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**sudbuster** · 12-03-2012, 01:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AnOldUR

Tossing loose hops in the kettle has been working fine for me, but I had a little time on my hands this morning and came up with an idea. I whirlpool after chilling, but get mixed results. Sometimes there's a nice cone, other times, not so much. When the cone is poor or starts to break down at the end of draining, hop and break material drifts toward the valve. I had this piece of perforated stainless and am hoping that it will create a kind of dam. The theory is that at the start of run off most of the hop and break will have settled and the wort will come over top of the filter. After that, the screen will block some of the solids from getting into the fermenter.

Hoping to get the chance to try it out tomorrow.

Ingenious solution. I hope it works for you. I built a similar rig, but more cumbersome, that was not much help for me. I gave up. Now, I just dump it all in, suck it all out into a conical at 36* f overnight and flush the sludge through the dump valve. Still not as effective as I would like, but the best I can do so far. Wish we could all have centrifuges. Again, very nice build.

**AnOldUR** · 12-03-2012, 11:13 AM

Well, the results were mixed, but any problems may have been self imposed. The beer I brewed had a lot of rye, but was not overly hopped. For some reason there was a lot more break material than I expected even though I have brewed a fair amount of rye beers. The boil looked like egg drop soup. The hop dam worked well at keeping the wort clear until it reached the top of the perforated plate. At that point the gumminess clogging the holes slowed the flow considerably. It did drain and I got my expected volume to my fermenters, so overall I'm happy. It was almost funny. The run off from the mash was fine, but I had to wait patiently for the kettle to finish draining.

I'm still curious how it will work on a hoppy IPA with 2-row as the bulk of the grist?