Therminator™ Wort Chiller

I hate chilling wort!!! I made a immersion chiller and it worked good but to get 5 gallons down using my south Alabama 88 degree water took forever. So I stepped up and laid down the coin for this plate chiller. I used my immersion chiller in ice water ran my 88 degree water through it first then into the plate chiller. I drained as fast as it would go straight into my carboy hose wide open. Took 4 minutes and I had 79 degree wort. Holey crap!!!!! I used 1/20th the water a fraction of the time and easy easy easy. I hooked the chiller up to my back flush assembly I made at Lowes for less than 5 bucks and it was clean let it sit in PBW for a bit and flushed again. Bottom line spend the coin it is worth it huge time saver less chance of infection and chill haze you will LOVE it!!

This is definitely the way to go for chilling your wort. It chills to pitching temperature as fast as your pump can move the wort from the boil kettle to the fermenter. Cleaning is a bit of a chore, but well worth it.

This device let me go from using probably 55 gallons of water (25' immersion chiller) per 5 gallon batch to about 10 gallons per batch. It pays for itself just in water savings if you have city water and are brewing regularly. At full flow out of the brew kettle (gravity fed from my garage to my basement) I have to throttle back the water otherwise the wort goes into the fermenter at 63 degrees. This chiller is amazing.

I've loved this thing for a long time, but after this weekend's brew, I'm even more impressed. I upgraded the setup by plumbing a 3/4" cooling line straight off the water main, which yields me around 20 gpm flow rate for the cooling water at wide open.

I didn't time it as it was a learning experience, but even with my pump running, I couldn't flow the wort fast enough to keep the temps up. At full blast, the wort would come out of the chiller at well below 60 degrees (love MN winter for cooling water). We've got so much cooling capacity, I need to increase the flow coming from the keggle to make use of it.

In theory, at 54 degree cooling water temp with 20gpm flow, we should be able to hit 68 degree wort temp in around 70-80 seconds for a 10 gallon batch! Now we just need to figure out how to get the wort out that fast.

It works!
With my little giant pump on full throttle the boiling wort comes out of the chiller about 60' F. I pump it straight into the fermenter. Two caveats; you have to use a pump or the wort will just trickle out by gravity, and you have to use hop bags (or some filter) or it will clog immediately. Hot break doesn't clog it, but hops do.

This is the only counterflow chiller that I have used so what I say might apply to all plate chillers. In the winter I have to slow the water flow down considerably because this chiller will instantly drop sub-boiling wort to below 55F with ground water as high as 40F. In the southern summers, temps are in the 90'sF and above 100F at times so the chiller needs a little help. I have an old immersion chiller that I plan on connecting to my garden hose and immerse in ice water to pre-chill the ground water to give the Therminator a little boost in the hot weather.

It is really amazing how quickly the Therminator chills the wort and how little water it takes. It is also extremely easy to clean and sanitize. This is an excellent investment and upgrade for your brewing. I have not had any trouble with clogging but I use a wire screen filter over my kettle intake tube and a pump to transfer the liquid. You might want to consider using a kettle screen and at least some whole leaf hops for the sake of your Therminator and the quality of your fermentation.

I live in Augusta, GA and our tap water during the summer is coming in at 81 F. I've been running a copper wort chiller for years with a pre-chiller coil but that still took 30 minutes and those last few degrees were tough.

The Therminator has shaved cooling time down to less than 10 minutes. I'm still running a pre-chiller coil on the water in side, due the the 81 F tap water. If you shake the chiller, you can get 68 F wort out the end of the chiller pretty much immediately. The best wort cooling money you can spend. ericwatkins_utk@yahoo.com

After using this one time, I am thrilled! I chilled 12 gallons from boiling temp to 75 degrees in 5 min!! I had to buy a hose connector adaptor at Lowe's to connect the end of the hose to it and I had to use a hose clamp on the wort hose. Otherwise, ready to operate.

About a year ago I moved to a new home, in a vastly different environment from where I learned to brew. Living now in the tropics, a very biologically active place...my brewing took a big quality hit. Of my first half-dozen batches I brewed...two got completely spoiled by unintended infection.

After reviewing my brewing process...the culprit had to be in the time it took to chill my beer with the old copper coil. Generally speaking...as we all know...the longer your beer is exposed to open-air after it has stopped boiling...the higher chance you have or wild yeast/bacteria getting into your beer.

The Therminator solves this. Completely. And since buying one; I've not had one batch of beer go bad.

Using just my ground water (that runs about 75 degrees give-or-take), My Wort goes from boiling into the primary fermenter in the span of 15 minutes...half of that is just sitting in the pot letting the proteins settle to the bottom of the pot....the rest is going through the chiller into the fermenter. The entire time I've got the lid solid on the pot and the lid on my fermenter with just the stopper-hole open. Minimal contact to room-air.

A couple bits of advice to everyone wanting to go to the Therminator vice a copper-coil immersion chiller:
a) You'll *really* want to invest in a brewpot with a spigot on the bottom. You really can't use a siphon- or pour-method to get the beer through the Therminator.
b) You'll *really really* want to ensure you have an in-pot filter / hop-blocker / boil-screen (Midwest sells a great one). The Therminator has very small internal tubing and can clog very easily. That said, since I got the boil-screen from Midwest I've never experienced a Therminator-Clog.

Cheers and happy brewing!

I purchased this to cool off ten gallons of brew. When I make five gallon batches I use the old school immersion chiller. To me, the sanitizing prep time is a little much. I bake mine in the a 450 oven for 30 minutes. This dries out any hops that may be present even after flushing. I then run Star San through to finalize sanitation. I use gravity feed, which works well from a blichmann kettle on a blichmann burner with leg extensions. I intend on purchasing the blichmann hop rocket, which would definitely need the use of a pump. The Therminator chilled the wort extremely quick. Constant monitoring is needed to monitor the temperature. I utilize the blichmann in line thermometer. Overall, works great, very fast.