AG Trub Question

[markp]

Thanks to the help received here I completed my first AG yesterday.
It all went very smoothly, but I have just had a horror thought.........there was no trubby mess in the bottom of the boiler on draining; just the bed of used hops.

For the last 15 mins of the boil I added a Whirlfloc tablet and then hooked up my cooler.
The boil was done and I had the wort cooled to 28 degrees in around 20 mins.
In the bottom of the boiler I was expecting to find a proteinacious trub along with the hops bed.

I'd be grateful if someone could put my mind at rest......or not as the case may be :pray:

Thanks in advance.

 

[Vossy1]

Opinion is divided on this question mark. 'Best Practice' would say that the cold break should be removed from the wort prior to fermenting. Some say they can taste the difference between a brew fermented on the cold break as opposed to one with it removed, some say they can't.

As with all things 'home brew' we have to balance 'best practice' of commercial brewing with that of home brewing. It also depends how you chill your wort. If you chill in the kettle then the hop bed acts as a good filter medium to retain the cold and hot break, whereas if you run through a plate chiller direct to fv, you'll carry all the cold break material to the fv, the hot break should be filtered by the hop bed.Waiting for the cold break to settle in the kettle post chilling, prior to running to fv, may not be a feasable prospect for you, time wise.

From what you've said I would have expected you to have had a good portion of the hot and cold break retained in your kettle, and you wouldn't have been able to miss it :sick:
Possible reasons for this may include that your hop screen may have been exposed in areas allowing the break material through.

Personally I've not found cold break to have much of an affect on taste, but the hot break can give a bitter taste to a finished beer. You can remove a lot of the break material that gets through to the fv by 'skimming' the dirty brown areas from the yeast head.

I hope that helps :thumb:

 

[markp]

Sorry I had missed this Vossey. Thanks for your reply, that is very helpful.

I transferred the brew on Saturday to a secondary FV and I bottled and kegged the brew on Tuesday night.......there was a lot of crud around the top of the primary FV. I decided not to skim as I did not want to risk an infection.
Big yeast cake on the bottom of the primary FV and a surprising amount again in the secondary when I bottled/kegged.
The beer smells absolutely tremendous though

I did my second AG on Saturday and there was visible break material in the boiler after draining.....also the hop bed had a murky grey tinge to it. Much more so than that of the first.

Thanks again Vossey.

 

[bones]

, whereas if you run through a plate chiller direct to fv, you'll carry all the cold break material to the fv,
:thumb:

I have a plate chiller that i used once..
As you say the cold break goes to the FV...
Apart from cooling the wort so i can pitch.. does this process bring any quality to the beer?
If so i will cool as standard practice... if nor i may not bother

 

[Vossy1]

I have a plate chiller that i used once..
As you say the cold break goes to the FV...

You can get around this by recircing the wort back to the kettle until the whole batch is at pitching temp. A lot of the trub will have been filtered by the hop bed by then. You could keep an eye on the wort returning to the kettle to gauge if it's clear and free of protein matter, then divert the flow to the fv.

Apart from cooling the wort so i can pitch.. does this process bring any quality to the beer? If so i will cool as standard practice... if nor i may not bother

The idea of cooling is to enable the removal of as much protein from the beer as possible, amongst other things. If left in the fermenting beer it may lead to issues with chill haze and long term storage, which may be important if making a 'big' beer.

Some of our Australian members allow their beer to cool overnight, or longer, and they don't report any detrimental issues with their beers, in fact it's a very popular over there.

Basically it's up to you :thumb: