Wort through chiller

[Capped]

Evening All. Well,after a long hiatus I returned to the wonderful world of AG brewing at the weekend. Made a simple bitter to get me back into the swing of things and all went well,but I have a question. Is it alright to pass the boiled wort through the copper chiller instead of having the coil immersed in the wort? My set-up means that it's much easier this way - to have the coil attached to the boiler tap,the coil itself being submerged in a constantly replenished sink of cold water. The emerging cold wort then falls a couple of feet,aerating itself in the process into the FV below. Took about twenty minutes to go from 80 deg to around 20 deg. Sorry if it sounds like a daft question but I could be missing something important? As for the brew - 1045 OG and it's already finalised at 1012! Gotta go to work now so thanks for any advice which I'll gratefully receive tomorrow.

[OldSpeckledBadger]

It sounds like you've got something a bit like a counter-flow chiller.

[trucker5774]

The principle sounds great..........doing two tasks in one! As long as there are no nasties or creepy critters snoozing in the coils, then it is basically a curly syphon tube, but on a tap outlet Be sure the wort is well filtered before entering the coil. It wont be much fun trying to clear a blockage

[Capped]

Thank you for those responses. I'll make sure the coil is well flushed through after I've done with it,and before the next use I'll shove it in the oven at 200deg or so for sterility. Fitted to the tap on the inside of my boiler is a 'tube' of the most incredibly fine steel mesh I can imagine, which I found lying around at work ages ago. Being a magpie I took it home thinking "hmm,that might come in useful one day". It did! Hopefully,efficient run-offs will be the norm and blockages absent. I should have been more specific with my original question - what I had in mind was the fact that the cold break would happen while the wort was on it's way to the FV,so obviously all the cold-break mattter will end up in the FV. Could this potentially present any problems wrt the fermentation (though this batch went like crazy),and will it just fall out of suspension naturally and leave me with an extra thick sediment in there? Thanks again!

[Mitchamitri]

Here's an interesting aside - whats the melting pioint of a 10mm copper tube?

[Cheshire-cheese]

I used to have a book with such data in when I was doing physics. You're probably looking at about 1000C.

[Capped]

Ha ha! Copper melts at 1084.6 degC at normal atmospheric pressure according to Wiki,so I think I'll be alright to bung it in my oven which struggles with chicken tikka. Good recall there,CC! So can I take it that my wort chilling method is alright then?

[Mitchamitri]

Very important warning though - if you were to accidnetally splash your copper tube with the content of a MacDonalds apple slice it will burn right through it onto your lap.