Difficulty siphoning through counterflow chiller

Just bought a counterflow chiller... tested it with boiling water and it worked fine. I also siphoned sanitizer through it, no problems there.

However when I tried to siphon the wort, it clogged immediately. Realizing my mistake, I flushed the chiller and then retried, using a grain bag to filter the hops/trub. But it seemed that this still wasn't enough; the siphon simply would not flow.

Can someone advise on what I'm doing wrong? What is the standard practice here?

Some additional info, in case it is useful:

  • I'm trying to siphon using gravity only
  • My kettle does not have a valve/spigot, I'm just running a silicon line up and over the wall
  • I'm brewing with an extract kit, with hop pellets (to give you an idea of the trub I'm dealing with)

Topic filtering chiller wort homebrew

Category Mac

1
answered at

If you are using a grain bag wrapped tightly around the racking tube, it will clog very quickly. Also, flexible tubing draped over a kettle will collapse, or at least narrow, as hot wort is passing through it. You should use a rigid racking cane with a cap on the end that keeps the bottom of the cane raised from the bottom of the kettle by a few millimeters. Attach your tubing to the other end of the cane. Canes are available at any homebrew shop.

Next, get a scrubbing pad (without soap!) and tie it to the bottom of the racking cane. See the link below for "Chore Boy" -- they come in copper and stainless steel. This will filter the bulk of the hops out. Move your grain bag to the top of the fermenter to catch the rest.

Finally, remember that the flow rate is a function of the different in height between your kettle and fermenter.

Chore Boy Scrubbers

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