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Wort Chiller

Chilling your wort is an essential part of the beer brewing process because it cools the wort down to a temperature where you can add beer yeast, which is part of what turns the wort into delicious beer. Wort chillers, also called wort coolers, are very popular because of their reliable performance and quick wort cooling process.  Regardless if you're cooling wort in the winter, or trying to beat the summer heat, our wort chillers are up to the task!

We offer both immersion chillers and counterflow wort chillers, depending on your preference. While immersion wort chillers run cold water through the batch near the end of the brewing process, the counterflow chiller is an external chiller that you pump the wort through. Counterflow wort chillers are a bit more efficient than immersion chillers because they focus on a smaller volume at a time, although they are a bit more expensive for the more serious home brewer. 

Shop our entire selection of homebrew wort chillers to find the one that is right for your batch size and your budget and receive free shipping on orders of $59 or more.

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How to Choose a Wort Chiller

Anyone who brews beer knows that the wort's quality can dramatically affect the beer's flavor. Several factors and the right equipment, such as a wort chiller, help create high-quality wort for fermentation, and ultimately, a better beer.

Making Wort

Making wort starts with mixing malted barley and water, then holding it at a specific temperature range to convert the starches in the grain to sugars. This process is called mashing and is the first step in brewing beer. The next step involves separating the wort from the mash and then later boiling it and adding hops for flavor and aroma. The result is a sugary liquid or wort that must be cooled before adding yeast for fermentation. Fast cooling is essential to prevent bacterial contamination and reduce off-flavors such as DMS (Dimethyl sulfide)

Chilling Wort

The wort's temperature needs to be lowered to below 75 degrees prior to pitching yeast; however, bacteria can promptly replicate in an environment below 170 degrees. Rapid cooling is essential for avoiding unpleasant flavors and potentially ruining your batch of beer. A chilling device can provide a fast, efficient and safe way to cool the wort.

Choosing a Wort Chiller

Home and professional brewers can choose between two types of chilling devices. After that, the devil is in the details, and it is worth considering various features.

Immersion

This chilling device consists of copper or stainless steel coils, which brewers immerse entirely into a batch of hot wort. Cold tap water enters the device through a tube connecting it to a spigot at one end. The cold water exchanges heat with the hot wort as it flows through the coils. This water exchange continues until the wort reaches the appropriate temperature.

Copper is the most efficient metal for cooling wort because of its high conductivity; however, cleaning and drying it is essential to prevent rust. Stainless steel is another excellent material choice. It is corrosion and rust-resistant, though it is not as conductive as copper. A stainless steel wort chiller may add some time to the chilling process, but this is mostly a matter of convenience and not safety.

Counterflow and Plate

These chillers have similarities and suit professional brewers or anyone making a large batch. Counterflow chillers remain outside the wort kettle. They use metal coils that promote flow in two directions simultaneously, maximizing the amount of time the wort is in contact with the cold water. A pump creates a whirlpool effect within it and forces the cooled wort out to the fermenter for fermentation. With counterflow chillers the wort flows through the encased tubing, which makes cleaning them more challenging.

A plate chiller also operates using counterflow but does not rely upon coils. Instead, this method uses a compact box with internal layers of cascading plates. Cold tap water flows in one direction over alternating rows of the metal plates. The hot wort moves in the opposite direction over adjacent plates. The combination of the metal plates' cooling properties, enhanced by the cold water, reduces the wort's temperature before another tube relays it to the fermenter. This wort chiller type very efficiently cools wort, but has many internal plates requiring thorough cleaning.

If you're looking for a wort chiller and have questions, let us help.Give us a call or email by clicking on the contact us link at the bottom of this page