normally i brew small batches with all grain. despite having made a heat exchanger from an immersion coil, i can generally just throw my kettle (4g) into the refrigerator. then the next day dump in to my 2g fermentation bucket add yeast and go. usually pour through a strainer that collects hops, hot break, cold break.
however, my brother gave me an extract kit for 5g batch which i brewed yesterday. i did the boil and added to my larger fermentation bucket with previously boiled and cooled water. thus i now have a bucket of wort with a nice layer of cold break. i will be transferring this later today and adding yeast. just found it impressive.
You need to add an end square bracket to the image “]”
I copy the link to view it…nice cold break layer. I do this with lagers and cannot believe how much cold break there is the next day I transfer. Sometime I have a hard time getting 5.5 gallons transferred even when I’ve filled my better bottle to almost the top from the kettle.
I like to switch over my immersion chiller from tap to ice water once I hit about 80F, which takes the wort down to 40F. It is impressive how much break falls out. Sometimes it interferes with how much wort I can transfer cleanly to the fermenter.
I have a false bottom on my brew kettle and I put the hose into a double mesh strainer on the output side going into the fermenter. That, coupled with hop bags, really allows me to start out pretty clear and to get a good harvest of yeast after fermentation is completed. Just a thought…
No pics, but next time I brew, I will try to remember to run off into a carboy for this purpose. I typically ferment in 15 gallon plastic barrels, so you would only see the clarity in the streams flowing into the fermenter, which might be hard to capture well with a photo, but I will see.
Do u ever have dms? I have been doing a ‘partial chill’ recently, where I get it below 140 for the SMM to drop, then chill to pitching temp in my ferm chamber. Plus, I’m too lazy to run off out of my kettle, and typically just dump, so I want to avoid problems brought about by aeration prior to reaching pitch temp.
I haven’t had DMS problems, but for lighter beers, I mash for 90 minutes and boil a full 90. I then immersion chill to about 55, then to the fermentation chamber to chill down the rest of the way for lagers (45F or so); ales get pitched around 55. It takes almost a full hour for me to chill down a 10 gallon batch from boil to 55, using my well water (thankfully, the well water is cold), but I am below 70 degrees within 20 minutes.
