What effect does/will sediment have?

Cerpintine · 07-12-2009, 10:45 PM

Ok, so the instructions for my second batch (honey cream ale) say siphon the wort from the pot into the primary and leave as much sediment behind as possible. When I got near the end I noticed quite of bit of it in there, so I poured through the rest though a strainer. I finished, and was rolling the strainer around a bit to drain and of course my phone rings..I shouldn't have anwsered but when I reached to my waist I angled the strainer, and the sediment rolled down and fell both on the floor and some in the bucket.

The beer should be ok, but I'm wondering what effects would be had if I left all the sediment in, or none had fallen back or in my case about half was reintroduced? Does it have a dramatic effect on the flavor and/or hoppiness?

**TXCurtis** · 07-12-2009, 10:53 PM

Your beer will be fine.

Some dump the entire contents of their boil pot into their fermenter.

RDWHAHB

Cerpintine · 07-12-2009, 11:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by curtis97322

Your beer will be fine.

Right, I know that, hence why I said:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cerpintine

The beer should be ok

I'm just wondering, if one did two batches of the same brew, but in batch A left all sediment in and batch B filtered most out, what the final differences would be. Anything subtle or notable, or is it just negligible to think about..

pnj · 07-12-2009, 11:18 PM

I usually don't use hop bags and dump the entire contents of the kettle into my fermentor. No worries.

**Yooper** · 07-13-2009, 12:24 AM

I don't strain my wort, unless I've got a ton of leaf hops that can easily be strained out by pouring through a sanitized strainer. I've made 250+ batches, and haven't noticed any differences if I strain or not.

**weirdboy** · 07-13-2009, 12:27 AM

It really, really depends on so many variables that it's hard to quantify what the difference will be given your initial conditions. The short answer is that yes, it will be different but the long answer is "it depends".

EDIT: oh wait I thought you were talking about from primary to secondary but you mean from the kettle to primary. No worries whatsoever. I seriously doubt anyone but a supertaster could notice the difference between a primary with sediment from the kettle and one without.

**rico567** · 07-13-2009, 12:27 AM

As far as the primary is concerned, everything just gets dumped in there, unless I've got whole or leaf hops, or some other adjunct like a gob of cracked coriander seed. Then I use a big SS strainer to get that out before I ærate and put on the lid.

land_shark · 07-14-2009, 09:51 PM

I misread the directions and tossed the entire boil into the fermenter on my first 2 batches. Both beers ended up with a very bitter, almost metallic taste. The first was in the primary for 2 weeks, and was worse than the second which was in for 8 days.

I didn't have an immersion chiller, and tried to cool off my first boil in a snow-bank....that didn't work for ****. The snow right around the pot melted, then I believe insulated the pot and kept the beer from chilling for a few hours. It was almost as if all the hops were in essence 'bittering hops'. not tasty.

Since then I've used an immersion chiller, and have been straining the trub with great results.

Jason

WorryWort · 07-14-2009, 10:18 PM

It depends, but if you did an experiment you may find that:

-The hops could introduce a grassy or vegetal flavour.
-Clarity could suffer.
-Head rentention could suffer.
-Attenuation could suffer (hops resin can coat yeast and slow it down)
-A lighter beer may turn out less 'clean'. Some brewers swear that cold break negatively affects their lagers.

But it all depends. Even if these occur they are minor, and none on their own should ruin a beer.