The Modular Worterator: Post-boil brew day needs in one unit

Once my homebrewing efforts moved out of the kitchen at the strong suggestion of my wife, I found myself having a hard time effectively getting 5 or 10 gallons (19 or 38 L) of wort close to fermentation temperature. In addition, after a long brew day I often forgot to set up my oxygenation stone and hated cleaning and sanitizing all the various parts individually.

I invested in a good, quality plate chiller (Blichmann Therminator™) early on to try to achieve efficient chilling. However, the flow through it was severely hampered by the residual trub in the kettle, despite having a powerful pump attempting to push it through. Adding an inline trub filter seemed to be the answer, however even the best version I came across (Brewers Hardware’s Wort Strainer) still clogged about half-way through the chilling process. Something in my process needed to be fixed since I knew I wasn’t the only one using a plate chiller.

My solution was to start to add a whirlpool step at the end of each boil session, for several reasons. First, it is a great time to add in the adjuncts and flavoring hops and second, and most important, it creates a lovely center pile of trub that doesn’t get sucked down the pickup tube.
I had my solution, now I had to figure out a way to put it all together into a single unit, so the end of the brew process didn’t continue to require my non-existent third arm.

My Worterator consolidates all the finishing steps together on a convenient stand set up; such that wort processing, cleaning and sanitizing is painless

My Worterator consolidates all the finishing steps together on a convenient stand setup; such that wort processing, cleaning, and sanitizing is painless. While I did not list it in my parts list, you need to make sure that your kettle has the proper configuration to allow a laminar flow of wort to create the whirlpool. In other words, you want as little turbulence to the whirlpool’s motion as possible. You can easily find the components to make this happen at many homebrew hardware outfitters if your kettle is not already configured or you can see the “Whirlpool Port Install” in the January-February 2019 issue.

My Worterator unit is driven by its own exclusive pump. This is necessary to ensure that I do not burn myself on hot fittings during the process. Since I favor tri-clover fittings, opening and tightening hot clamps is not my idea of fun. I placed the pump near the base of the stand to prevent having to siphon to get things flowing. The pump performs the whirlpool then with a twist of a sanitary three-way valve at the pump head, I easily divert the flow into the filter-chiller-oxygenator setup. I chose to buy most of the components off the shelf since I prefer tri-clover connections, but it could just as easily be configured using other disconnects or stainless NPT pipe. Below are sources for my hardware.

Materials

• Plate chiller (I have the Blichmann Therminator™)
• High-temperature pump (I have a Chugger)
• Tri-clover wort strainer (Brewers Hardware)
• Tri-clover three-way valve (Brewers Hardware)
• Tri-clover pump head (Brewers Hardware)
• Inline oxygenation kit (Ss Brewtech)
• Tri-clover thermometer (Ss Brewtech)
• Stainless ball valve (MoreBeer!)
• ¾-in. PVC piping (local hardware store)