Making an IC (Immersion Cooler)

Posted by: pdtnc on: July 10, 2009

• In: Brewing
• 3 Comments

Making my Immersion cooler:
I made the aluminium spacer strips to hold the coils about 5mm apart, the strips also let it sit nicely on the bottom of my stockpot boiler without interfering with the hop strainer.
I wound the 10 metres of 10mm Diameter copper around a small 15 litre bucket which left it quite neat then knocked up the ally strips at work last night, just had to add a short length of bent 15mm pipe to get the coils end points closer so I could bring the inlet/outlet pipe closer together so I can cable tie them when I’m done.
I have the hose connections pointing horizontal with 2x 10mm solder-ring reducers which fit nicely in the end of the garden hose to be jubilee clipped:

Soldered up and connected:
No leaks…

Cooling test Update:
Warming up, bits of pipe scum coming loose and floating…

On the boil:

The Cooling results are, from 100 Deg C:
7mins – 49 C
10mins – 39 C
15mins – 28 C
20mins – 23.6 C
25mins – 21 C
I had to get my stopwatch out and stirred the water at least every 2 minutes, the boil was of roughly 30 litres, I’ll only be brewing and cooling about 12 L in reality.
IC is nice and clean now ready for Saturdays brewday 🙂

Tags: ag, all grain, beer, beer making, coil, copper coil, copper pipe, full mash, heat exchanger, home brew, home brewing, ic, immersion chiller, immersion cooler