I know some home brewers transfer all (or most) of the wort and some use a filter.
Looking to see best practices and if you do filter, what is the most effective method.
Thanks
This is what I use and I am happy with it.
i have a KISS system for the most part. so i use a racking cane and tube
i started using a hopspider about 2 years ago and it has made trub a non-issue for me. i occasionally do a batch without fully using the hopspider, as the hopspider does reduce the IBU and the hop flavour, and it is night and day.
i guess im saying with a hopspider i have zero concerns on minimizing trub, also the data tends to point towards a cloudy wort providing a healthier fermentation than ultra-clear wort.
I pump until the bottom of the kettle is covered with trub. I know some goes into the fermenter but not a lot. Doesn’t seem detrimental.
I do pretty much the same as Denny. I whirlpool while chilling which forms a trub cone in the center of my kettle. Then I pump as slowly as I can from the kettle into the fermenter, and I stop when the trub cone spreads out to cover the bottom of the kettle. I may get a bit of trub in the fermenter but very little.
I only use whole hops in the kettle. The hops form a filter bed which prevents most trub from getting pumped into the fermenter.
Filters can get plugged up with the material you are filtering out. I tried a filter on my dip tube once and it was a disaster.
We do likewise. Plus, a fine mesh nylon hop filter is used to strain the wort as it goes into the ferment vessel. You would be shocked to see all of the grunge that gets filtered out.
For a couple of years, I increased my batch size by 1/2 gallon and transferred crystal clear wort into the fermenter. I saw absolutely no improvement in the end product. For the 10 or so years since, I’ve transferred several different ways without much concern about trub. The trub settles out, compacts along with the yeast and has no negative effect whatsoever. As long as you’re not pushing the volume of your fermenter(s), I see nothing wrong with transferring trub.
I’m inclined to agree with Bob. I use Muslin Hop Bags in the boil kettle. I’m sure my hop utilization is declined a bit. But I adjusted for it in my software.
I’m sure some grub gets into my fermenter. But it sinks to the bottom with the yeast. No worries. I have to use the bags because I pump the wort through a plate cooler and I don’t want to clog it.
I like to have ~6-6.5 gal in the kettle post boil. I recirculate to form a hop cone and drain into the fermenter from the edge of the kettle. I fill to 5.5 gal in the fermenter. I still get some trüb in the fermenter but I have a cone below the fermenter spigot to give the trüb a place to settle.
I use either a hop spider or hop socks in the boil. I don’t worry about what gets in the fermenter.
This has been covered in another thread, but the reason we filter the wort is exactly what you state…trub settles out, compacting with the yeast. We harvest our yeast and want it to be free and clear of any unwanted material, such as trub. Our yeast harvest is hyper-clean.
I do extract brewing with Hop pellets. I have not noticed a lot of crud at the bottom of the boil kettle so I just pour it from the cooled kettle into my fermenting bucket. Add water to make up the difference and stir well. This has been what the instructions have said to do. Once the yeast is added, put in in a closet that stays anywhere between 60 to 70 degrees and wait. Once it is ready to keg, I then become very vigilant on oxygen getting added to the mix and use a hose on the end of my fermenter and gravity feed into my keg, slowly as to not splash or have too much bubbles. I have a floating dip tube on my keg that I installed on my last brew and it has been great. RR
Whirlpool and allow trub to settle in center of kettle. Draw clear wort off the trub, at the periphery of the kettle. I do have a stainless braid over the slots on my pickup tube. Works well for me.
I drain, not pump, but otherwise same here. I eyeball the racking arm until I’m sucking trub and stop at that point. I ferment in a keg with a floating dip tube, so I don’t have to worry about racking any trub into the serving keg.
FWIW, except for a dry hopped IPA, I wouldn’t think twice about repitching from a beer that has some kettle trub in it. If it didn’t hurt the first batch, its not going to hurt the second.
Let trub settle after boil and immersion cooling. Open drain valve. At the end, I might tilt the kettle to get the most wort possible but once I see trub getting suspended and approaching the drain valve I stop.
Easiest for me. A clean and sanitized paint strainer bag over a clean and sanitized plastic food grade bucket marked with gallons and 1/2 gallons. When I’ve collected enough in the plastic food grade bucket transfer the paint strainer to another clean and stanitized plastic food grade bucket and strain while I pour the first bucket into my fermenter.
I’ve tried the whole hop bag on the end of racking cane. It helped, except for when it didn’t and then it was a bigger PITA than when it worked. Losing 1/2-3/4 gallon to the hop bed was seriously cutting into my brewlength.
Now, I use a 200 micron bucket top paint strainer.
https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B07B6C2H9T/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_i_2N7ZNR3JCEMYZZ86SDBF
Absolutely everything gets poured into it over my bottling bucket. Ten minutes later all that’s left on top in the strainer is a wasabi-like paste of trub and hop matter.
I now get a pint or so over four gallons into the fermenter of clean trub-free wort out of a five gallon kettle. I used to get a fairly trubby 3.75G on a good day.
Since my last post I have moved to BIAB and changed things around a bit. I have a bazooka screen built into my boil kettle, I use a hop bag to keep my hop pellets in check. I have a propane burner that sits high enough to where I can open the ball valve and let the wort just run into the fermenting bucket. The bazooka screen catches most of the crud in the boil kettle, but since I am using a hop bag and BIAB there is not much in there to catch. I use the pour into the bucket as a way to aerate the wort, so I think that is ok too. Once it hits the fermenting bucket, it is usually at pitching temp, so in goes the yeast and a quick stir or agitation of the bucket and off we go. Not sure if this is the right thing to do, but that is what I have found works for me. RR