Blichmann Engineering Therminator Wort Chiller

Let's face it: If you've got ice-cold cooling water and high flow rates, it's a short punt to design a cooler to get the job done. But the reality of brewing is that fall, spring and summer bring higher groundwater temperatures that causes a struggle to cool wort to acceptable levels. For ales, if you can't chill to 68°F, your fermentations will produce higher levels of esters, fusels, and other compounds that you may not want in your beer (except for those esoteric Belgians!). For lagers, the effect is even more pronounced.

At Blichmann Engineering, they've leveraged 20 years of experience designing cooling systems and coupled it with 17 years of homebrewing experience to develop the Therminator™. The result is a chiller that works well all year long, providing not only raw cooling horsepwer but the features brewers demand:

• Broad operating range at fast cooling rates.
• Low water usage for high efficiency.
• Low restriction for gravity feed at high flow rates.
• Compact size for easy use and sanitation.
• Heavy-duty mounting brackets for simple installation.
• Convenient straight-through water connections to prevent kinked hoses.
• Resistance to plugging.
• Substantial reduction in ice usage for chilling below cooling water temps.

The Therminator™ is the fastest way to chill your wort to yeast pitching temperature and get your fermentation off to a quick, bacteria-free start.

• All 316 stainless steel plates and fittings.
• Chill like the pros, as the Therminator™ is identical to commercial brewery chillers.
• Brazed together with pure copper in an oxygen-free furnace, with no potential leaks like a gasketed unit!
• Chill 10 gallons in 5 minutes to 68°F using 58°F cooling water at 5 gallons per minute (gpm).
• Great for southern climates! (See notes on FAQ tab.)
• Ultra compact (7.5" W, 4" D, 3" H)
• Super-low restriction is ideal for gravity feed.
• Easy to clean and sanitize, small enough to boil!*
• Garden-hose thread connections on the water side means no extra adapters to buy!
• 1/2" male NPT fittings on wort side mates up with virtually all common hose-connector types, and they're easier to sanitize than female fittings!
• With the lowest water consumption on the market, it saves you money!
• Comes with heavy-gauge stainless mounting bracket.

The Therminator has male garden hose fittings for the water in and out. If you are attaching a regular garden hose to it, you will need a female to female adapter. 

The Plate Chiller Backflush Adapter makes it easy to attach a garden hose to the NPT threads of the heat exchanger to simplify washing. It can either be looped to pump hot cleaning solution (such as PBW) using a pump, or it can be attached to a faucet using a kitchen sink-to-garden hose adapter to push hot water through in the opposite direction of the normal wort flow. 

Also recommended are the Blichmann QuickConnect™ fittings. These allow you to easily attach either 3/8" or 1/2" tubing to the wort side of the chiller. With these fittings, everything that touches the wort is either stainless steel or silicone. They install without tools, are easy to disassemble, and sanitizing is easy. You need one fitting for the wort in, and one for wort out. See below to add.

Blichmann Engineering is committed to continuous product improvement, so design details may change from the photos shown.

More info here.