Immersion chiller... I'm in love!

My first two batches I used an ice bath to cool things off quickly. What a frickin' pain. I made my own chiller with 20 feet of 3/8 copper connecting to the water hose. Went from boiling to 90 degrees in 7 minutes and 70 in 12. I stirred frequently. Best 30 bucks I've spent.

Use it once and you'll never do an ice bath again.

How true.

I cannot wait to get mine! I've been using frozen gallon jugs for cooling down a 5 gallon batch (sanitized of course) and its still not efficient enough. Cooling wort is the bane of my existence!

Yeah, I couldn't believe how long I'd waited after I first used mine. From boiling yesterday to 68 in 11 minutes. I stir the wort with the IC itself, not too much a bother to me and it greatly speeds the cooling time.

Some other great tools I kicked myself for not getting sooner:

Stir Plate $42: Stir Starters: Yeast stir plate for the home brewer

Blichmann brewing gloves $12: Blichmann Brewing Gloves : Northern Brewer

And of course a Blichmann kettle and floor burner The gloves are a godsend... if you've ever cleaned with Oxyclean and no gloves on you'll know what I'm talking about. They are full length too.


Rev.

If I really need to get it cold, after I hit 90 or so I'll get some ice water and siphon it through the chiller, with a hose running into the ice water bucket at roughly the same rate, until the ice is all melted. I can get it down to ~50-60 pretty fast this way.

Same thing for me. This was perhaps the biggest improvement in the brewing process, and it improved the quality of the product as well.