if it isn't simply because they are older and thus got the larger number of hits.  So they pop up first.

 
I used a 1/2" chiller for the first time on my last batch, 6 gal boil. I was stunned at how fast it cooled my wort.  I didn't make it so don't know the length but I'm sure it's less than 20 feet.  I put enough water in an iglo cooler and imersed a wal-mart fish tank pump and covered with 7lbs of ice and it was cool in 15 minutes.

Oh, topic.  I like my 1/2".  :-X
 
1/2 inch will increase the flow of the cooling medium mass as well as the contact surface area.  It will definitely make a difference.  Wider is better, at least in this case.  ;)
 
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