Getting the wort out of the kettle.

[PaulCa]

One part of the process of brew day I have not figured out properly is getting the wort from the kettle to the fermenter without lifting the boil trub with it.

My grain is always in paint strainer bags, as are my hops, but I use protofloc in the last 5 minutes and during the cooling a lot of crud settles out. The only problem is, I can't find a way to not suck it up into the fermenter.

I realise this isn't the end of the world the protofloc continues to work in the fermenter and last time I could even see the layer of crud forming and moving down the fermenter to the bottom within a few hours. I suspect it just ends up part of the trub in the FV.

Strangely I have had several brews recently with zero chill haze.

So, I suppose my questions are:

1) is it really that big a deal and will trying and finding a way to not siphon this into the FV improve the beer quality much?
2) If I really should avoid transfering the trub to the FV, what is the best way to achieve this? When I try, the stuff is still floating around the bottom and so gets sucked straight into the sediment trap and into the FV. How do you avoid this?

 

[PD]

have you a hop strainer fitted in your kettle ?

After the BOIL is completed let the wort stand for 10 mins or so before opening the tap and transferring it to your fermenting vessel.
Dont worry about the break material and crud getting transferred it will drop out readily enough in the fermenter if you give it a good week or more to work out.

 

[tommidolcetto]

Hi Paul

I'm BIABing and like you the break material goes in the FV - I pass the whole lot through a sieve (loose hops) and although some gets stuck with the hops most goes in. I find it all settles out very well towards the end of fermentation and I get very clear beer into secondary and after bottle conditioning but am also wondering what affect it has on flavour.

Am going to upgrade to a larger boiler soon that will have a tap and hop filter so will be interested to see what changes I see in the final product. Am presuming this will enable me to get clearer wort into FV.

Has anybody on here gone through a similar process and have you seen any improvement??

 

[rpt]

It sounds like the OP is syphoning from the kettle to the FV. Like most, I have a tap and hop filter on my boiler which filters out most of the crud.

 

[morethanworts]

I did my first three AG brews by siphoning only, and got some great beer. However, I fitted a hop filter and ball valve tap for my recent AG4 and it was SOOooo much easier and quicker on brewday. It's not just the reduction of break material in the FV (some still got through) but the reduced time with cooled wort sitting around while I muck about trying to keep the siphon clear. I had even made a mesh 'cage' for the siphon end by AG3, but it still got blocked. The sooner it's tucked away in the FV the better, and it shaved a lot off my brew day - it was the bit I really didn't look forward to.

So my advice would have to be to fit a tap at the earliest opportunity, as budget permits. I will never look back. There are how-tos on that subject, though I decided to buy a kit of ready made bits from Angel Homebrew, at a slight premium, as it was taking me too long to be totally sure I was getting all the right bits together and the price difference was worth it to me.

 

[PaulCa]

Thanks guys. So basically break material in the FV isn't a big problem, avoid it if I can, but it will (as it has been doing) settle out as long as the beer has enough time to clear in the FV before kegging.

I read somewhere that if you leave the wort to cool for several hours then the break material will firm down into a cake, making it easy to leave it behind, I haven't been successful with that much patience.

Regarding the hop material blocking the siphon. I keep my hops in strainer bags with the top loosely tied. They just float around and eventually mostly sink. So there aren't any chunks of hops floating about. This may lower my hop utilization, but I don't mind that.

My grain is also in a bag, but it's a bag big enough (5 gallon paint strainer) that during the mashing phase it is basicly just a liner, like a bin liner, as long as I'm careful when I stir not to knock the bag into the wort I can then just grab the top and spin the bag to contain the grain and even squeeze dry it. I then place it into a colinder and pour 80*C water over it a few times (to bring me up to boil volume), then I let it sit in a smaller pan to drain and transfer any wort that drains out into the kettle until the grain is cool enough to dump in the bin. Not exactly sparging, but it's the best I can do.

 

[Fil]

you might want to try creating a whirlpool effect with a spoon, I dont know how effective it will be, but if your lucky and stir a good enough vortex (it needednt be big or deep) the break material may form a cone in the centre of the pot, allowing u to syphon more cleanly from the edge? generally they are created by the return feed from a recirculation pump..

i always thought u needed a wide intrusion free pot to achieve the whirlpool effect, however i posted that as a comment once and quick as a flash came a pic of a cone residue in the bottom of a kettle with a big element hop filter and thermowell fitted.. so it is possible, just elusive..

 

[alanywiseman.]

ay be a faff but how about transfer wort and all to FV, allow to settle and rack just before pitching? I do think it makes a difference if you ferment on the break material though so I would just ferment on the break material then rack post fermentation (unless you are thinking of harvesting the yeast).

 

[Bopper]

In my old(upgrading 2bbl +) kettle i never had problem at the end, it was more at the beginning, open the ball valve nothing would happen, i had to slacken the pipe between the ball valve and the CFC to let a bit of air in and all would be fine, just the break would come out first, then i drain the break off into a jug, hey presto clear to the end. TIP If you make a syphon 15mm with a T - slotted strainer do not use an equal T, use 15mm x 22m x 22m. so then your strainer will be 22m instead of 15mm.



Richard