I have been whole grain brewing for about 4 months. Mostly Ales are good, however, my Pilsners when put into brewing kettle there is a very lot of trub, looking a lot like curdled stuff. Any ideas on how to cure this. I am using a fine mesh bag for the pellet hops when boilding.
Ed Meyer
Using kettle finings and whirlpool will help reduce trüb but studies have shown you want to carry a little over to the fermenter. I try to transfer clear beer this way.
Some taste tests show people prefer beer fermented on the trüb so some folks here don’t worry about it at all and just transfer with the trüb.
This is purely anecdotal, and a single data point.
We leave ALL of the trub behind in the boil kettle. By employing multiple screens and whole leaf hops, it gets filtered out. Our final catch-all filter is a fine mesh nylon bag, placed in line with the wort as it drains from the boil kettle.
If your pH is in the correct range you will see a lot more hot break and trub with pilsner malt. It’s nothing to worry about. Some choose to ferment on the trub others choose to remove it. I have gone so far as to let a beer sit overnight and rack off the trub the next morning. But as BrewBama says, evidence has shown that some trub is good for fermentation and beer flavor.
Have there been direct A-B comparisons of trub beer vs non trub beer?
We strive to remove every last bit of trub. This aids in us getting a hyper clean yeast harvest.
And our experience is the total lack of trub has not had any negative affect on our beers. I could take this one step further and state that in our case, having beer free of trub has improved our beer.
Anecdotal, single data point…over the prior 3 years of brewing.
Everything I have read says you want just a little bit of trub for yeast health. At Yellowhammer I used to run a centrifuge. ON the hot side I practiced running the hot wort out of the kettle which would separate the hot break, then it would run back into the chiller and form the cold break. Supposedly this is thew amount of trub that “you want” according to my friend who studied brewing in Germany. But, to be honest, it was such a PITA that I went back to just skipping the centrifuge and fermenting on the trub. I can’t say I ever noticed any difference.
If you like the results you get from removing all the trub, you should keep doing that. I just can’t say I have ever noticed much difference in the final quality of the beer either way. Course, I never sampled them side by side.
But wether to leave it in or not still depends on who you talk to. LoDo guys are anti-trub, no?
One thing to consider is if you are brewing with large quantities of pilsner malt is that you will get more hot break, and so more trub, with pilsner malt because it has slightly more protein than most other two-row varieties. If you hit your pH you should expect to see a lot of trub. This is what you want. If you don’t want it leave it behind.
I whirlpool after brewing and leave most of the trub (in the form of hot break) and hops behind. I don’t bother dumping trub (cold break) off the cone.
During chilling, our wort develops a huge volume of cold break. The cold break, hot break, and trub is mud like in viscosity, being trapped in the filtering screens and whole cone hops during the run off into the ferment vessel. A dirty greenish gray color. No…I don’t want this in my beer! Mainly because it will end up in the yeast, which we always harvest.
99% of our beers are Pilsners, or light lagers. Lots of Pils malt!
Trub is defined as a waste product of brewing.
I had stressed over trub in the past, now after nearly 80 brews, I don’t. I don’t try to get trub in the fermenter, but when I do, it is not all of it and I have never noticed a negative effect to the beer that I could attribute to too much trub. So many other things to worry about that this just isn’t on my radar. I overbuild starters for harvesting, so Bel Air’s harvesting issue is not a concern of mine.
I’ve always poured through a strainer which catches the hops and acts like a coarse filter for some of the break material. I get some trub through but the only time it is an issue is with one gallon batches where I didn’t use a lot of hops so there was no filtration. Then there’s not a lot of headspace in a 4l jug but a drop of fermcap solves that problem. I don’t know whether trub is good or bad on my beer but I’ve always done it this way and I’m happy with my beers.
Yes, there have been direct comparisons at the homebrew level, going back almost 25 years. Unfortunately them website that had the data is long gone, but I recall the test well. After reading the results that Joaquin Rudd (IIRC) posted I tried it myself as a test a few times. The beer with trub may have been better, but it was certainly no worse. Since that time I no longer worry about trub. I suggest you try it yourself and make your own decision as I did.
I don’t sweat it and I harvest and re-pitch on average about 5-7 batches of yeast. I let the break settle out in the boil kettle during chilling and when it is cold enough and clear enough, I start my run off to the fermenter. The first bit is cloudy with trub, but soon clears down through to the very last, at which point I stop the run off and leave a quart or so behind with the bulk of the trub. I use Whirlfloc and Brewtan B toward the end of the boil and find that my light lagers clear very well in the fermenter (pressurized ferment most of the time) - I spund or rack to a purged keg under CO2 using a Clear Draught floating dip tube in the fermenter. This process avoids pickup of most of the yeast/trub from the fermenter (at least in my experience). By the time my beer is fully carbonated, it is typically very clear. When I clean a keg that has kicked, there is typically a very small and fine streak of sediment on the bottom of the keg, rarely enough to cover the bottom.
Cheers!
Trub vs no-trub, it’s so black and white. I strive for grey. I put in just a little effort, remove most, and don’t worry about the rest.
Beer with trub, or without trub, may or may not be different.
I do not want any residual trub in our beer. As our yeast is harvested, we only want the cleanest, trub free yeast possible.
Thus we go to great lengths to keep the beer we brew free of any brewing waste byproducts.
I harvest yeast with trub and there are no problems. You might want to try it so you can either confirm or rej3ct wht yiy believe you know. At least, that’s the way I do things.
I am glad to hear this. Might give it a try. But it seems that the general consensus was for the yeast to always be clean.
I think that’s because in general people buy into what they’re told without checking it out for themselves.
i had to google because i read it as “trub” not “troob”, and some people are putting an umlaut on the u. not judging, but i thought i was anglicizing it when saying it, but apparently it is “trub”.
um i think i just also came up with a kind of discovery here. lol, you often (not always 
) hear brewers saying “ver-t/vert” for wort. ha apparently this is an english origin word.
it should likely be pronounced “wort”. in german it is “bierwürze” that is defined as “liquid, created during the mashing process”
the process going on here is hyperforeignism, likely due to the belief in the strong (and so it is, at least since the mid 19th century) connection between brewing and germany. not to get too far into it, but anton dreher and others in SW germany went to England and Scotland to see the world’s most impressive industrial brewing methodology and took that back with them.
lol, so maybe this is not news to some, but i know i frequently hear “vert” and have heard people say “troob” rather than “trub”
