Review on 🐍 Stainless Steel Immersion Wort Chiller - Northern Brewer Silver Serpent by Colleen Jackson

I'm new to the home brewing hobby and didn't use a wort chiller for my first home brew. I'm not stingy, but I also didn't want to be the sucker who walks into a homebrew shop and brings hundreds of dollars in luxury gadgets that I'll never use. I've read a lot about homebrewing and I've read over and over again that chilling the wort in an ice bath works great. Then I tried. wow boy First a few basic terms. Wort cooling is an important step in brewing. Generally, your first big job is "cooking," which is when you boil grains in water (5 gallons is a typical batch of home brew) for an hour or two. During this process, depending on the drink, you can also brew different types of hops and Co. for the taste in the kettle - the liquid is now called "wort". During boiling, the fermentable sugars make their way into your wort, which your yeast feasts on and produces the alcohol in your beer - the "primary fermentation". (I'm oversimplifying here and just to put this product in context.) So your wort is simmering for a specific amount of time, and your recipe says it's time to "pump in," i.e., your yeast into your wort bring to start fermentation. But yeast is alive, and if you drop the yeast in boiling wort, you kill it. So you need to chill the wort, and fast - there are nasty bacteria that love the soupy taste of the wort and will contaminate your beer if given even the slightest assistance. So you need to quickly transfer the wort into your safe primary fermentor, which means you need to chill the beer quickly so you can pour in your yeast. The ice bath is easy - just place the kettle in a large container filled with ice water. The problem is that this only cools the kettle from the outside, and it also requires you to lift and move five gallons of piping hot liquid. . . it's not fun and it's not fast. A much quicker method is to use a wort chiller, which is a simple metal coil attached to two pieces of food-grade tubing. The Northern Brewer Chiller comes with a hose adapter on one end - you simply attach it to a garden hose (or sink if you have the right faucet or faucet adapter). You then put the wort chiller in the wort about five minutes before you start chilling (putting the chiller in boiling wort will sterilize it) and then turn on the water. Cold water flows through the piping, cooling the wort from the inside, and then the heated water exits through a second pipe at the other end of the cooler - drain into a sink or safe spot in the yard. Chilling in an ice bath took over an hour on my first homebrew attempt, but chilling with a wort chiller took about twenty minutes on my second batch - a big difference and a lot easier. Cleaning is easy. Some will say copper is better because copper is easier to manipulate to fit your exact size needs, but this cooler is fine for a five gallon batch of beer. A highly recommended essential tool for any home brewer - well worth the investment.