Do I need a pump?

I am building a similar tiered brew stand like the one pictured in the link.
http://www.brewtree.com/i/SUB EZ Access/tn_DSC01635.JPG

My question is... do I need a pump for circulating wort through my counterflow chiller? or will gravity be good enough?

My boil kettle is just as low as the one pictured and I will be keeping the counterflow chiller a little lower to the ground but will be moving the chilled wort to a modified keg for fermenting or a glass carboy which will be sitting on the ground.

Thanks for the input

Gravity should be good enough seeing that you live in AZ and I imagine the water temperature will be pretty warm year round. Although you may run into problems when transfering to the fermenter depending on how high the bottom of you boil kettle is. If the fermenter sits below it you won't have any problems. You don't want to have the wort level in the kettle get the same or lower than the wort level in the fermenter because obviously gravity won't work anymore.

I recommend using a pump for the sole purpose of recirculating the wort back into the boil kettle while chilling. This helps reduce the temp of the wort as a whole to under 140 F when DMS stops forming. If you simply just gravity feed it slowly into your fermenter, the wort in the boil kettle will stay hotter longer. Just an idea I picked up from listening to jamil z's podcast.

Thanks! This is the kind of info I was hoping to get. Do I just simply run it through my cfc and loop it back into the boil kettle until the kettle temp total is 140 or lower? then start running it right into the fermenter?

Great idea!

bing09 said:

I recommend using a pump for the sole purpose of recirculating the wort back into the boil kettle while chilling. This helps reduce the temp of the wort as a whole to under 140 F when DMS stops forming. If you simply just gravity feed it slowly into your fermenter, the wort in the boil kettle will stay hotter longer. Just an idea I picked up from listening to jamil z's podcast.

Click to expand...

Yes just run it thru the cfc and back into the kettle. You can stop running it back into your kettle until after it gets under 140 but I wait till it gets down to pitching temp so that all the cold break stays in the kettle. I then do a whirlpool and let that settle to form a trub cone and then siphon off that. If you want more information regarding whirlpooling check out mr.malty.com. I am able to bring 3 gallons of wort down to 68 degrees in about four minutes doing it this way. Good luck!