Those days you knew you just shouldn't brew

[snowcapt]

that is absolutely horrendous.
I will raise a glass to you and your loss. Sniff, sniff.

[Stinkfist]

Damn That SUCKS!!! sorry for your loss

[TheDarkSide]

Man that sucks!!! I bet the next beer is going to be killer!!

[Adam]

My condolences.

[PorkSlapper]

some for my homies. loss of one of the best.

[Ozwald]

at least you get to go brewery shopping

For once I wish I didn't have to. I upgraded my mashtun a couple months ago & I've spent every penny in the brewing budget just trying to get it to play nice with my older smaller kettles. The chiller was scheduled to be upgraded, but my kettle won't work with the Therminator, a new kettle won't work with my current burner & I'm still having problems with the mashtun. So yeah, a new chiller was in planning, but about $1000 down the road. I've got a couple spreadsheets laid out & I've carefully planned the order of upgrades to finish building this new system as economically & efficiently as possible - while only buying items that won't need upgraded again, since saving a little money now on a cheaper item that needs upgraded isn't really saving money at all. This was just one more wrench in the works.

I ended up going with a counterflow. Even though I couldn't afford it, I couldn't afford not to brew for the next several months while everything else got upgraded. And copper's way too expensive to make another big immersion chiller that's going to get retired in less than a year anyways. Even at today's prices, there's well over $100 in copper in the blown out one. With some pretty badass premade chillers out there for $200, it just doesn't make sense to spend $300 when I could just spend $200 & be done with it.

I think I'm going to try to cut out the blown out sections & turn it into a prechiller. I'm pretty sure there's more weak sections in there & I don't plan on finding them the hard way all over again. It was likely from years of being stored in an outdoor uninsulated closet & no matter how hard you try, there's always a bit of water left in there. I chalk it up to the perfect storm of aged, weakened sections combined with the residual water being in just the right place. The sudden shock going into the boil was likely the final straw.

Dream systems can be a real bitch. Can't wait til this thing is complete. Thanks for all the kind words, it was a pretty frustrating day.

[spiderwrangler]

If it didn't freeze, the only think I could think is that the outflow was blocked somehow and some liquid in the chiller was vaporized and blew out?

[captain carrot]

I use my first wort chiller (3/8x25ft) for a pre chiller now. I freeze it in a cut off bucket of water. When I'm done chilling I blow it out with compressed air. I only had it freeze up once when water from the hose drained into the prechiller before I had connected it to the immersion chiller and turned on the water. Pain in the ass getting it thawed and flowing again.
There isn't much worse than losing a batch of beer but a ruined wort chiller would be one of those things.
Bummer dude!