your opinion on the best wort chiller

Hello!

I've been told that you need to chill wort down really quick. What do you think is the best rig on the market to do this? I have been looking at the therminator and then i saw this reverse direction ( counter flow ) rig.

what is the best rig for chilling the wort?

I don't want my beer to get infected because it stays hot too long.

so i'm tole

exmoonshiner

Each has its advantages and disadvantages. They will all get the job done. I use an immersion chiller and have not used any of the counterflow types. The advantage of the immersion chiller is that it is cheaper, easy to use, easy to clean and chills the entire wort at once but it is wastefull of water and depending on your set-up slower then the counterflow systems. I'm sure others that use the counterflow types will chime in with their opinions.

GT

I use a stainless steel immersion chiller. From what I've read, it's slightly less efficient than a copper one (about 95% effectiveness) but it's super easy to clean, cheap, and will last a lifetime.

To start off I'd get an immersion chiller. The counterflow chillers/plate chillers really benefit from a pump, and until you build a dedicated rig it is hard to have a pump. I do have a home-made CFC but I started with an immersion chiller and it is the way to go and many people stick with it forever. (Stainless would be nice so you don't accidentally get some corrosion when your chiller sits in water for a few months...oops!)

If you're kind of handy, make your own. Apparently copper prices have dropped. Search the DIY thread if you feel you can make one. If you don't own a torch or any solder and have no desire to make your own then just buy one. They should all be pretty good. The one I bought works like a charm. From austinhomebrew.com Good luck!

I made one much like this one with 50 feet of 3/8 tubing.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/simple-immersion-wort-chiller-33036/

The inside diameter of my coils is about 8 or 8 1/2 inches - I think I ended up with about 21 or 22 coils.
Instead of tying mine together with wire ties, I happened to have some bare AWG 6 copper wire, so I used that to make a couple of large clips kind of like safety pins - bent the wire in the middle to slip it over the bottom coil and ran the two straight parts of the wire up, one on the outside of the coil and one inside, then at the top coil, I bent one of the ends into a hook which holds the other end of the wire. I used two of these spaced about equidistant from the water input/output. This keeps the coils somewhat compressed so that it doesn't act like a big slinky and keeps the top coil just above the 4 gallon level in my 5 gallon pot. Since I didn't solder anything, if I want to move up to a bigger brewpot, I can remove the clips, spread the coils apart, and either solder or make new clips. I also used a couple of short pieces of the 6 gauge wire as wire clips to hold the input and output tubes together.
There is a little space between each of the coils, so I can gently stir the wort in a circular motion with the stirring paddle inside the coils and keep a flow across the coils. It works great - takes 4 gallons from boiling to 70 degrees in 10 minutes. I also built a small prechiller (about 10 coils) which I immerse in a bucket of ice water - this doesn't appreciably speed up cooling until you get down below about 100 degrees or so, but will be nice to have in the summer when the tap water is warm.
You will need something to bend the coils around - maybe a large paint can or something like that if you can find one large enough and to make the sharp bends at the input and output you will have to have a tubing bender (looks like a big coil spring) to slip over the tubing. It's a good idea to bend the input and ouput down as in the link so that if the fittings leak, the water will flow away from the brewpot, not into it.

I use two things. A copper immersion chiller and I also have a large party bucket that I put icewater in, or this time of year just add water and put outside for 6 hours and it will be mostly ice.

With the brew pot in the party bucket and the immersion chiller you can get the wort cooled very quickly 8-12 minutes.

Plate chillers, like the therminator, are the fastest and most expensive approach. They -almost- require a pump to move the wort.

Immersion chillers are cheap & easy, but if your ground water is much about 70F, you'll need a pre-chiller or a pump to circulate ice water.

Counter-flow chillers are in the middle.

They all work.

I love my Therminator, but I also have a pump. I used an immersion chiller for two years prior to that, and they work fine as well. The real key is simply the temp of your cooling water - if it's cold enough any of the common types will work fine.

+1 to making your own immersion chiller - copper tubing generally comes packaged as a 1' diameter coil to begin with, how easy is that? It's like someone had us home brewers in mind! I made mine for about $25 and it works spectacularly, if you are interested I will post pics/instructions.

llazy_llama said:

I use a stainless steel immersion chiller. From what I've read, it's slightly less efficient than a copper one (about 95% effectiveness) but it's super easy to clean, cheap, and will last a lifetime.

Click to expand...

+1 on the SS immersion chiller. I use a 50' SS immersion chiller. It was well worth the price for ease of cleaning and the quick cooling of my wort.

I think the whirlpool immersion chiller is best.

Whirlpool Chiller

Midwest Supply now sells a stainless immersion chiller for 49 bucks. Had I seen that before I started building mine, I would have definitely got it. I made mine out of 20' of 3/8" copper, and it works pretty darn well... but after buying the bending tool, the fittings, and all the extra stuff, I ended up over $50.

Even with my cobbled together cooler, it still works great. It all comes down to budget... if you are just getting started, an immersion chiller will be fine.

Well, an IC is certainly a great way to start, and maybe to stay with, but if you're goign to do that, you are not far from building a counter-flow chiller. Just add some old garden hose and sweat some fittings and you're good!

There are instructions online and in this forum if you are interested, otherwise you just wind up some copper tubing and affix a couple of fittings to the ends and there you have it!

The best wort chiller would be a custom made Therminator like plate chiller. But, instead of it being brazed it would be a full on plate and frame chiller with Buna-N gasketing.

I priced one of those bad boys. It would have been slightly larger than the Therminator, twice as heavy, and cost $1500.00 before shipping. Not really a bad price, IMO considering it has the efficiency of a plate chiller and can be completely broken down for cleaning.

GilaMinumBeer said:

The best wort chiller would be a custom made Therminator like plate chiller. But, instead of it being brazed it would be a full on plate and frame chiller with Buna-N gasketing.

I priced one of those bad boys. It would have been slightly larger than the Therminator, twice as heavy, and cost $1500.00 before shipping. Not really a bad price, IMO considering it has the efficiency of a plate chiller and can be completely broken down for cleaning.

Click to expand...

It's not too late to start getting a HBT collection going to buy me that present for this coming Xmas!

(Think I'll stick with my Therminator)

GilaMinumBeer said:

The best wort chiller would be a custom made Therminator like plate chiller. But, instead of it being brazed it would be a full on plate and frame chiller with Buna-N gasketing.

I priced one of those bad boys. It would have been slightly larger than the Therminator, twice as heavy, and cost $1500.00 before shipping. Not really a bad price, IMO considering it has the efficiency of a plate chiller and can be completely broken down for cleaning.

Click to expand...

I think my preferred chilling technique would to be to brew on the international space station and use the vastness of space to super-cool my wort instantly.

Hmmm....I wonder where I could get some liquid nitrogen?