Hop Pellets

General Homebrew Discussion
21

I don’t use any electric kettles now. On my 14 gallon system it is direct fire. I did use elements in the old 55 gallon brew rig and it did cause a problem with forming a cone. But I had a diverter plate so I still was able to keep most of the junk out. Same on the 15 bbl rig - it has a heat element fired by gas and the cone is kinda sketchy but I stiill leave most of the gunk behind due to diverter plate.

I personally think there is way more fretting about keeping hops out of the run off than is necessary. I wouldn’t want to dump it all in but some wont hurt a bit. I run perfectly  clean for about 98% of the run off and stop when it starts to get murky.

22

i brewed a porter today and didn’t use any muslin bags with the pellets for the first time in a long time. mainly because i started reading this thread. everything turned out so well i found myself trying to remember why and when i started using muslin bags in the first place.

anyway, brewing again on sunday and will just be tossing hops.

cheers.

23

The way I see it, the more equipment you have to filter, block, etc. the hop matter, the more stuff you have to clean up. I do a whirlpool, and have my pickup near the edge of the kettle. This leaves probably 90% of the hop/break sludge behind. Thats’s plenty good enough for me.

24

OK, yes I have done the “run off until it gets cloudy” thing for years, with a kettle screen just to catch the leaf hops. It works, and if you’re anal like me you can funnel-filter the leftover wort and use it for OG, FFT, speise, starters, or even add back to your ferment if you feel brave, or save it for a mixed garbage surprise beer when you have enough built up in the freezer. I do all those things.

I’ve never been totally happy with it though, because I often brew smaller batches and don’t like the “waste”, and I do more lagers than ales and have long suspected that keeping junk out of the fermenter was more than just a good idea. My recent comparisons proved to me that at least on my system, the malt and hop aromas and flavors can get muddled otherwise.

But what broke me was getting into IPAs recently. So how do you deal with a pound of leaf and pellet hops? Dumping that into the primary is not going to happen for me for a lot of reasons (yeah, I’m a whimp compared to that dude upstream :wink:

It created a stew that defeated my regular processes, so I had to change; hence the spider and bags. And once I did that, I was surprised to see how much of the trub in the bottom of the kettle was due to hop residue, not break material. That means to me, cool, that is that much more wort that I can get into the fermenter if I refine this process. I don’t care to throw paint strainer bags into the boil, that’s for sure.

Hop blocker looks great, but I’ve seen enough so-so reviews that I hesitate. And whirlpooling… well it took me a long time to ride a bike as a kid so maybe rotation just throws me for a loop.

Paul’s right - you gotta lose beer or wort somewhere in most systems, and I like the kettle myself due to the built-in sanitization. So I like my current deal better than any other systems I’ve tried. For me, it means more harvested wort and less work, not less and more, respectively.

To the OP, I do think that fly swatter would clog, so I’d have a backup plan in place. Also, can you move it to the side, in case you are normal and can whirlpool. It would last longer, if so. Also it would be out of the way of your IC if you use one.

25

Ok, I’m brewing a honey ale tomorrow. And with all of your advice, I’ve decided to ditch the hop bird and just pitch the hops directly into the kettle. I also took the fly swatter off and ran a piece of copper pipe out and 90ed down to the bottom of the kettle right past the bevel. I’m thinking this will work…and as mentioned above, I will have less to clean up. I will let you know how this works. Thanks!

26

Basic Brewing Radio had a “trub experiment” episode.  I won’t spoil it so you can come to your own conclusion.  Definitely worth checking out.

27

No harm in broadcasting the results. Denny occasionally posts a link to an experiment where the tasters could tell a difference, and preferred the fermentation with the trub, iirc - pellets and break. That isn’t my experience, but I’m sure one of the many variables here is beer style. Munich Helles vs. DIPA I wouldn’t expect to be the same.

28

Sorry about the delay. It was a frustrating and long brew day. But the brew itself went smoothly. I forgot to take a picture of how I rigged my drain in my brew pot. I’ll take one next time I get to my uncle’s place (the brewery). I brewed a white house honey ale clone, which only used 2 ounces of hops. I felt that I whirlpooled pretty well since I didn’t use a chiller (will return to this detail), but I pulled what seemed like a lot of trub through to the carboy. Since I have spigots on my better bottles, I feel that the trub/yeast cake might end up higher than the spigot when ferementing is complete. I suppose that I can syphon it, but I put spigots on the carboys so I didn’t have too lol. I will let you know how the rack to the secondary goes…and ultimately the final product…That’s what matters. I will also post a pic of the drain attatchment that I rigged to see if any suggestions would be made to make it better.

As far as the frustrating part goes…I didn’t use a chiller, because when I bought the chiller, it claimed that the only thing that could chill faster than it was a snowbank. We had 8" of snow on the ground and it was 29 degrees on Saturday here in Ohio. Instead of dragging the hoses out, we put this to the test. We’ll just say that chilling in a snowbank sucks! I guess you live and learn…

29

yeah, think “igloos”. Snow and ice make great insulation actually; I’ve ridden out major snow storms in ice caves, and I don’t think I ever dropped down to “pitching temps”. Quite cozy actually. Very strange claim they made about snow banks chilling wort faster than in IC. I suppose if you just dumped your wort onto the snow bank, that would be true.

Maybe if you tilt your primary a bit you can get a clear drain and not lose too much beer. You could use the dregs for FG, once it resettled.  I too like the convenience of not dealing with that stuff after the boil…

30

Ok, just a follow up on this thread…Last week I brewed a Two-Hearted clone. I purchased an auto-siphon and tried using that instead of just using a gravity flow. It worked well, but I still seemed to pull a good bit of trub through. It has since settled in the carboy, but I’m trying to leave as much behind as possible. I brewed a Pliny the Elder clone yesterday. So, as you all know, there’s a pile of hops in it. I pitched the hops directly into the brew kettle. I used the auto-siphon again, but this time, I went directly into a bucket instead of a carboy. I zip-tied a knee high hose stocking onto the tube and filtered much of the trub. I caught a softball size lump of garbage in the hose. I then poured my bucket-o-wort into the carboy. It’s looking good!

31

I use the Hop Stopper: http://www.theelectricbrewery.com/hop-stopper

It’s really quite a nice product. I tried just throwing pellets in & whirlpooling, then bagging them, then bazooka screens. This thing works EXCELLENT and will drain all but maybe 1/4 gallon from my kettle. I’ve used probably 10oz of pellets in the kettle once and it didn’t even bat an eye. I have a feeling that it’ll handle twice that. Best upgrade I’ve made in a long time.

32

I like the looks of that. Is it good at filtering break material as well as hops?

33

I have found that whole hops are easier to filter out at the end.  I use a big double strainer setup I got from a LHBS.  Works great with either, but pellets might fill it up once, thus you have to dump, re-sanitize, then finish the pour.  I’ve gone with and without hop bags.  Honestly, pellets or whole hops, it’s easier to just dump 'em in the boil.  Even unfiltered, the hops debris settles with the trub.  If you rack carefully, you can still get pretty clear beer.  Maybe not perfect, but who brews homebrew to be perfect anyway?

34

The break material is filtered out by the green mass that the hops form on the screen, so my wort coming out of the chiller is quite clear. I don’t have to loose wort/beer in my fermenter either. After using that thing for about 7 months, the only downside I could find was that it was slightly pricey, but it is all stainless. Probably the best hot-side improvement I’ve found for me.

35

I harvest yeast for direct pitching, so I employ 3 lines of filtration - I use a coarse nylon mesh bag inside another coarse nylon mesh bag for the hops in the boil (I suspend the bags with a clamp and they freely float in the boil; this filters probably 40-50% with no noticeable effect on IBU’s utilized - though I cannot say that I have my beer tested).  Then I have a standard SS screen in the bottom of my keg with a dip tube running through the center of it (I’d guess that filters another 20-25%).  Finally, I use a double SS meshed colander sitting inside another SS colander to catch any break material and hops that might get through.  I rarely have any noticeable vegetal materials in my fermenter and my yeast harvest is nice and clean for the next batch.  I typically brew 10 gallon lager batches and it seems to make a difference with minimal extra cleaning.  I remove the hop bags as the wort cools, so the bags are done being cleaned before the wort is transferred.  The rest cleans up easily, as everything is removable.

The Hop Stopper looks pretty effective, though, so I may give it a try and dispense with the bags and boil screen in the kettle, as it would serve that function rather nicely, or so it seems.

36

looks can be deceiving.  I have not had much luck with it, nor have several others on the electricbrewery.com forum.  YMMV

37

Wow those are some hop filled photos.  I have always used pellets and like everyone said they do settle out in primary.  25 ounces of hops?  What does that taste like?

38

What was your issue, out of curiosity?

39

protein break and hop sludge clogging the screen severely slowing down or impeding the suction.  I tried having the ball valve barely open, but after 3 fails with 1-2gal of wort left in the kettle, I’m done with it.

40

Were you doing a whirlpool along with the hop stopper (installed)? Do you use a bazooka screen regularly?