Fresh wort is one of the most important ingredients in the brewing process, but that can’t mean you like cooking with boiling-hot wort. Your brew will be a lot better if you can reduce the wort temperature quickly, especially if you’re looking to ferment with lager yeast. The problem is that those instructions about chilling your wort tend to be more like guidelines than actual rules.
With modern wort chillers, you can produce amazing beer with the best materials in the least amount of time. However, chiller technology has advanced so quickly that the choices can be bewildering. For anyone looking into buying a wort chiller, this guide should help reduce the stress.
| Name | Category | Product |
|---|---|---|
| Northern Brewer | Best Overall |  |
| NY Brew Supply Homebrew Immersion Wort Chiller-25 Tubing | Budget Pick |  |
| Copper Coil Immersion Chiller 50 Feet Length | Upgrade Pick |  |
1. Northern Brewer
Pros:
- Easily connects from a faucet to a hose
- Easy to take apart and clean
- Compact design
- Copper-alloy construction ensures constant conductivity
Cons:
- Some people might find it too small
- The insulation material might become dislodged after cleaning
- Loose fitting
If you’ve been holding back from building your own brewery due to the high investment it requires, then read on … the serpent-shaped wort chiller is the most beneficial tool you can have for beginners and professionals alike.
This wort chiller by Northern Brewer will reduce the temperature of your wort while it’s still in the kettle by up to 25 degrees Fahrenheit in under 20 minutes, making it one of the most efficient wort chillers on the market. With a copper-alloy construction, this immersion chiller maintains constant conductivity and ensures years of high-quality chilled brews.
2. NY Brew Supply W3850-SSV 3/8" x 50' Stainless Steel Wort Chiller
Pros:
- Fits any pot
- Tightens and screws securely
- Great for hot and dirty wort
This is one of the best wort chillers in our list. The NY Brew Supply wort chiller is 100% stainless steel so it’s completely immune to any chemicals that can affect your wort. It is also highly flexible, allowing you to fit it to any size pot. The stainless steel woven hose is lightweight, highly portable, highly flexible, and will last a long time.
It also has 50 feet of coolant running through it, so it will chill your wort in a relatively quick manner. The end stopper is so designed that it will tighten and screw securely so it won’t leak or freeze.
The inside of the chiller is completely smooth, so it can wick off all the unwanted chemicals off your wort once you’ve added the sanitizer. It’s a 3/8” chiller and will fit any pot that’s designed for it. The chiller is wrapped in a nylon sleeve that’s easy to clean and stretches to accommodate your needs.
3. HomeBrewStuff 25' Copper Immersion Wort Chiller
Pros:
- Copper ensures fast cooling
- Very durable
- The price
If you’ve ever ordered a batch of home brewing stuff, you’re probably familiar with HomeBrewStuff. Their Deluxe Package is a great deal for first-timers and anyone interested in taking up home brewing as a hobby. The package includes everything you need for your brewing needs such as the chiller, tubing, hose adapters, and faucets.
The 25-foot copper wort chiller is a must-have if you hate spending hours waiting for your wort to cool down. It’s incredibly efficient – cools 5 gallons of wort in about 15 minutes. Plus, it’s copper – the material of choice for any serious brewer.
The package also includes hose adapters and stainless steel clamps you can use during the brew. The package comes with detailed instructions on how to set everything up, which means you won’t have any problems whatsoever even if this is your first time brewing.
4. NY Brew Supply Homebrew Immersion Wort Chiller-25 Tubing
Pros:
- Great design that can be stored away compactly
- Includes 25 feet of copper tubing which is highly functional
- Fast chilling with 15GPM of water flow
- Built with high quality materials ensuring its long life
- Simple and easy to use; even for beginners
- Excellent customer service
If you haven’t heard of the wort chiller, it’s a simple process that cools the hot wort down faster to make the beer tasting better after a shorter fermentation process. You take the wort chiller, run the cold tap water through it, and the warm wort goes into the tubes. The water in the tubes is cooled down then cooled down by the metal coils, thus cooling down the wort.
The NY Brew Supply Wort Chiller provides a great chilling experience in breweries, homebrew facilities, and hobbyists. It’s made with copper tubing in 25-foot lengths and comes with a 50/50 ball valve with a 1/2" hose barb. And you can order additional lengths of tubing if you need to.
5. NY Brew Supply Deluxe Counterflow Wort Chiller
Pros:
- Highly recommended by homebrewers
- Quickly cools down your wort
- Manufactured with durable copper tubing
- Longest copper tubing ensures more uniform cooling
- It comes with hoses and clamps
Cons:
- Takes much longer to cool down compared to other chillers
- They are not well designed to fit on bottling bucket
- Complaints about loose screws
Do you want create homemade beer at home? If so, you should have a wort chiller. The device quickly cools down your wort, which prevents contamination while increasing the tasting.
A wort chiller is basically a coil that is immersed in your wort and then vacuums to eliminate the hot temperature.
The NY Brew Supply Chiller is a copper counterflow wort chiller made of copper tubing. The copper tubing is an essential part of the device since it carries out heat fast.
6. Copper Coil Immersion Chiller 50 Feet Length
Pros:
- Affordable
- Good for 15 gallons
Cons:
- Unreliable
- Cheap
It has become a common site in homebreweries around the world to see a copper coil brew chiller designed with brews of almost any size – from 5 gallons to 100… We chose the 50 Feet Copper Cooling Coil Brewing Immersion Wort Chiller as it’s the most affordable in its category.
If you want to produce 15 gallons of homebrew or more and you want to keep your brew temperature at a steady 68 degrees or below within minutes, this is the product for you.
You may be wondering why you need to cool down your keg before putting it in the fridge. Well, that’s because the keg is still hot and will suck the cold out of your fridge and cool down your beer in the process. However, if it’s cooled down, the beer in the keg will stay in the fridge for a much longer time.
7. Coldbreak 50' Wort Chiller
Pros:
- Available in 10', 15', 25', 50', and 75'
- 100% pure copper construction
- Strong clamping system
- Double O-ring hose fitting
Cons:
- The price
- The 4' model uses garden hose fittings instead of stainless steel
If you want the best wort chiller for homebrewing then you really can't go wrong with the Coldbreak 50' model. Picking the best wort chiller is quite different from the best wort chillers in terms of design and purpose. While we were going over the best wort chiller in our top 10, we found that Coldbreak makes the best wort chiller for home brewers as well.
For any brewer looking for the best wort chiller available, they need to invest in a total immersion chiller. This is the most efficient way to chill the wort, especially if you want to do it quickly. It also doesn’t require that much strength to operate. The device simply needs to be lowered in the wort and the wort will gradually enter the copper tubing. It’s a very effective way to chill the wort down to the desired temperature without the time and effort involved in using a counterflow chiller.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What is the best wort chiller?
We get this question almost daily. So we decided to make things simple by pointing you to the four best wort chiller brands and having them face off in a blind taste test.
In this report, we tested wort chillers from the following brands:
There are more wort chillers out there than just these, but these are the ones consistently top-rated on Amazon. Why do so many brewers prefer the immersion wort chillers from Barlow, JaDeD, and Copper? Because they employ the same double-coil design as the immersion chiller used by the pros.
The result: the best-tasting beer and the fastest chill times.
What is wort chiller?
A wort chiller is a coil of copper, stainless steel, or other material that is submerged in hot wort and is used as a heat transfer medium to cool the wort. This is necessary to ensure that the yeast are not slaughtered in a wort that is too hot.
How fast does a wort chiller work?
A wort chiller works as a heat sink that rapidly takes away heat from the wort with cold water. A typical brewing procedure runs at 3-10 gallons of wort at high temperatures. The wort is then cooled down to suitable fermentation temperatures ideally between 50-70 degrees Fahrenheit. Best of all, a wort chiller can cut chilling time by 33-50%.
Why is it important to chill wort quickly?
The new ‘spitting scandal’ in Germany has brought an international spotlight to the importance of reducing the contamination of beer. There are many reasons why it’s important to minimize the time spent cooling in a hot wort.
The biggest reason is the growth of spoilage organisms. You want to get the wort down to about 80% warmth and into the carboy ASAP. Cooling the wort through the ‘Dry Hop’ process has become popular; however, this is not for the faint of heart. The increased risk of contamination is high when employing this method.
Many brewers have switched to using a counter-flow chiller, but this system is bulky, noisy, and expensive. You’d be better off investing in a wort chiller if you plan on brewing frequently.
Conclusion
Wort is the new, fun way to brew beer. It’s similar to making soup but a little more complex. In order to cool off your wort for brewing, you use what is called a wort chiller. In our article, we explain what makes the best wort chiller and then list for you 10 models that are sure to satisfy your needs.
Our Recommendation
| Name | Category | Product |
|---|---|---|
| Northern Brewer | Best Overall | |
| NY Brew Supply Homebrew Immersion Wort Chiller-25 Tubing | Budget Pick | |
| Copper Coil Immersion Chiller 50 Feet Length | Upgrade Pick | |