I use a 200 micron filter bag on my hop spider and have begun to wonder if it is too fine to let the hop goodness flavor the boiling wort. To my pallet, it seems like flavor and aroma is missing, despite long hop stands post boil.
I went with 200 micron to keep my plate chiller clean.
For those of you using spiders - what size bag are you using?
Is 200 micron too fine?
I’ve used the paint filter bags from Lowes/Home Depot. They’ve worked well.
How large is your bag. Pallet hops tend to swell when they are wet.
They need to have enough liquid around them.
+1. Paint strainer bags work great and are inexpensive.
These bags are about 27 inches long and 6 inches wide.
Big +1 to the paint strainer bags. I don’t think that fine mesh is doing anything to lessen hoppiness in your beer because of micron size, but there might be a slight utilization loss as opposed to boiling them loosely as they are packed a little closer together in the spider. Honestly I never noticed much loss in my spider though. I made a DIY spider but actually took it apart and use the bag alone simply clipped to the side of my kettle with plastic clip/clamps. There is more room for the hops to circulate since part of the bag isn’t wasted on the spider collar. Works great for me.
That should be enough.
Unless you do not have free flow of boiling wort. This could create over saturated wort in the bag that does not distribute evenly in the whole kettle.
Try to lift the bag a few time thru the boil. This would empty and fill the bag with new wort.
(Just a speculation).