Wort Chiller Copper vs. Stainless

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ssashton

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I have a DIY copper immersion wort chiller. I don't like the fact that it comes out of the wort looking cleaner (slightly pink) than it went in. Anybody convince me why it's okay and I shouldn't waste money on a stainless one?
 
I'll convince you dump the lot and No Chill, much easier and you can split your brew days with overnight mashing too💣💣💣:coat:
 
There's a bit of a myth about copper causing oxidation in beer, and to be fair it does catalyse the oxidative pathway. However there's plenty copper in hops as it is to do that and adding copper over and above that isn't going to make any difference. However, stainless steel is shiny which is of course so much more eminently desirable. There's not really a lot to choose between them and copper has been used in brewing far far longer than stainless steel . I have both, but have now switched to a counter flow chiller which is made out of copper.

I have very poor previous on economising and not being tempted by shiny new things. I would though encourage you to consider if you are looking to upgrade your chiller whether a switch to a counter flow or plate chiller might be a better investment.
 
Isnt there some heat transfer advantage to copper too? Or is that negligible on a homebrew scale?
 
Stainless is significantly more expensive and yet as @Brewnaldo points out, copper has about 20x better thermal conductivity (413 versus 14.4 W/m K). This makes it work considerably better in a heat exchanger application regardless of scale.

So long as copper is properly looked after, ie. allowed to build up an oxide coating, it will not react with the hot wort (see The Alloys of Brew). John Palmer has excellent advice on how to clean copper before the first and subsequent uses here: Brewing Metallurgy - How to Brew which is worth reading. HOWEVER an important and often misunderstood point is that you should carefully avoid any direct electrical contact between copper and stainless elements in the presence of wort, as this will result in rapid electrochemical corrosion and ’off’ flavours. So don’t let your copper immersion chiller rest on the base of your stainless brew kettle (but the odd brief contact while stirring would be OK). Equally don’t fit a brass tap or copper pipework to your stainless kettle unless you use insulating washers or a short section of silicone hose in between.

The most significant factor however is the one that @DocAnna refers to, which is that a counterflow cooler (whether a tube-in-tube or plate design) is massively more effective than an immersion chiller and also a great DIY project; e.g. see Build a Counterflow Wort Chiller - Brew Your Own
 
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I already have so many temp controllers and tubes I don't want to add a pump and more tubes to clean with a counterflow chiller.

Thanks for the links on caring for copper, I'll give those a read.
 

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