Immersion Wort Chiller Construction

A few of you out there were curious about how to make a heavy duty immersion wort chiller. I think you might enjoy this pictorial of my wort chiller construction adventure.

We began with 50' of 1/2" copper tubing. We coiled the tubing around a Cornelius Keg. This keeps a uniformed coil from top to bottom and the Corneluis Keg is the exact diameter to my boil
kettle's opening.





I make this look easy.





Then we soldered 90 degree copper elbows to both ends of the copper tubing.














We also soldered a piece of 1/2" rigid copper pipe to one end of the coil, to an elbow, and up through the inside of the coil. This gives the wort chiller a bit of a back bone, it makes the wort chiller sturdy. Some sections of the coil were soldered to the "copper spine".

We measured the rigid pipe to reach over the rim of my boil kettle.







Cousin Lalo (Pronounced Lah-Loh) was kind enough to solder a couple more pieces of rigid pipe to the other end of the wort chiller's coil. It shoots across the diameter of the coil to another 90 degree elbow and up and over the kettle's rim.
Unkowningly, we also created the chiller's carrying handle. I know you can say it, ingenious!

From there, we added 2 more 90 degree elbows creating the inlet and outlet water supply lines.

Finally, we soldered a few more pieces of rigid pipe to the ends and soldered female threaded fittings.

We also threaded to the ends of the female fittings a couple of quick-disconnects and hoses.







Final product in its natural environment.....
a converted Sanke Keg.

Voila!

Final Note: This is how we measured the rigid pipe. Just an eye measurement to fit over the rim of the boil kettle.