Should I ditch the bazooka screen and create a pipe that pulls from the side? The bazooka gets clogged with hops even if I uses hop bag and it isn’t low enough to pull all the wort.
Ideas? I’ve been googling images of how people do this and it’s all over the place with the variety of solutions.
I have a false bottom in the kettle and the pick up is below it. Works great with whole hops. Pellets can be an issue above ~10 oz in 10 gallons, as those particles get through.
Same here. Pellets not an issue unless I’m using my plate chiller in which case I’ll put them in a sock.
One recommendation would be to consider only using an immersion chiller with a whirlpool, such as described by Jamil Z: Mrmalty.com. I’ve been doing it this way at his advice for a couple/three years now and am very happy. I already had a 1/2", 50ft. MoreBeer chiller and just purchased their “Jamil” tube and added it. Wort temp drops like crazy that if your chilling water is reasonably cold (I live in Texas so I usually have to pre-chill), and after chilling, if you let the wort sit for at least 20-30min. the hops will all settle out and you’ll draw off clear wort (except possibly the first little bit which I use for a gravity sample).
I have a nearly all Blichmann setup but even though I own one I don’t use the HopBlocker or any other sort of hop filter. And obviously, I don’t use my Therminator any longer either. Two addition advantages I see to going back to immersion is (1) you can truly whirlpool your hops and (2) you chill the ENTIRE wort down as quickly as possible. This is key for number of reasons not least of which is it helps proteins and other haze promoting material to precipitate out easier.
My two pence.
Do you have a pickup tube? If so, where does it pull from?
I have a smaller false bottom from a mash tun that I don’t use often. It’s dome shaped with slits and fits in a 5 gallon igloo cooler. As long as I can get it to sit flat would that work?
It would as long as it fits tight with no gaps, and is stable. I do scrape the false bottom with a SS spoon sometimes if the flow slows. That happens more with pellets.
Here’s what I did. Works for me. https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=17805.0
By the way, I bag my hops…