How to Cool Your Wort

Good morning. Anchor Brewing, the 127 year old brewery that was a pioneer in the craft brewing scene, ceased production in July 2023 due to financial woes.

The fate of the brewery is in the hands of an auction that will close at the end of January and already includes multiple bids that are “under review”. If you’re feeling lucky, throw in a bid before January 31st - who knows, it could sell for $1 like Barstool.

-Brandon Copeland

How to Cool Your Wort

Temperature control is critical to the brewing process, and it’s one of the most difficult aspects of homebrewing with basic equipment. Focus is often on temperature control during mashing and fermentation, but a key temperature step in brewing is reducing the temperature of your wort post-boil to a level that is safe for yeast to thrive.

The simplest way to accomplish this is by just taking it off heat and letting it cool naturally. Having done this before, I can tell you this is not very fun - it takes forever and extends your brew day way longer than it needs to be, making it less likely you’ll brew again.

The “no equipment” way to do this is by using an ice bath in the sink. This is what I did for the first couple of extract brews - have a lot of ice handy, stopper the sink and fill it with some water. When you have reached the end of the boil, move the kettle into the sink and let the ice do it’s work. You may have to add more ice as it melts.

If you’re tired of cooling your wort this way, rest assured there are better options. Brewers cool their wort with wort chillers (appropriate name) and there are a few different types we will discuss below:

1. Immersion Wort Chiller

   

   Immersion Wort Chiller (Affiliate Link)

   This is the lowest cost option and the simplest to setup. This chiller will hook up to your garden hose or closest faucet to gather cool water, and then it will circulate the water through copper tubing (usually 25 - 50 feet curled into a spiral). You “immerse” this into your boil in the last few minutes to make sure it’s sanitized, and then run the cold water through post-boil to cool down your wort. You can even make one of these yourself - I still use my homemade wort chiller I threw together 8 years ago.

2. Counterflow Wort Chiller

   

   Counterflow Wort Chiller (Affiliate Link)

   This will cool your beer faster than an immersion chiller, but it requires a external pump and a lot more attention to detail when cleaning. In counterflow the wort is passed along an inner tube with an outer tube of cool water running the opposite direction. The great part about this is by the time the wort reaches the end of the tubing and is pumped out, it has ideally reached the desired temperature and is already filling the fermenter. This is obviously dependent on the temperature of your water.

3. Plate Wort Chiller

   

   Plate Wort Chiller (Affiliate Link)

   This functions in a similar way as the counterflow wort chiller, however the heat exchange is contained in one small box with a series of plates. Without digging into the science of heat exchangers, the level of cooling that can be achieved is directly related to the number of plates that are included, so if you’re buying a plate chiller make sure to buy one with 30 plates or more.

4. Glycol Chiller

   

   Glycol Chiller (Affiliate Link)

   If you have or are building a fancy setup that has jacketed fermenters, you will need a glycol chiller for temperature control. You can also use this to chill your wort - now you’re getting into commercial brewing techniques. Commercial breweries generally use a plate chiller with a 2 stage approach - run water through for the first pass, and then second pass run glycol to chill it down to where you need it.

Beer Trivia Question

🍺 What was the first brewery in the world to have their own in-house distillery?

Read to the end to find out if you're right!

Deal of the Week

33% Off Large Conical Fermenter at MoreBeer

This is a niche sale, because the fermenter is sized at 27 gallons, so this is only for those of you with big setups. If you are pumping out large batch sizes approaching 1 BBL, this is a steal of a deal. For $799 you get a stainless steel fermenter that can hold 5 psi pressure. The only fallback is it’s not jacketed.

Brewgr Recipe of the Week

2024 Oktoberfest

Yes folks, you are reading this correctly - it’s the season where you should start planning that lovely Marzen to have it in time for September. As long as you brew by March you should have plenty of time to lager it to perfection.

Credit: Brewer 112394

And the Answer Is...

🍺 On theme with the intro, in 1993 Anchor Brewing Company started Anchor Distilling, which has been a pioneer of micro-distilling in it’s own right.