Cooling coil

[hennels Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close hennels]

Busy designing/building a new brewstand and was wondering if using stainless tubing inside the boilkettle is a good idea?

It will be a 3 tier, so no pumps at the moment.
Currently have a copper coil immersion chiller, but with the brewstand design I won't have a lot of space putting the coil into the BK.
SO fixing the SS coil inside the BK sounded like a good idea.

SS has about 10 times less thermal conductivity than aluminium.

If SS is not such a good idea, will aluminium work better? Will it corrode over time? It should not, but still a chance?

Or should I just try and design the stand so that I can still use the copper immersion chiller....

[CapeTownBrew Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close CapeTownBrew]

I have seen loads of setups online that use a SS coil for HERMS. I wouldn't go Aluminium.

[hennels Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close hennels]

I've seen this as well, but this will purely be for cooling. No recirculating mash etc. Cold water in one end out of hosepipe, hotwater out other end

[SimonB Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close SimonB]

Why not just use the cheapest most efficient material you have? Copper...

[hennels Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close hennels]

I currently do have a copper immersion chiller, but with the new brewstand design and using a KEG as a BK, theres no a lot of space ABOVE the BK to easily dunk the immersion chiller into the BK.

And thinking long term, I don't want to lug around a damn immersion chiller if I can fix it to my BK...
One can probably fix the copper into the BK, but it's soft refrigeration copper, besides the stainless tubing costs about R45 EXVAT per meter @ eMetalsCape which is not hela expensive considering...

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besides, copper is most certainly not THAT cheap anymore....

[SimonB Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close SimonB]

Cooling coil

Copper is still vastly cheaper than stainless and alu. If you want to build in a coil alu and SS is stupidly expensive. Copper is less than r20

But considering SS thermal efficiency, If you want to waste about 75% more per meter, be my guest.