I like my brewdays to be an uneventful and relaxing way to spend 6 hours on a Sunday morning but the last couple of times I've had stress-inducing issues with my wort chiller. Basically it's been springing a leak around the hose-to-chiller 'join' that means I've had to reduce the flow rate and stick something under it to catch all the dripping.
This is my old chiller, an S30 made by I don't know who but working perfectly well apart from the aforementioned leaking that's just developed.
A closer examination of the ends of the pipes shows clearly why it's leaking. Over time, my ham-fisted jubilee-clip method of attaching the end of a garden hose has taken its toll on the pipe.
It's so deformed it's no surprise it's leaking. And the other end's just as bad. I decided to buy a replacement and settled on the 'Klarstein 12' coming in at £70 delivered from Hifi-Tower on ebay.
Like the S30 it's made from 12mm OD stainless steel and the coils are not touching (unlike the cheap ones on ebay) so the wort will flow all around them. It's got many more coils than the S30 and a greater diameter so it should outperform it.
I don't want to ruin this one with jubilee clips again so I got on to Ali-Express for some stainless fittings. Somehow the Chinese seem to be able to produce stainless fittings cheaper than we can buy brass ones here.
The first connector is a 12mm compression to 1/2" BSP male connector. Only stainless would work here, anything with a copper or brass olive would have been too soft to grip into the stainless tube.
Connected to that is a braided stainless 20cm hose with 1/2" BSP to garden hose quick-connectors dangling off the end. Except of course this being China I can get a pair of stainless quick connectors for about the same as a pair of plastic ones from the UK. The hose allows the quick connectors to dangle vertically instead of sticking out at 45 degrees where they'd be under some stress and I'm trying to avoid leaks here and at 20cm they won't drag on the patio and pick up dirt when I've got it outside for cleaning.
I've tested it all and after really getting the compression fittings tight it's leak-free and I'm looking forward to giving it a go on the next brew day.