Posts Tagged ‘Brewnut’
Again, digging through the archives of random crap I have shot whilst brewing over the last few years, I came across this little gem. Â It is from late 2009, and my esteemed brewing friend & homebrew mentor @Brewnut was trying out brewing a mini-mash using his new brew kettle & burner setup.
In previous brews, we had always had an issue with cooling the brew from the hot break back down to a safe temperature for pitching the yeast. Â Attempts had included sitting the brew kettle in the sink surrounded by ice and of course, just waiting for it to cool down. Â *Hint: a covered brew kettle does not cool down very quickly. Â The lid you put on top to stop it from getting infected also keeps the heat in….
Based on the past experiences, @Brewnut and I had had lengthy discussions over beer looking at plate chillers and such on the interwebs, and decided that that was a little beyond our budget and needs, then he remembered he had a bunch of copper piping left over from the bathroom reno and an idea formed. Â I should mention at this stage that besides being an accomplished brewer, @Brewnut is also a bit of a MacGyver when it comes to building, well, just about anything.
Using the copper tube, a pump he had lying around, some garden hose, some ice and and esky, he built a very cool and very functional wort chiller coil.  Trés cool.
At the start of things, it was dropping a degree every few seconds. Â This did slow as the ice melted, and in hindsight I should have not been quite so tight and bought a few more bags of ice. Â From memory I bought 4 bags of ice, but I really should have bought 6, and topped up the esky about half way through. Â Still as a first time experiment, very cool.
Not sure on the costs of this. Â I was informed that the copper tubing isn’t cheap, but the rest of it is either parts from around the house, or a quick (cheap-ish) trip to Bunnings. Â Either way, it will be much cheaper than the cost of a plate chiller, and you get the price of building something yourself. Â If you want further details, comment on the post, and I will ask @Brewnut to kindly provide some further info on the specifics.
Tags: Brewnut, chiller coil, homebrew, minimash, Wobbles, wort