| Well, I had a chance to brew yesterday using my new WortWizard venturi "pump" (www.wortwizard.com). If you have trouble visualizing what I'm saying here, check out the pictures on the website. Here's the
lowdown...
The WortWizard is intended to help in moving your beer from the kettle to the fermenter. This is exactly what I needed, so after looking at the ads for a couple years, I decided to give it a try. I ordered through their website, and received my WortWizard in less than a week, from FLA to OR.
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The price is 23.95 plus shipping. The WortWizard needs to be assembled upon arrival. There's a 2 hole stopper (#6.5 supplied, #7 available on request). Also included are 2 3/8" OD plastic tubes, one 2.5 inches long, the other 15 in. long with 1/16" holes
drilled in the last 10 inches. Also included are a 4 in. long plastic hose fitting (the venturi part) and a nylon thread to 3/8" hose barb adapter. You need to supply 3/8" ID tubing, as much as you need to get to the kettle and hose connections. You insert the plastic tubes into the stopper. The shorter one for vacuum goes flush with the bottom of the stopper, the longer one for beer transfer and aeration is inserted from the bottom of the stopper until it sticks out the top of the
stopper as much as the shorter one. Then you screw the thread to barb adapter into the venturi section. This was where I encountered a problem...the adapter seemed larger than the hole it was supposed to go
into! After about 30 minutes of frustration, I decided to call Island
Brewing Products, the manufacturer. I had also asked for a #7 stopper, but received a #6.5. I called their toll free number, and in a a matter of minutes Island said they would send me an assembled venturi unit and
the correct stopper. They included a post paid return mailer so I could just drop the wrong stuff back to them. After 5 more days of waiting for the US Postal service, I was set to go.
My brewing setup is pretty manual, no fancy tiers or anything. Island Brewing claims the WortWizard has a 4 ft. head, but I don't need that much. My converted keg kettle sits on its burner about 12" high. It's equipped with a 3/8" ball valve and a copper pickup tube that extends to the bottom of the kettle. My normal method of wort transfer has been to lift the kettle onto a table after chilling, attach a hose barb adapter and a piece of 3/8" hose with a venturi aerator made from a small piece of broken racking cane. With the WortWizard, I screwed my hose barb adapter into the ball valve and ran a piece of sanitized 3/8" ID tubing from that to the wort in tube on the stopper in the carboy (the stopper and tubes get sanitized as a single piece). I screwed the venturi onto a hose, added another hose to direct the outflow, and ran a piece of
tubing from the venturi adapter to the vacuum tube on the stopper. I turned on the water, opened the valve on my kettle, and in 2 or 3 seconds, wort started flowing into the carboy. A huge head of foam developed in the carboy, showing that the WortWizard aeration was much more effective than my previous small venturi tube. After that I just sat down and waited! The flow rate was much better than when I had been
using gravity for the transfer. In about 5 minute or so, I had transferred all 5 gal. from the kettle to the carboy...pretty fast and very easy!
All in all, I'm really pleased with my WortWizard. It did exactly what I needed and expected it to do, the price was right, and the people there were extremely helpful and friendly. If you're considering
ordering one, I do have a couple recommendations...
- Ask them to assemble the thread to hose barb/venturi assembly for you...save yourself some frustration! Hopefully, they'll start selling them preassemled.
- Get both the 6.5 and 7 stoppers. I decided that for my collection of carboys, I'd need both sizes. It's pretty easy to fabricate a second set of tubes from a broken racking cane.
The WortWizard is an inexpensive, easy to use product that made my brew day easier the first time I used it...if you're looking for a solution for wort transfer, look at the WortWizard. Highly recommended!
[ Technical diagrams on just how this thing works can be viewed right here. - Bodensatz ]
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