Chilling the Wort

On the left is our counterflow chiller attached to the keg after the boil is complete. The right picture is our old immersion chiller that we now use as a pre-chiller for the counterflow chiller. We will attach the water hose to this chiller and place it in a bucket of ice water to superchill the water going into the CF chiller

Here's the whole setup in action. You will notice that we also use a motor hoist in order to raise the VERY HOT keg enough to let gravity do the work of flowing the wort. We place the carboys on a piece of plywood to keep them from coming in contact with the concrete garage floor. Concrete + Glass + homebrew = emergency room visit, not nice. Use caution with all glass!! We turn the tap water on at a fairly slow to medium rate which allows for the exiting wort to be at approximately 70°F as it goes into the carboys. Also note that we use 6.5 gallon carboys for primary fermentors.