The Copper

The copper is the vessel in which the wort is boiled together with the hops.  It's basically a 75l stainless steel vessel with two 3kw, 240vac elements and a hop stopper made of 22mm copper leading to a ball valve.

This is a photo of the wort being pumped through a copper pipe to the bottom of the copper.  As soon as the wort covers the first of the two elements I switch on the power.  It means that the boil commences even before all the wort is collected.

Once all the wort is in the copper it is boiled fiercely to produce the "hot break" which is the proteins coagulating in the copper so that they can settle out later.

After about a couple of hours of boiling the wort is cooled using an immersion chiller.  This device is purely a coil of 10mm copper which is  put inside the copper 15 minutes before the end of the boil to sterilise it.  Once the boil finishes I run cold water directly from the tap through the immersion chiller which causes the wort to cool to pitching temperature in about 45 minutes for a 50l batch.  The hot run-off is collected and used for the clean up operation.

I also have a counterflow chiller that I have used a few times.  It chills reasonably well but it really needs to be longer to be more efficient.  In fact, I connect it up in series to the immersion chiller (CFC first) and use it that way.

I am concerned though that I won't be able to clean it properly before use.  I spotted some mould in the flexible pipe coming from the CFC a couple of batches ago.  I am now worried that if mould can grow on that pipe what could be growing inside a 25 foot coil of copper?  I may give it a good run through with caustic soda or something to make sure it's clean then try it again.

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