Barrel Sized Wort Chiller

[Longhairedcountryboy]

I recently scaled up to mashing up 40 gallon ferments. I didn't realize how long it takes for such a large thermal mass to dissipate the heat. My first barrel took about 36 hours to come down to pitching temp. On the next couple of barrels I tried pointing a fan at it, mixing often, turning off the heat source in the room and opening the window to let the cold in from outside. None of these things made a significant impact on the time it took to cool. I was still waiting at least until the next day to pitch. I decided to take a more aggressive approach.

I picked up a 60 foot roll of 1/2" soft copper and went to work.

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I put down my last barrel in 8 hours! That was starting from scratch filling boilers and grinding grain all the way to pitching the yeast in a total of 8 hours. I am super stoked. I had to share this with you guys.

The copper was so soft, the coils would deform every time a moved it. I ended up soldering the tubes together in a vertical line down one side and soldering the bottom and top coils to the vertical tube on the other side. This made the whole thing rigid enough to handle without the coils bending out of shape. I was worried that by not leaving space in between the coils, it wouldn't be as efficient. This wasn't a problem at all. It is still very effective at pulling the heat out of the mash in a hurry.