Wort Chilling - done quickly!

Thanks to Jeff, we are now using a Blichmann Therminator to chill our wort. Before, we had a double immersion chiller setup. One chiller was in the wort and the second chiller sat in an ice bath. It pushed the wort into an ice bucket with a sump pump, which would push the ice cold water back into the wort chiller. It was a very effective setup for 5 gallon batches. When we started brewing 10 gallon batches, it would take over an hour to chill the wort to 80 degrees (usually closer to 2 hours).

Now with the Therminator counterflow chiller, we are able to chill 10 gallons to 60 degrees in less than 30 minutes. Check out the video for our setup.



I read that many people just hook the chiller to their water hose and chill it that way. This works, but seems to waste a lot of water. The sump pump is a great way to save water, and you can chill the wort even faster since it's ice cold. Later you can use the water for cleaning and rinsing the equipment.