Flash Boiler or Instant Hot Water

[backyard brewer]

I read an interesting idea on the HomeBrew Talk forum. The idea is to take a 50' ish copper coil, wind it into a pyramid or several pyramids. Cut the bottom out or a corny keg to use as a chimney of sorts. Place the copper coils in the corney with a burner at the bottom. Now pass water or wort through the coils. The author says he was able to pass 58* water through and have it exit 178* at 2 GPM. A home-made tankless water heater if you will.

The plan was to reduce time and fuel consumption by heating more efficiently. Seems like an interesting idea to me. I have read of people doing something similar but by installing a high wattage electric heating element in the bottom of the corney and filling it with water and have the copper wound tight in the keg. The idea there being that very fast temperature changes can be made because of the small volume of water in the corney vs. a HLT.

The author's intention is to heat strike water and hot liquor and use it during sparge to get wort to a boil faster. If you weren't interested in making chemical changes to your hot liquor, it seems like it would be a good way to save space and dollars in a larger brew system by using it to replace the HLT.

[brew captain]

Interesting idea Derrin. A little too dangerous for my liking. I burn myself often as is without having something like that to sear my flesh on!!!

Cheers!

[bwarbiany]

Seems like a pretty cool idea... Can't see myself using it personally (adds complexity and I don't have any problem with my current setup), but I can see there being definite applications for it.