I’ve read a few questions lately about whirlpool and wort clarity. First, in homebrew when someone asks CAN YOU, the real answer is YES. You can do whatever you want. SHOULD you, is a different matter. Anyway, for those new to whirlpooling (like me) , here’s what I do.
I whirlpool through my whole boil. One point of boiling is to circulate the wort to drive off DMS right? Why not help it. Sanitize your system at the same time, right? Assist flow across your hops too, right? I think so.
At flame out I turn the cooling water on to my IC. When I hit bottom, or my pitching temp which ever comes first, I kill the whirlpool. Then I take a gravity sample. I use the gravity sample as my timer for when I SHOULD start running it to my fermentor.
This is tonight’s batch. Typical 5 gallon brew with an ounce of EKG pellets in a one gallon paint strainer bag. Twist tied and thrown in the middle of my IC at the right time.
You can see that the break does most of its settling in about 15 minutes. The trick is to not disturb it, and run off gently. You should endure up with most of your gunk in the center of the BK.
I don’t know about that one Jim. Unless you have a really badass pump I don’t think you’re going to get appreciably more mixing by “whirlpooling” during the boil. The boiling action is going to divert the whirling energy in a hurry, moreso if you have the chilling coil in there too. The less obstruction you have, the more effective your whirlpool will be. Not to mention 60-90 minutes per brew of noise, energy and wear on your pump. Last 10 minutes of the boil is more than sufficient to sanitize equipment.
But as you said, you CAN do whatever you want. 8)
You’re probably right. But it works for me. It may not make a ton of difference on DMS venting, but it can’t be hurting it either. And I can see the whirlpool during the boil do my pump must be pretty good.
As far as wear, you’re probably right. But for me, I don’t mind the noise and I bought it to use it. I think start up is the hardest thing on electric motors.
In any event, the main point is that I think some people kill their whirlpool and immediately start draining. It takes a while for things to settle
Professional articles advise minimal pumping of hot wort for whirlpool to prevent breaking the trub floccs up and shear stress on proteins. Best method is hand mixing with a spoon or paddle which can be applied up to 15 BBL. To get good separation you want your trub to coagulate and aggregate, not blend it up finely. Also professional breweries use low shear pumps on VFDs (with gentle flow paths) so they can be slowed down. Furiously whipping the wort with a homebrew pump at 3500 rpm for an hour can’t be good for the quality of the wort.
The best method with a pump is to turn it off as soon as you get sufficient velocity in the whirlpool and then let it settle.
90% of why I pump whirlpool is rapid cooling. The remaining 10% is keeping the surface moving for DMS off gassing, and last of al a trub cone. Figure of speech of course, I haven’t really done the math. Ive noticed no ill effects to body or anything else. Just my experience though.
very interesting info - did not know that. one thing though, as I do have a whirlpool arm on my setup - aint’ no way its whipping around at 3500RPM. the velocity of the WP is, to me, significantly slower at least visually, to a professional whirlpool.
I think the concern is the action inside the pump, not in the whirlpool itself. I have no idea if this is really an issue but as it happens, apparently I’ve been doing it right the whole time (using a spoon to hand whirlpool) ;D
I don’t know about you, but I’ve found that there are many theoretical concerns from the commercial brewing world that don’t really affect our reality as homebrewers. Autolysis is another example.
Just sharing the information. I know people like to poo poo professional brewing knowledge, but if you don’t see any problems, then you can’t argue with experience.
I use a pump, but I can see how blending up the floccs may lead to a poor trub cone. If you try it both ways let us know what you observe.
I think we all appreciate you sharing the info. FTR, I wasn’t necessarily saying to ignore info from commercial brewers. Only to test it for yourself rather than simply accept it because it came from a commercial brewer.
Neither am I. I’ve been using a pump for about 1 1/2-2 years now and there has been no change in my beer because of it. So either I don’t have a problem or my evaluation isn’t good enough to notice a difference.
