I'm leaving a LOT of beer in the brew kettle--help

When I siphon my beer out of the boil kettle, I end up leaving a whole bunch in the bottom of the kettle, like 1 or 2 gallons, because it's mixed with cloudy stuff. That cuts down my yield a bunch. I brew 5 gallons and only 3 make it to the fermenter.

I'm doing all-grain BIAB. After I boil, I cool my wort with an ice bath. Since I have a thin aluminum kettle, it only takes 35 minutes or so for the beer to get down to 68F. I whirlpool the beer at first but I don't stir it while it cools. The thing is, after I cool my beer, it separates really well, with the clear wort separate from the clouds of stuff--is there a name for it? I siphon away all the clear wort, but I'm left with at least a 3 inches of beer at the bottom that is totally cloudy. If I leave it sit for a while it settles some more and I could get another inch or so of clear beer off the top, but there's no way I could get my siphon started without stirring it up again. What other people do?

dump the whole thing in the fermenter.

Do people really do that? I'm willing to try it. My separated wort is like crystal clear and I like that; I'll have to get over the nice crystal clear part, but will by final beer be cloudier if I let all that stuff into the fermenter?

BetterSense said:

. . . but there's no way I could get my siphon started without stirring it up again. What other people do?

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Bargain Fittings. The best 30 bucks you'll spend.

That's not going to help me at all.

I'm trying to explain.

Due to my stand-chilling technique, my beer separates into crystal clear bits and cloudy bits. I siphon away all the crystal clear sweet wort but when I leave behind the cloudy stuff, I leave a lot of beer behind with it.

I don't know what other people do. Apparently, people don't worry about getting the cloudy stuff in the fermenter? Do you just dump it all in and figure it settles out in the fermenter? Can you filter it?

It's called trub. Don't be scared to let most of it enter your carboy, it will settle in the bottom of your carboy as your wort ferments. The yeast do need to munch on some of it. 2 gallons seems like alot. You might want to not have such an aggressive boil and add enough water to end up with 5.5 to 6 gal in your kettle. Then you can leave a little bit in your kettle.

I have added a tube to the inside of my kettle that extends out from the drain bung towards the middle of the kettle and turns down to within 1/8" to 1/16" from the bottom of the kettle. I have a 10 gallon kettle and I open the drain and let it flow until it stops, leaving behind combination liquid and trub at about 1/8" and however wide my kettle is.

put it all in....if your worried about hop bits, etc from getting in, just use a fine strainer....but otherwise dont get carried away with siphoning only crystal clear wort....its all good.

put it all in....if your worried about hop bits, etc from getting in, just use a fine strainer....but otherwise dont get carried away with siphoning only crystal clear wort....its all good.

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Ok, I guess I've been making a lot of effort to do something that doesn't matter that much. I swear that in the past when I haven't been wiling to lose so much and sucked up that cloudy stuff, the beers haven't ended up as clear in the end, but maybe it's my imagination. It will definitely be nice to get an extra gallon of beer out of each batch.

I have a 10 gallon kettle and I open the drain and let it flow until it stops, leaving behind combination liquid and trub at about 1/8" and however wide my kettle is.

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If I did that I would definitely be getting practically all the stuff I've been avoiding because it's at least an inch or two thick layer at the bottom. I have been wondering about people who have immersion chillers, because if I put an immersion chiller in my beer it would definitely stir everything all back up again and there would be no wait to avoid it anyway.

If you aren't already doing so, just make sure you are using whirlfloc/irish moss in the final 10-15 minutes and then dump it all into the fermenter once cooled (+1 on using a strainer to filter at particles out). FYI, the trub contains a lot of nutrients that the yeast will use.

FWIW, I've always had crystal clear beers in the 30+ batches I've done this way.

gclunde said:

If you aren't already doing so, just make sure you are using whirlfloc/irish moss in the final 10-15 minutes and then dump it all into the fermenter once cooled (+1 on using a strainer to filter at particles out). FYI, the trub contains a lot of nutrients that the yeast will use.

FWIW, I've always had crystal clear beers in the 30+ batches I've done this way.

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+1. Do it up, it settles out during/after fermentation and most certainly in the bottle.

How exactly are you whirlpooling, and how long are you letting it settle? After you get it swirling really well, it needs a good 20 min for the trub and break material to settle and the cone to form before you start draining. I only leave ~2 pints of wort behind when I whirlpool. As others have said, if the trub and break material gets into the fermenter it's not really a big deal.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Whirlpooling

I only whirlpool with a spoon at the very beginning for a minute or two, then I don't touch the kettle until I'm ready to siphon. I even put the racking cane in the kettle while its still hot so that I don't have to jiggle anything when it's cool. I don't know how many people do this but if you do, it's amazing how the wort separates into clear pockets and the cloudy stuff clumps up together. If you can avoid the clumps the beer siphons literally clearer than the finished beer sometimes. But like I said you leave a lot. I think I will just suck all the junk into the fermenter (except a bit on the very bottom maybe) next time because it's wasting a bunch.

what exactly is the advantage of irish moss? What differences are there when you use it?

After you cool your wort, slide one of these over your racking cane and it will allow you to filter out the hops.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002CQTXBC/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

BetterSense said:

what exactly is the advantage of irish moss? What differences are there when you use it?

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Irish Moss (or Whirlfloc in its powered and tablet form) is a clarifying agent. It assists in coagulating and settling out certain proteins that can cause beer haze.

I've used both, but personally prefer Whirlfloc since you just drop a tablet (or portion of one) into the wort during the last 10 or 15 minutes of your boil and forget about it.

all of that trub compacts into a very tight cake at the bottom of your fermenter and it's easier to siphon most or even all of your beer out. you've already seen this in your kettle; the longer you wait the more the trub compacts, same goes for the fermenter. time is a great clarifier.

I think people on here who have never done biab don't have a valid idea how much trub gets into your kettle. It its easily 3 to 5 times as much compared with traditional methods. I might not worry if I did a regular vorlauf, but we got none of that. I saw a post on here the other day where a biab guy shook all his super fine flour out of the bag before mashing and had super clear wort and high efficiency. I am skeptical but willing to try this on my next batch.

Currently I just shoot my recipes for 6.5 gallons and try to get about 5.5 by the end. I don't like the waste, and I'd rather not get all the trub either.

I often take the liter or so left in the hops and trub and dump it into a colander lined with a paper towel. I bag the wort with a foodsaver and freeze it to be diluted for starters. I could even just boil it enough to sanitize it, chill it and add it the fermenter. Two gallons is close to a case of beer. I'd have a hard time wasting that much.

Trust me I do. What I'm dealing with is light-colored stuff that is very fine, and there's a lot of it. There's no way you could filter it out with a screen, cheesecloth, or mesh. Maybe a coffee filter or paper towel might filter it out. Or maybe it will fall out in the fermenter anyway and I'm wasting my time worrying about it. Like I said, for people that use immersion chillers or stir during cooling, it will all be suspended evenly through the wort for those people anyway.

The wort I get through the paper towel is very clean. The problem is it clogs up fast. I'd run it through a strainer first.

edecambra said:

I think people on here who have never done biab don't have a valid idea how much trub gets into your kettle. It its easily 3 to 5 times as much compared with traditional methods. I might not worry if I did a regular vorlauf, but we got none of that. I saw a post on here the other day where a biab guy shook all his super fine flour out of the bag before mashing and had super clear wort and high efficiency. I am skeptical but willing to try this on my next batch.

Currently I just shoot my recipes for 6.5 gallons and try to get about 5.5 by the end. I don't like the waste, and I'd rather not get all the trub either.

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i don't see how either of these can be true. i was doing BIAB for a while before going to the traditional 3 kettle method and i saw no difference in the amount of trub at all. what would cause this difference in trub between the two methods, i can't imagine.

shaking the flour out of a dry sack of grain as a way of getting clear wort? makes no sense. that flour IS where your efficiency comes from, without it your efficiency has to drop. it's understandable that someone would equate dusty flour from the grain with cloudy wort but it's simply not the way it works. a proper boil for a good hot break, rapid chill for a cold break, whirlfloc (or irish moss), correct yeast pitching rate and a cold crash of the fermented beer have always given me clear beers. crystal clear wort is of less importance to me because the process of making the beer is not over.

So let me ask this:

Does wort generally look clear or cloudy when people put it in the fermenter? When people use false-bottoms, stainless-hose cooler tuns, whirlpooling, counterflow chillers, etc...does the resulting wort look clear or does it look cloudy? Does anyone even notice or care at that point?

Right now, I can get crystal clear (as clear as finished beer) wort using my method, but I leave behind at least a gallon of beer with the break material.

BetterSense said:

So let me ask this:

Does wort generally look clear or cloudy when people put it in the fermenter? When people use false-bottoms, stainless-hose cooler tuns, whirlpooling, counterflow chillers, etc...does the resulting wort look clear or does it look cloudy? Does anyone even notice or care at that point?

Right now, I can get crystal clear (as clear as finished beer) wort using my method, but I leave behind at least a gallon of beer with the break material.

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Mine is cloudy in to the fermenter.

i just dump it all in and don't look at it. beers are good

I use whirlfloc and dump everything into the fermenter through one of the Lowes paint straining bags which is set into the fermenter (obviously I ferment in buckets). Works very well to strain out the hops and trub from the whirlfloc. I ring out the bag fairly well to get the last bit of goodness. Whatever makes it through settles out during fermentation. I lose very little wort to the kettle (basically whatever gets absorbed by the hops) and as far as I can tell my beer is clear (not a lot of experience to really know yet).

Get a funnel, wrap a hop sack around it, and pour your cooled wort in...every bit of it.

You'll pitch your yeast, your yeast will work, you'll transfer to secondary and/or keg, you'll cold crash for a week or two, and you'll have a nice and clear beer to drink.

You're spending entirely too much energy and time in trying to keep trub out, when trub will just drop out throughout the fermenation and cold crashing.

Dump it all!!!! It settles out in my brews every time. The bad news is you've wasted a lot of beer.

This is fairly simple...if you don't want the trub in your beer, which I prefer not to have, then just brew a larger batch size. I plan all of my non IPA brews for 6 gallons. IPA's have lots more hop break and trub so I plan larger, 6.5 or so for them. The minimal cost to get an extra gallon and no trub is worth it to me. Plus, the trub takes up space in the fermenter where beer could be in place of it.

However, the trub vs. no trub thing is personal preference. If you don't want it, then brew a larger size.

The local microbrewery here does a whirlpool and then cools through a large plate chiller.
Granted, they also filter their beer, but they don't worry about trub getting into the fermenter. However, even before the filtering, the beer is pretty clear.
It really boils down to your own preference. Thats one of the great things about homebrewing. You can adjust your brewing system and process to make beer that you like.

BetterSense said:

So let me ask this:

Does wort generally look clear or cloudy when people put it in the fermenter? When people use false-bottoms, stainless-hose cooler tuns, whirlpooling, counterflow chillers, etc...does the resulting wort look clear or does it look cloudy? Does anyone even notice or care at that point?

Right now, I can get crystal clear (as clear as finished beer) wort using my method, but I leave behind at least a gallon of beer with the break material.

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clear wort does not automatically mean clear beer in the glass. the finished beer at cold temps could get very hazy from proteins left in the beer that are visible only at colder temperatures. sometimes chill haze can be permanent other times cold crashing it for a period of time will clear it up. trub will not negatively affect your beer. period. choosing not to add it to the fermenter is also fine but you are not really avoiding anything bad. if you consider that the trub provides nutrition for the yeast you might say that you are avoiding a good thing but that's a minor point IHMO.

In Honest My Opinion?

No matter what gets into the fermenter, it will eventually clear out without enough time especially in the cold. My Belgian wits turn into crystalweisse after a month in the keg.

rycov said:

In Honest My Opinion?

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funny. and i thought i proof read that post.

its cool. when i was scrolling back down just know i read what i wrote as in my honest opinion. and thought "****, i'm trying to pick on this guy and i spell the same thing wrong"

*now

damnit

Bobby_M said:

My Belgian wits turn into crystalweisse after a month in the keg.

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ditto

Personally, I wouldn't worry about siphoning that into your fermenter. It will settle out and be left behind when you rack later.

But, since it does concern you and you didn't specifically mention it, I'm guessing you pitch your hops right into your kettle. This will significantly increase the amount of break material left behind. Get a fine mesh bag and put your hops into it. I usually use a small clamp or metal clip to attach it to the side of my kettle while the bag hangs in it. You will get slightly less utilization (10% max) but you can account for that if you're concerned. Not only will it give you more clear wort, it will make your clean-up alot easier since you just pull the bag with the hops in it. Dump the bag in the garbage and rinse it out until clean.

Jaz

BetterSense said:

That's not going to help me at all.

I'm trying to explain.

Due to my stand-chilling technique, my beer separates into crystal clear bits and cloudy bits. I siphon away all the crystal clear sweet wort but when I leave behind the cloudy stuff, I leave a lot of beer behind with it.

I don't know what other people do. Apparently, people don't worry about getting the cloudy stuff in the fermenter? Do you just dump it all in and figure it settles out in the fermenter? Can you filter it?

Click to expand...

Just get yourself one of those 10" wire strainers from any brew store. Sanitize it and set it over the top of your bucket and pour the kettle through it. If it's loaded with hops and gunk when you are done, hose it off, re-sanitize, and set it across your boil kettle and pour from the bucket back into the kettle. Then spray off the strainer and sanitize once more. Add yeast starter to the bucket and pour back into this from the kettle. I then pour twice more. This mixes up the yeast and aerates the wort. I usually have a full bucket of foam and wort when I'm done. Put on the top, add airlock, and put away for 4 weeks.
There is no way in hell I would ever leave even a drop of beer behind. With this method, you will have no beer wasted.

But, since it does concern you and you didn't specifically mention it, I'm guessing you pitch your hops right into your kettle.

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No, I always use fine hop socks. I have very little solid material left in the kettle, it's mostly very fine fluffy stuff.