First time conical user

Once your cooled wort is in your fermentor, are you letting the break material and excess trub settle for a dump prior to pitching your yeast? If so, how long do you wait for the settling to occur before dumping?

enohcs said:

Once your cooled wort is in your fermentor, are you letting the break material and excess trub settle for a dump prior to pitching your yeast? If so, how long do you wait for the settling to occur before dumping?

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I try to minimize that before it goes into my fermentor. What is your cooling method?

Celticway said:

I try to minimize that before it goes into my fermentor. What is your cooling method?

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I use a blichmann plate chiller. One of the best homebrew investments I ever made.

I'm of the opinion that cold break material is good for fermentation, so I left mine in for a week or so when I used a conical.

I don't have a conical (temp control is a *****), but I would just let it settle out and dump the trub when I dump/harvest the yeast.

samc said:

I'm of the opinion that cold break material is good for fermentation, so I left mine in for a week or so when I used a conical.

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It is true that there are allot of nutrients in there, but you should have plenty in there already. There are people who will tell you that having cold break in your fermentor will not effect your beer, but I have tested this a few different times and in my opinion, my beer came out better when I got rid of the break as much as I could.

enohcs said:

I use a blichmann plate chiller. One of the best homebrew investments I ever made.

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If you want to remove as much break as you can, you can cool and pump back into your kettle (if it has a false bottom) and use some whole hops sometime in your boil. It will act as a filter. Then when the kettle contents is at pitch temps, then pump to your fermentor.

Celticway said:

If you want to remove as much break as you can, you can cool and pump back into your kettle (if it has a false bottom) and use some whole hops sometime in your boil. It will act as a filter. Then when the kettle contents is at pitch temps, then pump to your fermentor.

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Unfortunately no false bottom on the kettle. But I've never had issues with trub or hot break material in my fermentor.

How long does it take for cold break material to settle at the bottom of a cone so as to get the most efficient dump? My preference is to remove it before pitching yeast.

Before I started pre fermentor removal, my break material didn't take long to settle. It gets pretty bulky and heavy with my CFC. I would guess 1 hour you will be able to dump the bulk of it.