How fast do wort chillers work

Hook one end of the chiller tubing to your water source and place the other end in a sink, near a drain or anywhere that can accept hot water. After the boil, turn on the water to the chiller. Using a clean pot holder or barbecue mitt, grab the top of the chiller and swirl it through the wort a few times to start the wort circulating. The circulating wort will flow past the chiller coils and keep cold wort from collecting around them. Swirl the wort every five minutes or so. Putting a lid on the kettle slows the cooling slightly, but it prevents air-borne contaminants from falling into your wort.

Once the outside of the kettle is cool to the touch, take the temperature of the wort every five minutes or so with a sanitized thermometer. When your wort is cooled, transfer the wort to your fermenter. Another way to cool your wort is with a counter-flow chiller. A counter-flow chiller is essentially a tube within a tube. Hot wort flows into the chiller and travels through the inner tube. Cold water flows in the opposite direction through the outer tube. As the wort moves through the chiller, it encounters ever-colder water and continually transfers heat to this water.

Some chillers are made out of copper while others are made with nylon tubing run through a garden hose. Copper conducts heat much better than tubing, but is also more expensive. Counter-flow chillers are commonly attached to a valve on the kettle.

After the boil, the water is turned on and the valve is opened. Hot, clear wort flows into the chiller and cooled, cloudy wort exits the other end. A counter-flow chiller will quickly cool your wort down to pitching temperature, but the wort that comes from it will be cloudy. The wort is cloudy because it contains all the precipitated cold break solids. To get rid of this, you can direct your wort from the chiller to a sanitized bucket first.

Once the break material has settled to the bottom of the bucket, you can transfer the wort to your fermenter and pitch the yeast.

The temperature of the wort exiting the chiller depends on a number of factors. If you measure your wort temperature as it exits the chiller, you can change the wort flow rate with a tubing clamp to hit your target temperature.

Running hot water through the wort line of the chiller immediately after use will help keep it clean. Follow the hot water with a cleaning solution. To sanitize, you can run sanitizing solution through the wort line or boil the entire chiller. If you boil, fill the chiller with water first, place it in your kettle and heat the water to boiling. Following cooling, you will need to aerate your wort and pitch your yeast.

Some brewers have built aeration stones into the wort outflow tubing on their chillers for aeration. Quick wort chilling — followed by cold break separation, if needed — will give your yeast cool, clear wort to live, grow and ferment in. Five-gallon L batches have long been the standard for homebrewers, but there are some real advantages to brewing smaller all-grain batches.

Maintaining a homebrew barrel program can be a lot of fun, but it is difficult by yourself if you want to use a full-size barrel. These are the perfect sizes for homebrew clubs, however. A New Jersey club shares how it successfully operates a two-barrel program for its members. Log In Support Cart 0. Search for: Index. Reasons to Chill Wort After the boil, wort needs to be cooled for a variety of reasons. Topping Up With Cold Water Extract brewers typically boil a concentrated wort, a wort smaller than the volume of the batch.

In the Sink A five-gallon or smaller wort can easily be cooled by submerging your brewpot in a sink. It is hooked up to a sink or a garden hose and cold water is run through the coil to cool the wort. Its low cost makes the immersion chiller great for homebrewers just starting out, and most applications do not require you to purchase a pump, so it is perfect for home brewers who do not wish to purchase many pieces of equipment.

They can also be easily cleaned and sanitized, as the outer surface of the coil is the only part that comes into contact with the wort. That said, immersion chillers do have their limitations. Because they only cool the wort that is touching the coils, you may need to stir your wort using a sanitized spoon or purchase a pump and a whirlpool arm in order to keep the wort moving and introduce as much surface area as possible to the cooling coils. Depending on the length of your coils, it may be difficult to efficiently chill larger batch sizes using your immersion chiller.

A counterflow chiller features a coil within a coil. The hot wort is pumped through the inner coil in one direction while cold water flows through the outer coil in the other direction to cool it. When used properly, counterflow chillers have a very efficient design that can cool all of your wort with a single pass through, making them effective for batches of all sizes.

For brewers graduating to larger and larger batch sizes as they advance, counterflow chillers will be able to keep up with the added volume. Beer Starter Kits. Recipe Kits. Top Taps. Learn how to make beer. Satisfaction guaranteed. Connect Facebook. Added to your cart:.