Last Updated on Friday, 29 January 2010 09:01 Written by admin Friday, 29 January 2010 09:01

There has been considerable interest in folks wanting to building their own wort chillers and for good reason, a wort chiller from the homebrew store might cost $70 or $80 while making one at home will only cost about a quarter of than in materials and can be made in about 4 hours or so.  That said, the following plans for a DIY wort chiller are from Reboot Daily.

Directions for making a homemade DIY Wort Chiller

In search of ever faster cold breaks, my wife and I thought a wort chiller would help. One trip to Home Depot and four hours later, here is the result.

What you are looking at is a chiller that is set up to use a water pump to circulate the coolant. Our idea is to circulate ice water through the chiller to increase its cooling capability.

Additional points:

• Clean the oil and dirt off the copper by using white vinegar.
• When the copper wire is purchased, do not allow the store to tape or label the wire – the adhesive backing is difficult to remove from the wire.
• Plan carefully the inlet and outlet – I sized the chiller against several different pots.
• Consider drip loops for the inlet and outlet – in the picture above, they appear at a ninety degree angle, but condensate and leaks are going to clearly slide down the neck into the wort. Consider pointing the inlet and outlet downwards.

Results from having used the chiller:

• First off, the boil is HOT. If you DIY a chiller, consider that heat conducts and the entire apparatus will come up to temperature. In our first usage, we threw the chiller in during the boil to sanitize it. The result is that the vinyl intake/outake tubes practically melted. Next time, we will first sanitize the chill with iodophor and remove the heat before immersion.
• When the chiller was placed into the boil, it immediately refluxed. This is an important point to your DIY design – the air and remainder water from testing remains inside the chiller. When immersed, the air rapidly expands and remaining water gurgles out the intake and outake. Of course if you are connecting it to mains, this is less a problem. We are using a water pump which had to fight head pressure from the expansion of air.
• Though the vinyl is tough, it will chemically alter from the heat and our chiller’s vinyl tubing near the copper now has a pretty good haze.
• The vinyl tubing is connected to barbs. When heated from immersion in the boil, the barbs were no longer effective in anchoring the vinyl tubing and minor leakage occured.
• Apparently compression fittings need LOTS of compression – ours leaked slightly risking wort contamination.
• Thought I planned carefully the inlet and outlet, you cannot leave too much – the heat conducts across copper like crazy. Leave at least a foot!
• The next time we use this chiller, it is going to work really well. Maybe the beer master will post the temperature curve for us…

Last Updated on Thursday, 14 January 2010 08:13 Written by admin Thursday, 14 January 2010 02:48

This is third step in the instructions for making a Plastic Conical Fermenter.  Follow these links for parts 1 and 2.

Building a Plastic Conical Fermenter – Part 1

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Building a Plastic Conical Fermenter – Part 2

And now for part 3 …

I increased the size of my racking tube to 1/2″, Beershasta has increased his to 5/8″ at this point.

Standard Zymie weldless bulkhead fitting.

My stand is simply 2 pieces of particle board cut with a circular opening and legs made out of some scrap 2×4’s and 2×2’s.

Beershasta is mounting his in a fridge for better temperature control and lagering.

The wort gets into the fermenter from the brewpot through the counterflow chiller, down a 1/2″ ID braided vinal tube into the top of the fermenter through the blowoff.

Racking off into the cornie is accomplished by attaching co2 to the blowoff and draining through the racking arm into the out post of the cornie. Notice the ease of seeing the yeast cake. As the beer level gets closer to the yeast cake it is easy to turn the racking arm and get the last of it. Under 2 lbs co2 pressure it took about 15 min to fill a cornie. Just attach the black fitting to the out post and open the tank popoff.

Beershastas approach…

DIY Plastic Conical Fermenter Plans Part 1

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DIY Plastic Conical Fermenter Plans Part 2

I hope these plans helped.  If you have any questions, feel free to post them at our forums, or else post reply to this post.

Last Updated on Thursday, 14 January 2010 08:08 Written by admin Thursday, 14 January 2010 02:26

This is the second part of the plans to build a Plastic Conical Fermenter.  The following links will bring you to parts 1 and 3.

DIY Plastic Conical Beer Fermenter Part 1

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DIY Plastic Conical Beer Fermenter Part 3

And now for part 2 …

Then I had to do something about the gap between the plastic of the conical tank and the black screw ring the lid attached to.

First I took out the screws holding the lid on. Then, examining the gap between the ring and the fermenter I figured it would take about a tube of silicone sealer to close the gap. After checking a couple of big guy hardware stores for food safe silicone and coming up empty I found DAP 50 year silicone at my local hardware store. Pure silicone and fda approved food safe.

Rough up the ring and the body of the fermenter with sandpaper before applying sealer. Be sure not to roughen anything that will not be covered with silicone.

Lay big beads of silicone around the inside of the upper and lower lips of the ring and press it in place being sure not to line up the screw holes and making it squeeze out of the entire outside and all of the screw holes. Fill in the inner gap between the tank and the ring and press it in and smooth it out with your finger.

Don’t try and smooth the silicone around the outer ring and screw holes – just let it harden in globs – much easier to clean up later. Use the whole tube – you want to solidly fill the area between the ring and the tank.

I tried a lot of things to seal the lid and finally settled on rubber foam weatherstripping. Beershasta uses another Frost King product, a solid ridged rubber weatherstrip. I sanitize it with alchohol every time I use it and change it every couple of batches.

I used a 3/4″ PVC valve at the bottom reduced from the 2″ threaded opening. When I did this I connected a 2″ threaded pvc coupling to a 2″x1 1/4″ reducer to a 45° street L to a 1 1/4″x3/4″ reducer to a short piece of 3/4″ PVC Pipe to the 3/4″ valve.

There were some major pockets in the 1 1/4″x3/4″ reducer so I filled them with food safe 2 part epoxy putty and smoothed it out so that it had no nooks or crannies to catch any nasties. I put the 45° in there to make it easier to dump on a relatively short stand. If I had had a higher ceiling in my basement it probably would have been better with a taller stand and a vertical dump.

I didn’t take any pictures when I installed my racking arm – these are Beershastas originals that I patterned mine after. Its pretty simple – another 7/8″ hole about ” up from the base, Attach the copper tube on the inside with a compression fitting after bending it to the curved shape. Getting this tube bent without kinking requires a tubing bender. I bought a spring type one at my local hardware store for about $3.

DIY Plastic Conical Fermenter Instructions – Step 1

Instructions for DIY Plastic Conical Fermenter – Step 3

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Last Updated on Thursday, 14 January 2010 08:04 Written by admin Thursday, 14 January 2010 11:50

There has been much talk lately about plans for plastic conical fermenters.  I found the following plans here.  They were based on this forum post which was written by Beershastas at Northern Brewer.  If anyone else has other good plans, please post them in a comment to this post or else on our forums.

This is my conical fermenter. Based on the conical tank from US Plastics, it seemed perfect to do 10 – 13 gallon batches and the price seemed great.

The conical holds 17 gal though it is rated at 15 on the web site. Clearly marked gallon markings on the side, big top opening, easy to clean. Looked like a great place to start, now I just needed to turn it into the Fermenter I knew it could be.

I put the blowoff in the center of the lid instead of the top of the tank because I figured it would geve me a couple of extra inches clearance from the wort. I drilled the hole in the lid with a 7/8″ spade bit. Was a little concerned using a spade bit but it cut the plastic beautifully.

Here are the parts for the blowoff. After the initial assembly I decided to go with a 1/2″ barbed fitting for the top for the direct feed from my counterfow chiller.

Starting with a threaded 1/2″ PVC coupling going to a 1/2″ brass close nipple with a hose o-ring over it for the inside of the lid. I found a socket that fit the couplings ridges nicely and it made tightening easier.

Put it though the hole and add another O-ring on the outside.

Then I connected the 1/2″ PVC threaded elbow to another threaded coupling with a short piece of 1/2″ PVC pipe. I finished it off with a 1/2″ barb fitting. When the elbow is connected to the brass nipple and tightened it makes a nice airtight seal.

To continue with these plans, please follow the following URLs

DIY Plastic Conical Fermenter Step 2

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DIY Plastic Conical Fermenter Step 3

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