At about 4pm yesterday I recieved a little brown box in the mail at the office. Long story short, I have in my posession a wort chiller. And it proved itself last night to be worth every penny.
Andy and I brewed up another batch of the Marina IPA (aka the 44th) last night (late last night), and put the wort chiller to use immediately. If you do not have a wort chiller, get one. Period. We finished our boil, popped in the chiller, turned on the water, and no more than 5 seconds after water started coming out of the out tube it was PIPING HOT! Instant chillin’action. Pretty damn sweet. So we let it do its thing and had just about exactly the right amount of time to get everything else sanitized when it had droppped to a nice 82F. We then finished the process as usual. I can’t say enough how much this little copper device helps in streamlining brew-day. Its totally awesome! (Thanks again Chrissie!!)
I’d like to experiment using my chiller, a bucket of ice water, and an aquarium pump if I can come across a cheap pump sometime. I’m pretty sure you’d be able to recirculate the ice water through, and not waste so much water. I love mine, but it really does go through a lot of water in the 20 or so minutes it takes.
@ Deez
yeah pants and I were just talking about that the other day. totally possible and rest assured its in the works for next time ;)
I just bought a wortsnake professional. it is a counterflow wort chiller and it cools my wort down three times as fast as my old submersion wort chiller, just thought i would recommend it because i am really happy with it.
How is the clean up on that?
The only thing that scares me away from the apparent efficiency of a counter flow wort chiller is the clean up and sanitation of the lines.
I would guess if you are quick about clean up its not an issue. I can just be lazy sometimes… ;)
Let the water flow into a large bucket and then dump the bucket into the washing machine. Or you can use the water for something else, like watering plants, but we just dump it in the washer and start a load of laundry. We never waste a drop of water this way. Yes, if you homebrew, a wort chiller is required.