Wort Chiller: Stainless Steel

Arishtam stocks Stainless Steel wort chiller because of the following reasons:

1. Most locally made copper or aluminum chillers are made from AC ducting tubes. These air conditioning tubes are meant for industrial use to carry refrigerant and not food material contact. As a result, they are often dosed with lead and other heavy metal which helps in making these tubes harder and stronger. Unfortunately, that makes it hazardous for use in brewing.
2. Stainless Steel chillers are better suited for chilling kombucha tea, honey mead, and milk for the cheese industry. Unlike copper, Stainless Steel does not react to low acidity, also it is easier to clean any grime/deposits that can get accumulated.
3. Stainless steel is inert and does not accumulate the green rust that eats away your pipes. Hence it has a much longer life than a copper chiller.
4. Pure food-grade copper is very soft and prone to pinching and denting which can render your equipment useless as the pipe will get blocked. Stainless steel is much tougher.
5. SS-304 does not react with acid-based sanitizers that can eat away your copper metal over time.

Plate chillers consist of two sets of interlocking plates. We pass cold water through one set and boiling wort through the other to create a heat exchange.

Advantages of Wort Chiller:

1. It is easy to sanitize: We can simply add the stainless steel chiller in the wort and disinfect it by boiling along with the wort. So, no extra effort is needed. Plate chillers on the other hand need a thorough cleaning as the wort goes inside the delicate and intricate tubes, pumps, and internal plates of your plate chiller.
2. Repair: If a section of the wort chiller pipe is blocked, one can cut it out and repair it. However, plate chillers are brazed together and hence much more difficult to repair.
3. Wort Chiller can be attached to tap water to create the chilling. However, plate chillers need a magnetic drive high-temperature food grade pump to operate, which adds to the cost and cleaning efforts.
4. Plate chillers need to be monitored continuously for flow rate (both of hot beverage and cold water). If the two flows are not balanced, then the desired cooling will not happen. Wort chillers, on the other hand, do a batch cooling. So one needs to keep it on till the temperature drops to pinching temperature (30 Degrees Celsius).

Essentially, plate chillers are ideal for industrial use if you are planning to chill a large batch (100 Liters or more) and are brewing multiple times a week. For a smaller 20-50 liters batch, one can simply use a wort chiller pipe to achieve the desired results.

After you have removed the spent grains, one can add the wort chiller. This way during the rolling boil, the metal surfaces also get sanitized. After the flame is turned off, one can connect it to the cold water source.
Wort chiller works through a simple heat exchange mechanism. The chilled water inside the pipe cools down the wort as it flows. In about 15 minutes, it can bring 35 liters of boiling water to room temperature.

10 to 15 minutes. However Beer chilling depends on variety of factors:

1. Where are you are chilling? Chilling in the refrigerator takes about 30 minutes but chilling in a freezer takes 10-15 minutes.
2. What: Glass is an insulator. Hence glass bottles take 30 minutes to chill but aluminum cans can be chilled in 10 minutes.
3. How many: It will be faster if you add a couple of bottles in your refrigerator. However, if you add a couple of crates then it will take forever. Do check if the refrigerator is overloaded or vents as blocked. Those can also add to the chilling time.
4. Season: It will take longer for the refrigerator to function in summer than it will in winter. Humidity also reduces the cooling efficiency as the condensation of air can take away a lot of chilling power of your freezer

How to chill the Beer Wort Fast?

1. The higher is the difference between the beer (wort) and the chiller source, faster is the cooling.
2. Stirring or circulation pump can cut down your chilling time by half.
3. Faster is the chilling, less will be the haze in the beer. Also flash chilling causes pasteurization that can prevent home brew beer infection.

After boiling your homebrew it’s important to cool your wort as quickly as possible. There are several methods of chilling your wort quickly both with or without cooling equipments. In most cases it depends on the kind of brewing you are upto. Some methods to cool your wort are :

1. Using Equipments:

• Immersion wort stainless steel/copper chiller
• Counter flow wort chiller
• Plate chiller

These are some wort chilling equipments used by homebrewers. Immersion wort chiller is the mostly common used. Counter flow wort chiller and Plate chiller are a bit more complex to use as compared to Immersion wort chiller.

2. Using Natural Methods:

• Ice bath
• Using ice packs
• Sealing and leaving the wort for the whole night to cool down naturally

Many of times for the first couple of batches brewers don’t have the availability of wort chiller. And sometimes it’s also the demand of the brew to use natural methods.

Yes, one can leave the wort to cool naturally overnight. But it is important to understand the risk before you do it.

Cons: Cooling wort overnight has its own set of problems. Keeping wort hot for too long will lead to a reduction in aromatic hop and essential oils needed for the flavors. It will increase your brew day from 1/2 a day to 2 days. Also certain off-flavors esp DMS seep into the beer. The naturally cooled wort starts tasting like tinned baked beans.

The overnight wait contaminates the wort before one is able to pitch in the yeast. Sanitation becomes a big issue in this method which affects your end product. Achieving ‘cold break’ (protein coming out of the wort, excess protein leads to haze and staling of the beer quickly) becomes impossible in the slow cooling of the wort.

Pros: Leaving the wort overnight under the right temperature conditions to cool can cut you a lot of cost. You need not buy the wort chilling equipment. This method also saves a lot of water consumption as the wort chiller requires gallons of water. It also saves a lot of labor that one needs to do in case of equipments.

There are more ways than one to brewing beer. Do what works for you.

The time a wort chiller takes to cool the wort down depends on the ambient temperature as well as the temperature of the water supply. The amount of wort and the water used accordingly also decides the time taken. Approximately, a wort chiller would take around 20 minutes for a 20Liter/ 5-gallon hot wort to come from 100 degrees C to 28 degrees.