Is vorlauf necessary?

I've been doing AG for a while now and I just recently saw something about doing vorlauf, or clarifying the wort. With my mash tun, I made a manifold with tiny tiny holes and slits. No grain gets through so it's always clear.

So do I really need to vorlauf if it's clear?

I've been hitting gravities (and in some cases, exceeding them) so I'm just curious.

Maybe not.

If you are running clear wort out of the mash tun there is no reason IMHO to vorlauf.

Dan said:

Maybe not.

If you are running clear wort out of the mash tun there is no reason IMHO to vorlauf.

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This. The point of the vorlauf is to clear the wort. If your wort is clear, what's the point?

I never frolauf anymore. My wort comes out pretty clear. I do drain though my hop nap on the kettle just in case. But there is never anything significant solids that come through.

I use a drilled copper manifold and get some small bits of grain at the very start. After a few seconds they are gone and the wort looks pretty good. However, after drawing about 2 quarts, the clarity is so much better. It's not the bits of grain that are a concern, it's the small particles that get filtered by the grain bed. That stuff is full of proteins.

There so little time saved in not doing a vorlauf that it's not worth skipping IMO.

And if you recirculate your mash, you are vorlaufing constantly anyway.

i batch sparge, although I'm thinking about fly sparging once I build an arm

and my clarifying you mean just not murky?

on a side note, do manifolds yield a clearer wort than false bottoms?

Last two batches I forgot to vorleuf and everything turned out perfect, so I'm thinking maybe it's not necessary too.

With BIAB, after the bag is pulled from the wort, it is very murky and the beers always turn out fine. With whirl pooling and adding clarifiers I don't think it is necessary.

Vorlauf helps. Even if you run a clear wort over all, the first pint or two will be more cloudy, before the grain bed will settle down and form a good filter. I do it, it takes a second, I just collect the first couple of pints in a pitcher and then return it back to the mush tun through a strainer, so it goes back slow and it doesn't mess up the grain bed.

It's not an absolute necessity, but if you're a stickler for detail and procedure then it should be done. It adds a couple of minutes and the grain bed helps filter stuff really well.

In a 4-5 hour brew session why not vorlouf? It takes maybe 5 minutes. If you want to speed it up a little use a steamer basket to distribute the wort over the grains so you don't disturb the bed. You can pour it a lot faster into that. But really. Its only 5 minutes.

Simple. Do a vorlauf into a clear vessel of a quart or two in size. Drain off another and compare the two. If they are both clear enough for you, your system keeps your wort clear and you don't need to vorlauf.

I use a braid and get a lot of fine particles in my vorlauf and very clear after a pitcher full. So I will continue.

Doesn't have to add time, do it towards the end of the mash (like 55mins in if you mash for 60min). It may look clear, but try it and you'll notice a proteiny-cloudy mess on top of the mash when it drains.

What exactly is vorlauf. I use a copper manifold with slits and keep tipping the runnings back into the mash until they are gin clear which is normally 5 minutes. I also wrap my manifold in a very fine muslin bag.

BOBTHEukBREWER said:

What exactly is vorlauf. I use a copper manifold with slits and keep tipping the runnings back into the mash until they are gin clear which is normally 5 minutes. I also wrap my manifold in a very fine muslin bag.

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Vorlaufing is what you are doing. It is simply draining some wort from the MLT and returning it back to the main body of the mash until the wort runs clear.

Your clarity is not defined by the mash process. Your proteins coagulate in the boil and settle out in the trub in the kettle and fermenter. If one is truly concerned on trying to solve this mystery, brew two beers one with and one without and let us know the differences you find

I still do it, but I've read and/or seen a few references which say it's unnecessary and provides benefits during fermentation for the amounts we home brewers are dealing with. So... I really don't worry about sparkling clear transfer anymore. I drain off a bit of the loose stuff, and move on.

When I use my cooler MT w/ a braid the first quart of so looks a little cloudy w/ protiens, not pieces of grain I believe. The wort that I return to the MT while vorlaughing looks very much like the 9 gallons of wort that I get while doing BIAB, both methods produce similiar beer. Last batch w/ the MT I just ran straight to the kettle, the trivial amount of matter eliminated during vorlaughing w/ a braid MT is so small it's trivial IME and IMO.

Okay, I'm confused. According to the one notable guy who advocates the batch sparge method (forgot his name, saw him on youtube), vorlaufing is just to get the "chunks" out of the brew. Others here refer to using it to get clearer brew. Those are two different things. In any case, it's my reasoning that any chunks and cloudiness will fall to the bottom of any boil pot and fermenter, anyway, so what's the point? It seems like this is one of those minor things that is belabored over ad nauseum, but doesn't really matter in the long run. Am I wrong?

if there are no chunks, i'm fine without it. i like a cloudy beer anyway i dont filter

I had tannin flavor issues with a fine crush and not vorloufing. When i started vorloufing about 2 gallons worth. I got rid of the flavor issue.

I vorlauf about 2 quarts at the beginning of lautering, and then 2 quarts again when I start lautering the sparge (I do a single batch sparge). The wort is always pretty clear after running two quarts.

For me, the only thing that has contributed to tannins/harshness was the fine particles. A little bit of protein/cloudiness in the runnings is no worry for me (full disclosure - I don't do delicate lagers).

I do batch, less than a quart of vorlauf, and use a double strainer after that for any more that occurs when I open the valve wide open. Sometimes I've gotten a few particles in the strainer, which is why I use it. Hard to know for certain every little process change that affects flavor, but why screw with perfection? (I love my beers better than any micro brew these days)

But the point is that the majority of stuff that will cause some issues you can actually taste is in the first quart, even for fairly fine grind batch sparging.

As a side note, if BIAB works well, it seems like just lining the cooler with the same filtering bag and just opening the spigot full bore right away would work, assuming the first little bit of hazy protein in the vorlauf would not affect flavor. But to trade 5 minutes for sparging for 5 minutes of cleaning the bag - not gonna happen.

RichBenn said:

...
But the point is that the majority of stuff that will cause some issues you can actually taste is in the first quart, even for fairly fine grind batch sparging.
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come to think of it, I've never tasted the cloudy first bit against the tail end of the first runnings. I'll have to do that now, curious. I usually just taste when I take a pre-boil gravity.

It is the grain bed that filters out big chunks medium chunks small chunks tiny chunks and nano chunks. Just try taking out the coarse grain from your mash leaving fine bits of grain and cloudy liquid, then filtering through cloth or muslin, the cloudiness always stays assuming filter times of less than 6 hours.

I don't usually bother. I do run it through a metal coffee filter though for the first few minutes so I guess I'm accomplishing the same thing.

on an episode of brewing tv they profiled a guy who does not vorlauf and he claims that the cloudy first runnings of the mash provide lipids that the yeast use later on. who knows about that but i stopped doing a vorlauf after seeing that episode and have noticed no bad effects in the finished beer, in fact i won second place in the world cup of beer APA category. the bits of grain and husks do not seem to matter at all in my experience. it could be that there is something about my process that keeps my beer safe from harm. i don't do anything but filter my water through an RV filter and i have no idea about the mineral content but my local brewery does nothing to their water but filter so i gave that a shot too. either way seems to work so i don't think it's a critical issue.

i'll play devil's advocate here...why would commercial breweries bother with vorlauf if it didn't improve the beer? They are always looking for shortcuts and cost-saving options, yet I've never heard of any brewery skipping vorlauf, unless they are utilizing a mash filter. So in the case of those breweries that use a mash filter...why would they install & invest large capital just to be able to skip vorlauf?

telejunkie said:

i'll play devil's advocate here...why would commercial breweries bother with vorlauf if it didn't improve the beer? They are always looking for shortcuts and cost-saving options, yet I've never heard of any brewery skipping vorlauf, unless they are utilizing a mash filter. So in the case of those breweries that use a mash filter...why would they install & invest large capital just to be able to skip vorlauf?

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this may be true but i would argue that homebrew is better than commercial beer in most cases anyway. it would be interesting to see a comparison of two, or more, identical beers brewed with the vorlauf being the only variable.

eastoak said:

this may be true but i would argue that homebrew is better than commercial beer in most cases anyway. it would be interesting to see a comparison of two, or more, identical beers brewed with the vorlauf being the only variable.

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i'll take your first your first sentence with a grain of salt considering i've judged many a hb comps and tasted a large pool of commercially brewed beer and while the bar is coming up on the hb side...still a far cry. That said, top level hb'ers though can compete and at times maybe best the commercial side.

I've always understood the purpose of vorlaufing was to establish the grain bed for fly-sparging. So why would commercial breweries skip vorlauf and insert a mash filter...maybe the answer is that they want to minimize particulate matter in the kettle even thought the particulates may not effect the flavor profile of the beer at all. Identical brewed beers on a controlled system with a triangle taste test would definitely be the answer...

telejunkie said:

i'll play devil's advocate here...why would commercial breweries bother with vorlauf if it didn't improve the beer?

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I'm not sure one can make a direct comparison between a commercial brewery's Mash / Lauter Tun and a 48 qt. cooler with a stainless braid? The braid filters pretty darn well irregardless of vorlauf. Who knows what's under the FB in a commercial setup?

It's simple. Vorlauf helps get a clearer beer with less trub. If you BIAB, vorlauf probably will not help at all and I'm not sure how would you have done it, but if you mash in a MLT vorlauf will help for sure.

Here is an interesting short discussion on the topic from Jeremy King and brewing tv.


This was one of the reasons I stopped being overly concerned about it.
Edit: discussion starts at about 7:00

Scooby_Brew said:

It's simple. Vorlauf helps get a clearer beer with less trub. If you BIAB, vorlauf probably will not help at all and I'm not sure how would you have done it, but if you mash in a MLT vorlauf will help for sure.

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this is simply not true and the way to prove it to yourself is to try a no vorlauf brew.

haha, that's a great video.

My vorlauf is horrible. I think probably b/c I disturb the grain bed when I pour the wort back in. Anyway I get a few chunks of husk in and the wort is not clear. No ill effect in terms of clarity, but certainly I have more trub and I hesitate to dump that in the fermenter. As a result my brewhouse efficiency suffers if I want to bring the volume back up. We'll see if I can clarify the wort better in the future.

rico567 said:

I vorlauf about 2 quarts at the beginning of lautering, and then 2 quarts again when I start lautering the sparge (I do a single batch sparge). The wort is always pretty clear after running two quarts.

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Yep. This is my concern dude. Boiling grain particulate for an hour or more can't be good. I try to get my wort as clear as possible through a vorlauf-- three quarts through my steel braid in my cooler MT and it's clear.

mattfmoore said:

Yep. This is my concern dude. Boiling grain particulate for an hour or more can't be good. I try to get my wort as clear as possible through a vorlauf-- three quarts through my steel braid in my cooler MT and it's clear.

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try it sometime then you can say for sure if it's good or not otherwise how do you know?

mattfmoore said:

Boiling grain particulate for an hour or more can't be good.

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If boiling a few grain particles is bad, then I guess decoction mashing must be terrible.

But of course neither is bad, and for the same reason: you only extract tannins from grain at high pH, and if you're doing things right both your mash and your wort are low pH.

In terms of clarity, everything drops out with the hot break and hops.

Vorlauf == waste of time.