So I’ve been steadily brewing for months now. Ever since I stepped up my game (and monetary commitment) to the craft and bought my kegging setup, I’ve been brewing constantly. Taking out the bottling step definitely made things easy. The bottling process at the end was always something I dreaded; the worst part of brewing is cleaning and there is a lot of it during bottling. First you have to clean each individual bottle. I used to keep my beer bottles in a big bin. Before depositing the beer bottles to the bin, I tried my best to clean them. The theory was I would clean each bottle and keep it in the bucket and be able to quickly sterilize everything in a big bucket of BTF (Iodophor). In reality, I didn’t clean the bottles enough and before the bottling step, I found green molds growing at the bottom of most of the bottles. At that point, I’d have to start using some serious elbow grease to get out the yuck out. It took hours to finally clean and sterilize the bottles. That wasn’t even the end of the headache. Once you got clean bottles then came filling part. I tried to be careful again, but I eventually spilled beer all over the place. I’m a clean freak when it comes to bottling, so if I got a little beer on the side or top of the beer bottle I would sterilize it again – this is all to ward off contamination. Knock on wood, but I haven’t had a bad batch yet. Not only do I clean the beer bottle, but I also my work area. After I finish cleaning the bottle and work area, I’m back to bottling again. Rinse and repeat about 50-60 times and the work is done. Wait, let me repeat that… 50 or 60 times and I’m done. I neglected to talk about putting the caps on the bottles, but that isn’t much trouble at all. In fact, every cap I put on a bottle seems like a small victory.
So now that you have some idea of what a pain bottling is, imagine taking that all out of the picture. Yeah, it is much better! Like all hobbies I choose, brewing is yet another craft you can always improve on. In a continuing effort to make better beer or make the process more efficient, I decided to try to cut out the longest part out of the brewing process. All the beer I brew use all-grain recipes; this means I don’t use malt extract. You’d think the longest part is the mash and sparging, but it actually is a later step, or should I say, the last step before fermentation. If you haven’t guessed, it’s cooling down the beer after the boil. Before you can put yeast in the sugar rich wort, you must first cool the liquid to around 70 degrees. I used to use an immersion chiller, but even with this, it took me several hours to cool the hot wort to room temperature (I live in San Diego). I read on several beer brewing forums that you could quickly chill beer after the boil using a counter current wort chiller. This technique has cold water go past the hot wort in the opposite direction. You can pretty much go to a full boil at around 200 degrees to 70 degrees using a counter current wort chiller. Instead of waiting 2-3 hours to cool the liquid, I can do it in 10-15 minutes.
I always admired how people documented every step of a DIY project. I haven’t done this for any of my projects, but I though I’d try it once. Oh, I forgot to say that I decided to make my own after I started pricing counter current wort chillers on the internet. Without going into each site and what types are out there, most systems cost around $150 with more elaborate systems starting at $300. This was way out of my brewing budget. Ok, so onto my tutorial.
First, let’s go through my shopping list.
- 50 Feet of 1/4″ refrigeration copper tubing
- 3/4″ diameter plastic hosing
- 2 x 1/2″ t-joint copper tubing
- 2 x 1/2″ to 1/4″ copper reducers
- 5′ of 1/2″ copper tubing
I was able to get everything from a local Home Depot for about $40.
Now to the assembly. Take the 1/4″ copper tubing and straighten it out. By straightening out the copper, it’ll make the next step a breeze.

Straightening out the copper tubing
After the copper tubing is straightened, it should look like this.

The straightened copper line ready for the next step.
Now that you’ve got a straight line of copper, it’s time to open up the garden hose and insert it over the copper tubing.

Garden hose inserted over the copper tubing
Now that you’ve got the garden hose surrounding the copper tubing, it’s time to curl it. I used a soda keg to wind the garden hose / copper tubing.

Winding the garden hose around a soda keg
It’s also helpful to have somebody guide the garden hose while the other person is ensuring the garden hose is wrapping tightly.

Pops helping me wind the garden hose
At this point you’ll have a wound garden hose around the copper tubing. It’s now time to make the attachments. My brother and I took turns sodering.

Marty sanding the copper tubing before sodering

The finished copper endings
The above image didn’t resemble the final setup. I first got 3/4″ copper tubing and after assembling the ends, I found the 3/4″ diameter garden hose didn’t fit over the copper tubing, so I went back to the drawing board and got 1/2″ copper tubing (for the ends). Just imagine the 3/4″ fittings with 1/2″ fittings.
I then inserted the assembled fittings (in the picture) over the 1/4″ copper tubing inside the garden hose and cinched the garden hose over the fittings. After everything was snug, I sodered the 1/4″ copper tubing to the assembly.
Now you get to see pictures of it in action.

Using the counter current wort chiller

Chilled to 70 degrees straight to the fermenter
Having cut down my brewing process by a few hours, now I can brew a batch casually in an afternoon. Yay!