When I started home brewing this year, I started using a strainer to both clean up the wort going into the primary and also aerate the wort. Generally, I would run the cooled wort from the kettle to the primary bucket through the strainer.
As I have gained more experience, have started using oxygen to aerate and am brewing a bit more complicated extract beers, I am wondering if I should:
stop straining
continue straining
use the strainer on certain types of beer
These thoughts occurred as I was making a Belgian Tripel and ended up straining the orange peels I had just added at flame out…now wondering if this screwed up the flavors. Then when I made my second batch for the day, an FBS clone with cocoa nibs, I didn’t strain as I wanted to leave the primary on the nibs.
Since I just throw my hops in loose in the boil (I don’t use a bag or spider or anything like that), I do use a strainer for most of my beers. But if you’re brewing a beer without a lot of trub, then you could just use an autosiphon to rack to your fermenter. Or you could just pour carefully and leave the last few pints (with the thickest amount of trub) in the kettle.
I use a SS hop spider to retain the big majority of hop matter. As for the trub I let a good portion of it into the fermenter most times. There have been many postings here (some recently) that letting trub into the fermenter doesn’t hurt beer quality and actually could help with final clarity.
I strain smaller batches because its easy and autosiphon larger batches. I don’t really care that much about trub, in fact I try to have a little. When I’m using whole leaf hops I strain and squeeze some of the wort out of the hops.
I dont strain. I do not thin it hurts anything if done before oxygenating. I do not do it mostly becuast it is just one more thing that I might screw up… and one more thing to clean.
I am one for keeping trube out of the fermentor, but I just siphon after a whirlpool, and what little bit makes it in… never been an issue.
I pour everything (hops, trub, etc) in the fermenter. All of it sinks and stays out of the way. It gets buried under a layer of flocculated yeast after fermentation completes. I also repitch the slurry unwashed 3-4 times per yeast purchase.
I used to, but stopped as it’s much easier and I haven’t experienced any negative effects since doing it. I toss all of the hops in loose, chill, stir, let settle then open the valve and right into the carboy. Usually the most trub comes from the very last bit of volume, but if there’s a lot mixed in with the remaining wort, it goes right into the carboy with the rest. The only real issue is with my IPAs and that I lose an additional 0.5-.0.75 gallons of final volume due to all of the hop matter, but that’s negligible overall. I’ll probably just to 6 gallon batches of IPA/DIPA for 5 gallons of final volume.
Thanks all for the replies! Not a clear consensus but good arguments for both cases of strain vs. no-strain…mostly I sense people generally strain over trub concerns.
I’ll look into the thoughts on the benefits of leaving trub in the fermenter…although its too late for me to dive into another topic tonight; however, I will tell you that I just finished racking my FBS and Belgian Tripel a few minutes ago and noticed the FBS is VERY cloudy (first time I haven’t strained)…so I will see how the secondary magic works with regard to clarity.
I strain although it doesn’t really pull much out of the liquid until towards the very end, and I’m starting to tweak my equipment profile to get my volumes so that I can just call it quits once it gets trubby and I hit my final volume goals.
In my experience temperature has a much more significant impact on clarity than the trub issue. I used to notice beers would go from cloudy to clear at the flip of a switch right around 2.5-3 weeks after kegging. Then I got a chest freezer and started cold conditioning pre-kegging and have found so far that beers are very clear once carbonated.
used to worry about how much boil trub made it into carboy…not so much anymore. never strained, just with a good hot and cold break, everything settles as its chilled and then i rack really clear wort for 95% collected. the last bit always pulls a little trub, and i haven’t experienced any negative issues from it.
I use a hop spider for almost all my extract and all grain batches and I dont usually strain anymore unless i happen to NOT use my hop spider. I also oxygenate using pure o2.
I don’t strain…use a hop spider and whatever makes it in after that is just fine. Some will actually argue that the trub ADDS to the hop character. Who knows how true that is.
My original concern about straining my Tripel was not warranted…bottled today and plenty of orange in the flavor…maybe not quite a Chimay Tripel (was drinking this while bottling mine…trying to channel good Belgian energy :) ) but was plenty tasty.
Yes…I also agree with Joe Sr. that straining is a PITA.
In the future, I think I’ll pass on the straining unless warranted by some unusual circumstance.