Therminator or Shirron?

So my boyfriend is getting into brewing his own beer and I would say he is not a begginer but I am, he has recently been compalining about the beer not cooling fats enought, so i was looking into getting him a wort chiller, and came across the therminator and shirron. I don't really understand the way to use I understand what it does but here what i am thinking it gets set up-

garden hose and and hose from the beer goes into the cooler- the other two holes what do you hook up, another hose to get rid of the water and another hose to put the beer in the carboy, also what about the pump it says it is not needed but helpful-- Please really explain in simple intrutions on this one I want to make sure i get everything he needs.

Thanks

You are a great girlfriend.... thats all I have to say...

The therminator is more expensive but is more efficeint (less water, cools faster). The way these things work is you have hot beer go in the top and cold water come up from the bottom. Both of them have MANY plates in them that will carry either beer or water but not both. These plates are set up every other, so wort/water/wort/water/ect. This creates a HUGE amount of surface area for the cold water to pull the heat out of the wort.

Along the lines of a pump, that all depends. My friends and I do not use a pump, we just gravity feed (using a therminator) and it will take us about 15-20 min to go through an entire 10 gallon batch. If we had a pump, this time would be reduced and we wouldnt have to lift the hot keggle, this is due to our set up not being high enough for gravity feed (you will want the boil pot above the fermentor).

In our case, the therminator is working great the way it is, when someone can afford a pump, we will get one but it isnt that big of an issue. If you would like to get him a pump to make things faster/easier, and want to save some moeny, get the shirron and a pump, worst case scenareo is you put the beer back in the pot instead of the fermentor for a little bit (I would prefer this option myslef) as it will cost a little more then the therminator itself and has more utility to it.

I hope this helps, you have a lucky bf!

I have a shirron and it works just fine for 5 gallon batches. It cools MUCH faster and is also much cheaper then the therminator (check austin homebrew, even shipped to Canada it was very cheap for me). That being said the Therminator is obviously better but I would only recommend it for 10 gallon batches or greater.

Id start with the shirron unless you feel he really needs the therminator. PS. awesome SWMBO!

Either model is probably fine for 5 gallon batches. I do 5 gallon ones myself and bought a Therminator, but that was half because of the bling bling factor It looks like John Blichmann owns my kitchen considering all of the things I have with his name on them.

For either chiller you need a cold water line and a waste water line for the cooling side. I use washing machine supply line, it has standard garden hose connectors on both ends. You need an adapter to connect it to a regular faucet. The wort side uses a 1/2" MPT connection on both sides, so you'll need tubing for hot wort and chilled wort with connectors that fit. I use 1/2" thermoplastic tubing on the hot side and 3/8" clear vinyl tubing on the cold side, with Blichmann QuickConnectors on the ends. QuickConnectors screw on but only need to be hand tightened; some folks use quick disconnects instead so they can simply pop their hoses loose from the chiller.

+1 on the cool girlfriend.

However, there are two basic types of wort chillers, plate and immersion (IC).
You've picked the plate kind and they can be tricky to operate (so I've been told)

I would consider one of the top three on this link : NORTHERN BREWER: Wort Chillers

Here is a link to a thread i put about a cheap plate heat exchanger. They are used for biodiesel but its the exact same thing but cheaper. The 30 plate one is comparable to therminator and the 20 plate is comparable to shirron.

Thank you all for the information and I will be sure to let him know that he should consider himself lucky. Just kiddding , I feel better about my furture purchase, I believe I will go with the therminator as he is looking in really develop this hobby of his. And will only increase the amount of gallons he makes. He will have wait for the pump but our aniversary is soon and i think he will be surprised especially since I have some knowledge on it now, So i was thinking of getting the quick realease hoses and ideas where to get teh best deal? Thanks again for the quick feed back on this.

The best place might be your local home depot, lowes, or menards. These big box stores will have all of the fittings that you will need. Just make sure not to get anything galvinized as it contains led and can eventually poison you. If you were to ask a member of plumbing department they would be able to help you out pretty well. All of the fittings they have will be metal. The plus side to metal is it is cheap and readily avail. The downside is metal conducts heat pretty well and the connects will be warmer then a plastic one to touch.

If you are looking for plastic, then the best place would be NORTHERN BREWER just keep in mind that these are far more expensive and I use metal ones with no problem, I will sometimes use a rag if it is really hot but that is no big geal.

Another thing to consider is the tubing to move all of the wort from the kettle to the chiller. For this, I personally Prefer the silicone tubing from Austin Home Brew Supply. This is $2.10 a foot but will handle the heat better than anything you will find at a hardware store and you can still see the flow through it.