Trub Shmub

General Homebrew Discussion
1

Preface: All of this is “for me”, and not to imply you’re doing it wrong. And only my observations, I’m no expert.

Early this year when I was looking for unnecessary things to get rid of, I decided to ditch letting my wort settle and ditch my auto siphon, and instead, once my wort reaches pitching temp I just pump it over to the fermentor, trub and all. Someone pointed out the Brulosophy experiment that showed no significance. Well, now I have several successful batches with this trub in the fermentor method and I’m not seeing any harm.

Tonight I happened upon an experiment done last year by Stone Brewing on a commercial scale. Same beer, 1 control, and 1 with all the boil kettle trub pumped to fermentor. (Split Batch)

Analytical  (instruments)
+Trub beer was clearer than control and remained so throughout shelf life
-Trub beer had 10% reduction in yeast viability at harvest than control
+/-? Trub beer had less yeast growth than control
+/-? Trub beer measured more IBUs than control

Sensory (QC Panel)
They compared the two samples fresh, mid shelf life, and at the end of shelf life.
No difference in aroma, flavor, no preference, throughout shelf life.
Descriptors showed that the Trub beer had slightly less perceived bitterness and reduced lingering bitterness, despite the instruments showing more measured IBUs. Another data point that the IBU is junk.

Their outcome: because of added stress in their equipment and the reduction in harvested yeast viability, they decided not to carry trub over to the fermentor going forward.

So… my equipment doesnt shy away from trub, I don’t harvest yeast, I like clarity, I don’t like lingering bitterness, and I’m lazy and impatient at the end of the boil. So I am locking in my trub pumping ways from here on.

Hope this helps you decide what to do.
Honestly, if I were a yeast harvester, I would probably give it time to settle and keep the Trub out of my fermentor.  And if my beer had lingering bitterness, I know other ways to remedy that.

In short, to trub or not to trub is obviously not a one size fits all, right/wrong problem.

Cheers

2

Guess we were listening to the same podcast!  Since Stone’s experience flies in the face of the conventional textbook data, my takeaway was:  we don’t know all of the other factors in their system, or the systems the conventional wisdom was tested on, that might influence or mitigate the effects of trub carryover.  So it makes sense to test it out on your own system, and let your process requirements and your sensory impressions guide you, too.  Because yeast harvesting is important to me, I’ll make a different choice from someone who just wants to simplify clarification, etc.

I hope someone does more new experiments on this (Stone quit before getting significant data because they saw what their process demanded,  and Brulosophy is only one data point;) the textbooks may be biased to unrealistic conditions.

3

Those are some interesting thoughts to consider. I usually let the trub settle. Sometimes I use the autosiphon to transfer into the fermenter. Other times I simply pour it into the fermenter but leave some of the thickest trub in the kettle. Perhaps one of these days I’ll perform my own experiment.
Cheers,
Brandon

4

Was the textbook written in a time that had the same ingredient makeup that we use - might be another question to answer.

But ya, you’re right. Like I said, it works for me. Stone and Brulosophy tests are just an appeal to authority argument that confirms I’m not a one-off.

5

I don’t “try” to get all of the Trub into the fermentor lol. I just go for it. Usually there’s a mound in the middle and about a 1/4" of thick slurry left. If I had to guess, maybe a third of the Trub gets transferred

6

It takes a lot of trying to make bad beer.

7

Oh how I wish this were true…

I don’t know, maybe it is, since I have never (yet) made a truly ‘bad’ beer.  I have tasted several though, and my guess is the brewer was trying to make good beer.  I find it quite easy to make uninteresting beer, which I have made too much of.  I find it exceedingly hard to make a truly good, interesting beer.

I know, not the point you were making.  I just used your post as a spring board to voice my frustration.  I wish I was better at making really good beer!

8

I pick up the kettle, tip, and pour every thing in it into the fermenter. I have tried to whirlpool, but, there is always way too much wort left behind. When I see that, I pick up the kettle and pour everything into the fermenter. I can’t help myself.

I reuse yeast. I don’t have a microscope or any other means to measure yeast viability. I can just say, yeast still make beer from my trub laden wort, enough yeast survive in my trub laden jar of slurry to apparently thrive in the next batch, and my beer tastes good to me.

Maybe, I like the taste of oxidation. Maybe, that’s why I prefer my beer to most commercial beer. One thing I will say is a batch of beer at my house generally last 2-3 weeks (after I tap the keg) and stays cold that whole time. So, maybe, oxidation doesn’t have time to set in.

9

Jim, which podcast are you summarizing.  Was the Stone experiment about hot break, cold break or both?

10

I’m not Jim, but it’s MBAA podcast episode 47.  And they’re talking about whirlpool trub, so a mix of hot, cold and hops presumably.

11

Just listened to this, I had a few thoughts as related to my process:

  • I’ve usually used mine 15 minutes before the end of the boil. Last night I racked some very clear wort to the fermenter, but let the proteins settle out. I dumped ~1.25 gallons of trub and wort from the kettle, but I still had 5.25 gallons fermenting away.
  • I’ve felt like I’ve noticed the break material is fairly fine, I have been doing 20 minute steeps @ 160 F. I’ve also been stirring fairly vigorously and I wonder if I’ve been breaking some of the particles apart.
  • I’ve always used a full tablet, but maybe that’s too much.

Based on a document I found on BSG, which is for the granular version, excess whirlfloc can lead to increased sedimentation size without an increase in clarity. There’s an interesting picture on page 2 that shows that using too much can lead to higher losses due to a less dense break sedimentation. A single tablet treats 1/2 bbl and weighs 5 grams, so I should probably be using much less. I might try out the optimization procedure they share in the 2nd link.

https://bsgcraftbrewing.com/Resources/CraftBrewing/PDFs/Brewing_Processes_and_Techniques/ClearBeerTechnology.pdf
https://bsgcraftbrewing.com/Resources/CraftBrewing/PDFs/Brewing_Processes_and_Techniques/KettleOptimizaInstructions.pdf

There’s also the Brulosophy article this morning that found a significant difference, the majority of tasters preferred the low trub beer.

12

On a commercial scale, I believe they whirlpool prior to chilling.

13

Of course, guess that was my brain on a Monday! In fact the heat exchanger was precisely what they wanted to keep excessive whirlpool trub out of in their experiment. Thanks for catching that.

14

To more correctly summarize the findings which Brulosophy did not correctly summarize, the majority of tasters who correctly identified the odd beer out preferred the low trub beer over the high trub (cold and hot break) beer.  The exbeeriment ostensibly looks at aging and trub, but the beers appear to be fairly young.

15

So Brulosophy’s (limited) result seems to be in line with conventional wisdom, but Stone’s experience  is just the opposite: Kunze attributes better fermentation, not worse, to a little hot break, but also difficult clarification and poor flavor stability, which they did not see. Sounds to me increasingly like there were other, unidentified factors at work in the Stone case.

Maybe grist? Yeast type and fermentation temperature  a strong possibility?  Quantity and variety of hops?  Podcast suggests increased hop polyphenols to complex with proteins might help clarification,  but you wouldn’t want that for flavor reasons in a lager like the textbooks assume, so removing any haze-contributing trub at whirlpool would be more critical.

16

Today’s Brulosophy experiment is another data point in favour of excluding trub for flavour, but including it for clarity and faster attenuation. Results from other experiments showed no flavour difference in younger beers.

I’ve definitely found that whirlfloc causes large losses. However, you can recover a lot of the losses by filtering the trub through a muslin-lined funnel. This is very slow but does work.

I’d like to see a few more studies. I could save a lot of time if I could just tip all the trub into the fermenter.

17

Why not do it and see if you like the beer? That seems to me to be the most important study. It interesting how few explorers we have. I’ve found that maps can be wrong, and sometimes the most interesting places aren’t on maps. It’s not like we’re talking about walking on the moon though.

I find a few things interesting in this. The howl at Brulosophy is much quieter when there results line up with conventional wisdom. I also see a tendency to go “but but but…” when things don’t line up with conventional wisdom. I wonder if that’s due to the $300 investment in the book of conventional wisdom. Hmmmm, now that’s something that needs more study [emoji41]

18

I will give it a try next time. I like any technique that shortens and simplifies the brew day. Brewing needn’t be complicated.

I like how rigorous and empirical Brulosophy is. They get stick because everyone is opinionated, but their methodology is sound. Better to avoid opinions and look at evidence. And you know what they say about opinions…

19

There ya go.

20

For me the biggest reason to keep the trub out of the fermenter is space.  I’ll bet I had a gallon of Hop material and trub in Saturday’s IPA.  I’ve got a 6+ gallon fermenter so no extra room.