Brewing Process (in Construction)

GRAINS
-Bring the grains out to rest at room temperature one day before BREWDAY

CHILLING

The basic setup is that you put the immersion chiller in the boil pot with 15 minutes remaining in the boil. Connect the pump to the kettle spigot (out) with a length of tubing. From the pump output it goes through a hunk (about 2 feet) of the silicon tubing that B3 sells with their systems. This hunk of tubing is attached to a piece of copper tubing with a hose clamp. The tubing has a gentle curve to it and goes underneath the surface of the wort, just inside the coils of the immersion chiller. Although the pump is clean, and has been pumping 170F+ water for the past hour during the sparge, I turn it on for a few minutes to recirculate the wort through it and heat sanitize the setup. When the boil is complete, turn on the pump and the chiller water. The temp drops more than 100F in 3 minutes, using one of the beefy, B3 Super Chillers. It is 50' of 1/2" copper, which is a huge amount of surface area. The rest of the drop (another 50F or so) takes longer. Watch the thermometer until the temperature is where you want it for pitching, then turn off the water and the pump to let everything settle for 20 minutes. This allows me to rack clear wort to the fermenter and leave all the trub behind in the kettle. If you don't care about it settling, you can just run it off at that point.

There are many advantages to this technique. The first is that you're cooling the entire wort below 140F in about a minute or two. Below 140F you're not going to keep generating DMS like you will with a plate chiller or counter flow chiller. If you're into clean german lagers, this is a critical factor in success with this style. The other huge advantage is leaving the cold break behind. With a counter flow chiller or plate chiller you're sending all that cold break into the fermenter and you're going to need to get rid of it if you want the best lager possible. With the whirlpool chiller, the trub forms a nice cone in the kettle and you can leave it behind when you transfer to your fermenter.

After chiller has cooled wort to desired pitching temp, turn off the water and the pump to let everything settle for 20 minutes. This allows for racking clear wort to the fermenter and leave all the trub behind in the kettle. If you don't care about it settling, you can just run it off at that point.

Courtesy of Mr._Malty