I know a few people on here have these kits. What did you use to attach the cooling loop to a kitchen tap? I’ve done two circuits of Homebase and B&Q and cannot find anything with a male 1/2″ thread. I emailed Massive Brewery and they suggested a universal tap to hose fitting from Wilkinsons. Could not find that either. Help!

Pics of what you’re trying to connect to.

does the copper chiller have some hose attached to it? A standard garden hose fitment should be a push fit onto this, although you may need to dunk the end of the hose in hot water to soften it. Then standard garden hose attachments will do.

The outlet hose isn’t such an issue as long as it’ll reach the sink – but if you can use it to fill a waterbutt, that’s slightly better than pouring hot water down the sink

Feel my bodge!

Next one will be done outside, and drained into a water butt, as John suggested.

Jesus, that work top needs attention.

This hopefully shows the problem. Sadly the thread under the tap cover is the wrong size

Those knives need sharpening too 🙁

It does indeed, DD, it does indeed! We’re going for ‘shabby rustique’ as a look this year. 🙂

Next one will be done outside,

Is that because of excessive steam/stink from doing it in the kitchen? I see on the MB website he’ll be selling kits again in the next few days so hopefully will be able to pick one up soon. Trying to gauge how much trouble I’ll get in doing it inside!

Worktop? knives? HE’S GOT A TEA COSY!!!!!

Cut into the cold feed pipe under the sink.
Attach a speedfit T with a short bit of coppe pipe and a service valve.
Put whatever fitting you need on the end of that (city plumbing/plumb centre)

You can still use the sink and it’s a lot neater.

One of these should do the trick if you’ve got a removable aerator fitted to the tap.

Zilo, there was a lot less smell than I expected. Was thinking more that I could use harvested rain water to cool it, possibly refilling a butt with the same water.

Course he does Davidb,it gets cold in a 17th century chateau at this time of year.

Was thinking more that I could use harvested rain water

provided your source of rainwater is a lot higher than the chiller, it might work

as you know the idea of this is a heat exchange – cold water going through the copper coil chills the wort, while the hot wort warms the water. Provided the cold water going through the copper coil has enough pressure to keep it flowing AND cold, you should be ok…

Another thing with the immersion chiller – first 40-50 deg of cooling happens pretty quickly; the remaining 30-40 deg takes a lot longer as there’s less heat differential to exchange…

BTW the cold water inlet looks like it’s designed for one of these:

the barbed bit on the left unscrews to reveal a suitable sized thread. You should also be able to get adaptors for such a thing at a decent DIY store

John, I’ve got the height sorted. Might do a test run of it. Plenty of rainwater going spare!

let us know how you get on.

I had an immersion chiller, but the bit where the plastic hose joined the copper kept springing a leak and leaking (potentially contaminated) water into my wort. Diluted it to the point that it needed reboiling and then chilling naturally overnight 🙁

I lost a few brews over summer to that – and phenols due to some chlorine based cleaning chemicals ingrained into my fermenters. I binned the fermenters and the chlorine based cleaner and started again with new fermenters and “purple beer-line cleaner” instead. Not lost a batch to phenols since…

I now have a plate chiller (pic below), which does the job in the time it takes to drain the boiler. More expensive but uses a heck of a lot less water (could be an issue if you’re on a water meter)

I didn’t use my immersion chiller first time round as I couldn’t connect it to my tap so I’d like to get it sorted for the second batch this weekend!

I have an awkward tap; the only thing I’ve found that connects to it is a Hozelock connector, so does anyone know a way of connecting one of those to the Massive chiller?

Do you have a shower? It’s the same attachment as found on most shower hoses.

I use a pump left over from a home birthing kit we used for the births of 2 of our kids – this lifts the water from the water butt, through the chiller, then back out to a different water butt – it has a connection very like the one above, I think it’s a pond pump of some sort.

Do you have a shower? It’s the same attachment as found on most shower hoses.

ta, that’s good to know! I’d rather chill the wort in the kitchen but if I have to do it in the bathtub then so be it!

Just picked up a male/male 1/2″ BSP thingummy from Plumb Centre so that I can unscrew the shower head and connect up the immersion chiller instead.

Pleased I can used the chiller now but still baffled as to how it was originally intended to be used, given the connector and short hose length!

What I did was to have the normal male hozelock thing on the kitchen tap (as that’s what I use for my hose anyway). Then I have a short length of garden hose with the female hozelock on it. Then I took the adaptor off the end of the chiller’s hose, put that hose inside the open end of the garden hose and then gaffa taped. Worked fine.

Gotta love any solution involving gaffa tape!
I too have a Hozelock jobby for my kitchen tap, I did find this online which is from the Hozelock aquatic range which I think should work:

I will probably get one off eBay at some point and try it out!

Zilog, linky please

http://www.hozelock.com/aquatics/liner-hose-and-fittings/pond-accessories/reducing-hose-connector.html

Plenty on eBay/Amazon or I’m sure you could get one at local aquatic/pond shop.

…which is where I’ll be off to at the weekend! Just tried hooking it up to the shower – the pressure just blasts the connector off the hose!

I posted this on the Massivebrewery twitter account the other day as someone else was having a similar issue. After trying to figure out a “proper” way to connect it all in the kitchen, I ended up using this bodge which is actually very effective.

I just butchered a £2.49 cheap rubber shower attachment and pushed the hosing through. No need to secure it at all. (This has worked for 4 batches now). There is a lip on my tap which helps it to stay attached although I’ve only found it necessary to run it at low pressure. I have the brass attachment on the exit tube to keep it from potentially spraying around anywhere.

Just an update with another (bodge) solution! I eventually got around to buying the Hozelock reducer that I posted about above. (20mm/12mm version according to eBay, although I think the actual size printed on the adapter is slightly different…)

By heating them up I was able to cram the hosepipe inside the wide end and the smaller tube from the chiller over the narrow end (that was a struggle but it worked and it ain’t going anywhere!).

The end result is I can go from a Hozelock tap adapter to the chiller with no gaffer! It seems totally watertight and I can run at a much higher pressure than with the gaffer solution (in fact I can run it high enough that the chiller starts leaking where the tube meets the copper pipe).

(I like albino’s solution above as well but that wouldn’t work for me due to the shape of my stupid tap!)