FWIW, SN is using pellets these days, too. And c’mon…a homebrew experiment is a data point, not a conclusion. There is no way they can have tight enough control to reach a conclusion like that. The pellets would have to come from the same lits as the whole hops, for one thing.
Fair point, this is very true. Whole hops do a great job filtering the wort. I only use pellets (which you could probably tell ;)) and I have found that letting the wort sit quietly for 45-60 min after flameout yields crystal clear wort at knockout. All the trub settles into a very compact layer at the bottom of the kettle and is avoided. Different ways to skin the same cat! Cheers.
Would it be worth while to use some sort of cheese cloth or something to strain the liquid as I put it in the keg? I am sure I can find some sort of cloth that would work, but would that be adviseable?
I haven’t tried it but I have read of others who did that and found that the filter plugged with the material they were straining out.
Others told me they use paint strainer bags from Lowes/ HomeDepot.
I have never used them myself.
This would have worked in my previous boil kettle, as the pickup tube was raised about an inch from the bottom. Won’t work for us now. The pickup is about an 1/8 inch from the floor.
And we run the wort through a hop filter bag as it goes into the ferment vessel. That is the final “catch-all” for anything that escapes out of the boil kettle. The hop filter bag is folded over about four times, so it is very fine.
I use whole cones and pellets. I prefer whole cones with one caveat and, that is, they need to come directly from a trusted source on the West Coast (one that also acquires non-US cultivars from trusted sources). I bought a bunch whole cones from Ted at Hop Heaven earlier this year. I am a huge fan of EKG, but Ted only had US Goldings, so I bit the bullet. Man, those hops have made the must authentic British-style beer I have made over the better part of 30 years. I do not know if 2020 was a good year, but every cultivar I purchased from Ted has been off the charts. There is definitely a difference when a beer is finished with whole cones. Pellets may bitter better, but whole cones leave pellets in the dust when it comes to keeping the essential oils intact.
I used to use whole cones exclusively with a false bottom in my kettle. Nothing works as well as whole cones when it comes to producing clear wort, nothing, at least not at the home brewing level, not even whirlpooling. That is one of main reasons why the British invented the hop back and the Peter Austin design employs a type of hop back known as a hop perculator. I am currently using a hop spider with 1520 mesh that I special ordered from Arbor Fab (one has to ask). The holes in 1520 micron mesh are 1.52mm or ~0.060". They do not clog like the typical 300 or even 400 micron mesh spider that is used with pellets. Wort boils right through the spider. I ordered a 6" spider, but an 8" or 10.5" would be even better. Unlike 300 or 400 micron mesh, 1520 micron mesh is easy to clean too. All that is needed is garden hose-level pressure with a nozzle. I plan to eventually have a custom false bottom made for my DBS 6.6-gallon kettle.
There is a major downside to using whole cones exclusively; namely, significant volume loss in beers with high hopping rates. Here is one area where using a 1520 micron mesh spider with whole cones pays off as the spider can be lifted out of the kettle and the hops can be pressed with a large stainless steel spoon to squeeze out wort. I make my knock-out addition with a cloth bag because my hop spider does not fit in the middle of the immersion chiller, the Faucet Flow (a.k.a. the Mantis), I use with my 3-gallon rig.
Being very new to all this, would you be able to provide a link with an example of what you are talking about? I am going to brew today, and would love to find something I can put on the keg so in a week or so when I am ready to transfer it I have it here. If it is too much of a pain, then no worries. My thought is, there must be something you can slip into the keg, run the fermented beer thru it, then pull the strainer out and wash and sanitize for the next go around.
Thanks for reading. RR
Here is my BK, with the SS screen and false bottom. Does a very good job filtering. But might look into another screen, or a custom bottom.
I use a side pickup. All the trub settles in the depression in the middle of the BK and I pull clear wort from the side.
I have used filter screens that fit the mouth of a 5 (or 6.5) gallon bucket, but they would always clog up something fierce with pellet hops. Search DudaDiesel on eBay if you’re interested in what I’m talking about.
I have had better success making a juryrigged hopback. You can take a kneehigh nylon stocking, put about half an ounce of whole cone hops in it, and ziptie it over the outflow of some tubing that you use to transfer the beer from your kettle to your fermenter. In the end, I found that the amount of trub I transferred had no bearing on the quality of my finished beer, and I stopped sweating that particular detail.
I agree, no harm with trub in your wort.
We do not want this in our beer, only because we harvest our yeast. It is desired to have the yeast as clean as possible. And so far our yeast harvests are hyper clean.
I gotta tell ya, my experience is that it really doesn’t matter. Just a data point.
FWIW for whole hops I had great luck with Denny’s old trick of using a stainless/braided water supply line. You have to remove the inside tubing and crimp the one end but I never had whole hops clog using that method. It definitely ran off super clear wort in conjunction with whole hops. Gravity feed, not pumped, which may cause problems (not sure).
I ended up using Cheese cloth that I soaked in Starsan. It did ok, but I am sure I am going to run into more problems after I dry hop in a few days. I am thinking of using the same style cloth over my keg and run to siphon hose off my fermenter bucket and try and catch as much as I can, but I could swear I read that you don’t want to the fermented beer to spash around too much. I wish I could find something that slips into my keg and sits at the bottom where I can run to filler tube down and go that way, if that makes sense. I also know I am going to clog the pickup tube something fierce if I don’t figure out a way to get most of the crud out of the fermented beer.
Not a perfect solution, but it is what you described:
Cheers.
I think what I am going to do is use the Muslim bag I used for the grains, put the hops in and drop it in the fermenter. I will, of course, sanitize the bag as best I can. That should at least keep the dry hops contained. Once it is ready to go into the keg, I might try either the drip tube screen, or I saw this:
Has anybody used anything like this?
I use a floating dip tube in the fermenter only. Works well for early racking and spunding in keg for the last couple points.
There are several iterations available from other mfg’s of similar floating dip tubes with filters that seem to work well.
Loose pellets with an immersion chiller are one big pain in the backside. Sure, one can whirlpool, but even then one is going to end up with pellet debris in one’s fermentation vessel if one does not leave a substantial amount of wort behind. I use a cloth bag-based spider for pellets. That way if it clogs mid-boil, I can just replace the clogged bag with a new bag. If I ever switch back to using a counterflow chiller, I going to do knock-out hop additions using whole hops and a hopback. Whole hops hold pellets back very well. The Alan Pugsley installed breweries use this approach. Pellets are used for kettle additions and whole cones are used in a hop back (the hop perculator) to hold back the pellets. It is a very simple and effective design. However, it does require one to use counterflow or plate chiller.
Depends on your kettle design. I haven’t found it to be a problem.