If you own a distillery or brewery, you need a distillery chiller in Eugene, OR. Distillery chillers are crucial in cooling down your boiled wort so that the fermentation process can begin.

Depending on the size and type of your distillery, you can customize your distillery chillers for a number of different goals. However, they all have one thing in common: they use water, and often propylene glycol in a heat exchanger to cool down your liquids. How they accomplish this depends on the type you choose.

Why distillery chillers are so important

As you know, making any sort of alcohol depends on keeping liquids at specific temperatures. Once you’ve boiled your wort, fermentation can’t begin until the liquid is cooled down to the appropriate range. If you left giant vats of boiling liquid to cool down naturally, that could take hours or even days. Distillery chillers make it possible to cool the wort down quickly, allowing you to make multiple batches per day.

In addition to aiding in the boiling process, distillery chillers help maintain a consistent temperature during fermentation. Fermentation generates heat, so having a chiller monitor and maintain the proper temperature throughout is a way to ensure every batch comes out perfectly.

Distillery chillers are also good for the bottling process, which can also generate heat and affect the flavor of your final product.

Types of distillery chillers

Distillery chillers in Eugene, OR come with plenty of options, from the number of heat exchangers you install to how the water and glycol solution is circulated around the machine. Here are some of the basic types you can buy or customize:

• Single-stage heat exchanger and cold liquor tank: This type of chiller uses one heat exchanger and a cold liquor tank, which is filled with water. The heat exchanger cools the water down to about 35 degrees Fahrenheit, and the water is then pumped through the wort to cool it down to the right temperature. At this point, the hot water is held in another tank for another batch.
• Pre-chilling: If your city water is usually cold enough to cool down the wort without help, getting a pre-chilled city water heat exchanger can be a cost-effective solution.
• Two-stage cooling: This type of distillery chiller first uses city water to cool down the wort, then sends the liquid through a propylene glycol heat exchanger. When the liquid leaves the heat exchanger, it’s already at the appropriate temperature for fermentation.
• Three-stage chiller: This type of distillery chiller uses city water, propylene glycol and cold liquor to cool the wort. The bigger your brewery is, the more likely you’ll want to opt for a three-stage chiller—it will help increase capacity and handle any type of weather- or water-related cooling issue.

As with any piece of machinery, you need to make sure to stay on top of your chiller maintenance—pipes and tubing can become clogged, which will slow down production. If you’re interested in installing and maintaining a distillery chiller for your business in Eugene, OR, call the team at American Refrigeration Inc. today.