Tompopo Brewhouse & Winery
Dave's got a new toy!
Monday, May 25th, 2009
Oh I am so freaking happy I could just wet myself!
That there is a wort chiller. It's not only my very first wort chiller, I built it my own damn self!
It's not like it was so hard. Well, it was, but it wasn't. If you stay with me a minute, you'll know what I mean.
When you boil up a batch of beer, you have to be careful to keep it clean. When it's boiling that's not a problem, but after it stops, any damn thing floating through the air can land in it, and if it happens to be the wrong kind of bacteria or yeast it'll turn your batch of what should have been lip-smacking good beer into a skunky-smelling, undrinkable witch's brew.
Trouble is, you have to bring the temperature of your freshly-brewed batch of beer down from two-hundred twelve degrees F to somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy or seventy-five degrees before you can introduce any good brewing yeast to its new home. If it's much hotter than that you could easily kill the yeast, and you sure don't want that.
So you have to cool off the beer, and as quickly as possible to minimize the time it's exposed to all the snot and goobers floating around in the air. Up to now I've been doing that by putting the kettle of beer into a kitchen sink filled with cold tap water. When the water in the sink got warm I'd drain it and refill it with more cold tap water, then wait for it to warm up, drain it again & refill it, over and over, until the kettle's cool to the touch. Takes as long as twenty, sometimes thirty minutes. Gets old really fast.
A wort chiller is an awesome gadget that cools off a batch of beer quickly and easily. It's not sophisticated, just twenty feet of copper pipe coiled tightly enough to fit into the pot. Hooked up to a cold-water spigot, this particular wort chiller cooled a kettle of boiling water to seventy-six degrees in ten minutes. Honestly, I was squealing like an eight-year-old girl when I saw that.
I was going to order one from an on-line beer supply company until I saw how stupid simple it was. The ones they sell on-line aren't cheap, either, the simplest, least expensive models starting at sixty bucks, not including shipping. I bought twenty feet of three-eighths-inch copper pipe, ten feet of vinyl tubing, four hose clamps and a brass fitting so I could screw it on to the faucet, all for thirty-five bucks. Wrapping the copper pipe around an old paint can was the hardest part.
I was going to wait two weeks before brewing another batch, but now I'm not sure I'll be able to wait that long to try out this little gadget.
© 2009 Dave Okonski
– - Beers - –
Not Too Spunky
On A Whim
– - Wines - –
Big Pete
– - Supplies - –
Brew & Grow
—
Wyeast
