Loading... Please wait...Boost your wort chilling power with the Chinchilla. Just set this little power house in some ice (in your sink or a bucket) to pre-chill the water going into your wort chiller. Works with immersion and counter-flow chillers. (Adding some rock salt to the ice will intensify the effect). Will also work as a standard immersion chiller for smaller batches (under 2 gallons in the boil)
A full 11' of 3/8" copper is the back-bone of this bad boy. Also comes with 2 ft of tubing on the inlet with a female garden hose attachment (fits your garden hose or faucet adapter in your sink), 6 ft of tubing on the outlet side (should give you plenty of room to get the ice cold chill water over to your main chiller). Three stainless steel worm clamps also included. Comes fully assembled.
Note: There is no fitting on the outlet tube. If you are connecting to an immersion chiller, you will also need a 3/8" Barb to Male Garden Hose Fitting (and a worm clamp). If you are connecting to a Plate Chiller (Shirron or Therminator), you will need a 3/8" Barb to Female Garden Hose Fitting (and a worm clamp).
Posted by Shannon Farrell on 2nd Oct 2011
I live in NW FL so our ground water doesn't get too cold. This really helps bring the temp down with my main IC. I too had trouble with the crimp clamps instead of worm screw clamps. Go ahead and spend the $1.50 and replace the crimp claps with worm screws... which you can tighten down before each use. Otherwise you might have a fountain of garden hose water squirting upward and getting into your kettle. At least it was a pretty funny picture to me and I'm not worried about the beer at this stage. But, that's a cheap improvement.
Posted by Lee Martin on 23rd Oct 2009
When I recieved the unit, I laughed, then I cried thinking that I'd wasted $25 on something so small...Wrong!
I have a self contained setup using an Igloo kooler w/a sump pump. Pryor to the chinchilla my 40lbs of ice melted very quick & I wasn't able to get the wort chilled down quick enough. Now I've added this bad boy between my 50' 1/2" wort chiller & the main kooler, my ice last past the end of my chill break & help get my temp down to 65 degrees or better in about 15 minutes!!!
The ONLY problem I've had is the input side will need a better hose clamp to keep the garden hose attachment on [mine blew off on the 2nd use! Only had a cheap plastic zip clamp.]
+ you may want to consider a short piece of hi-temp hose, to replace the inlet side thin-walled stuff provided [mine kinked], just to extend the life of this sweet little jewell!
Do yourself a BIG favor & spend the $25 - you won't regret it!
Posted by Mike Taylor on 10th Oct 2009
Even though I have a 50' wort chiller I couldn't get the temp below 80 - ever. I got the Chinchilla and put it in a bucket with ice and water while the wort chiller was in the pot for last 15. Once I started chilling I could tell by grabbing the hose and copper on the main chiller that the water was way colder than usual. With the Chinchilla my temp got down to 65 in 20. Perfect.
No instructions, but kind of self explanatory that the Chinchilla hooks up to the existing input line on your immersion chiller (buy a couple of clamps). The 6' of line was great - a little short on the sink/spigot hookup side.
For $25 to get to the temp you want without ice bath in the sink or waiting around you can't go wrong.