Hop strainer?

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fatelvis

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I just finished my first all grain brew and had a lot of problems draining my wort. I used pellet hops and and a ss braid. Any suggestions to solve this? I was thinking of trying a hop bag.
 
You should be able to buy a hop strainer from a homebrew store. They're just a section of copper pipe with small holes punched in it. I made my own with a section of copper pipe. Cut myself about a 9" length and crimped one end shut in a vice. Then just drilled a load of small holes in it with a power drill. About 30 mins work. Attach this to the inside of the tap in your kettle.
 
Or make yourself one of these. Easy and works great.

hop%20filter.jpg
 
So the hop strainer you made is just a straight piece of copper with a lot of small holes in it? Any pics? The ss braid worked so good in the mash tun, I thought it would work with hops.
 
The copper w/ holes strainer doesn't sound like a very good technique. If the holes are too big, then it lets all of the pellet hop and break material through, thus being fairly worthless. If they're small enough, then you're not getting the large surface area of a hopstopper or hop bag. When the holes clog, then you're going to have a hard time draining the kettle.

Fatelvis - you're not the only one. I've heard other negative reports about using the SS braid as a hop filter. You didn't say what problem you had. Did it get clogged on you?
 
I use a homemade version of the HopStopper, which is commercially available; do a Google search for HopStopper. Mine is a fine mesh stainless steel woven cloth (hi tech window screen). Being cheap, and letting my ego lead me into situations my mechanical skills can't keep up, I built mine from a 12'' diameter cook's spatter screen, and used a fine stainless wire from the braided hose you mentioned to stitch up the edges of the folder-over screen. This screen was sewn over a triangular frame I bent up from heavy guage copper wire, and soldered to a bent up 3/8" dia copper tube as the pick up. I connected it to the 1/2" pipe thread coupling inside my keggle with a compression fitting/male pipe thread fitting.

This is not new, someone else on one of the forums has made one and calls his the HopTaco, and he has photos, so do a search for HopTaco and see what he did. This is the set of directions I followed.

By the way, it works wonderfully, but you may want to use some leaf hops to help form a filter bed. I've used mine twice now, and get no hop particles in the sieve I use in my carboy mouth when I run the wort through my CFC chiller.
 
My ss braid was completely clogged with pellet hops. It worked flawlessly with my grain/mash tun, but the hops clogged it up in the boil kettle. I was trying to think of a way to filter the hops out of the wort before it got to the braid. Something like a screen that you would set on the bottom of the boil kettle and lift up with the hop pellets screened out.
 
fatelvis said:
So the hop strainer you made is just a straight piece of copper with a lot of small holes in it? Any pics? The ss braid worked so good in the mash tun, I thought it would work with hops.

Don't have a pic of the one that I made, but here's a commercial one.
HOP_STRAINERS.jpg


Lil Sparky said:
The copper w/ holes strainer doesn't sound like a very good technique. If the holes are too big, then it lets all of the pellet hop and break material through, thus being fairly worthless. If they're small enough, then you're not getting the large surface area of a hopstopper or hop bag. When the holes clog, then you're going to have a hard time draining the kettle.
Actually, it works wonderfully. I don't use hop pellets though, I use dried hop flowers, so it may not work with hop pellets. The hops form a filter bed on top of the hop filter which filters out the cold break. The hop flowers are too big to fit through the holes in the filter. It all works out pretty nicely. Never had a clog with it.
 
That's the rub. There is no permanently installed hop filtering device I know of that will stop a large, 100% pellet hop bill. The mesh style screens will stop a good deal of it but you need at least 25% leaf hops for it to work. You also can't expect miracles with a lot of pellet hops + cold break if you're chilling inside the kettle.
 
Why not get a hop bag? Works beautifully and you then you don't have too much cleaning to do in the bottom of the keggle. You also don't have to worry clogging up the bottom drain spout either.
 
I must be very lucky. I use the whirlpooling method along with a straight 1/2" copper dip tube to drain my kettle through my CFC and I don't get hops into my fermenter at all. I only use pellet hops and even on IPA recipes with large hop additions I get a nice large pile right in the middle of the kettle that doesn't get sucked into the pickup.
 
I'm all about the lil' sparky hop bag. I just made one myself. You can add all the hop additions in it and drain the mash tun through it too!
 
I guess I'll try a hop bag. It's a cheap thing to try out. I heard you have to increase the hop amounts when you use a hop bag. Anyone else heard of this? Also, I just recently heard of the whirlpool method, so I'm going to give it a try on my next brew. It will be my second all grain, so I'm slowly learning what I need to correct. Thanks for the ideas, it really helps someone like me just starting out.
 
Bobby_M said:
That's the rub. There is no permanently installed hop filtering device I know of that will stop a large, 100% pellet hop bill. The mesh style screens will stop a good deal of it but you need at least 25% leaf hops for it to work. You also can't expect miracles with a lot of pellet hops + cold break if you're chilling inside the kettle.

I respectfully disagree.
 
fatelvis said:
I guess I'll try a hop bag. It's a cheap thing to try out. I heard you have to increase the hop amounts when you use a hop bag. Anyone else heard of this?

If you use a large enough bag I can't imagine why. The bag I use is huge and rolls around in the boil. I haven't noticed any difference or reduced hop flavor in my beers.
 
Dude said:

Dude, I respectfully rebutt. Notice he includes leaf hops to create a bed. I have a DIY hopstopper with even more surface area than the commercial version and I'm telling you, it cannot stop a large ****100%***** pellet hop bill. I also persist that using it with an IC (tons of cold break) will clog in no time flat.
 
i have a decent size funnel and a kitchen strainer that sits inside of it. It not only strains out the hops extremely well, it aerates as I rack into the primary after chilling.
 
Dude, I respectfully rebutt. Notice he includes leaf hops to create a bed. I have a DIY hopstopper with even more surface area than the commercial version and I'm telling you, it cannot stop a large ****100%***** pellet hop bill. I also persist that using it with an IC (tons of cold break) will clog in no time flat.

Ditto. I have been through 3 different types of strainers, including similar to the hop stopper, and they just didn't work with 100% pellets. For the past year, I have been back to the immersion chiller and racking cane after a good vortex, and I dont see myself going back to the valve.
 
I tried the SS braid and it does clog immediately with pellet hops. I think if you wound maybe 5-10ft of braid in the bottom of your kettle and used leaf hops it might work...

I use sparky's invention now and am a happy hopper.
 
Just out of curiosity, is there anything that's super cheap and doesn't impart anything to the beer that we can use in place of leaf hops? I'd like to set up a filter bed, but leaf/whole hops aren't always available and they suck a lot of water from the wort.

Maybe those flat glass stones? You could put them around your hopstopper and break up the muck enough to give it some room to drain.
 
I just went to world market to look for beer glasses. I found a big tea infusion ball, probably 4" X 2.5" for $6. I usually use leaf hops.
I have used the paint strainer bag/PVC pipe method with great success, but always looking for a way to make cleaning easier.
 
Hmm I haven't used that kind of hop bag with the immersion chiller (I have a CFC) I think your two choices are to #1 do as you say and lift it out, put the IC in and put it back. Or #2 do the whole boil with the IC in place.
 
I lift the bag out and slide in the IC when I use the hop strainer.

Mike
 
Mine for the Blingmann arrived in time for the first brew of the year.

HopHolder-Blichmann.jpg


One piece stainless with a 4"to3" PVC adapter and a 5" worm clamp with a 5 gallon paint strainer.
 
What if you just put a hop bag over the end your tubing when transferring to the fermentor? The wort would just flow through the bag while stopping all the trub.
 
What if you just put a hop bag over the end your tubing when transferring to the fermentor? The wort would just flow through the bag while stopping all the trub.

I have a 1/2" ball valve on my kettle. I just use an ale pail with a paint strainer in it, let the cooled wort fly out into the ale pail. Then I pull out the paint strainer with the hops, and pour the wort into my fermenter. It's one extra step but it takes care of aeration, and you don't have to worry about hop utilization like you do with a bag.
 
I am looking at using a couple of these:

Tea Infuser

Then I can string a bunch together and add in my hop additions at different times. I use all pellets so I think a 3" would be able to support most beers. At $2 a piece I could order a ton too.
 
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I am looking at using a couple of these:

Tea Infuser

There can't be any way you will get full utilization out of one of those. Have you dry hopped with them? 1oz of hops will completely fill one of those when hydrated, I can't see how you would get water flowing through that while boiling.
 
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Way too small IMHO. If I have a 1oz bittering addition, I use the 5-GALLON straining bag. I usually dedicate a whole new staining bag to subsequent additions and I still notice a big drop in utilization.
 
What is the plastic piece that you used? I assume it's plastic or some kind of polymer...the white piece.

My first guess is that it's PVC...if so, is that safe??? I'd like to make one; looks awesome! Just wanna be sure I'm not poisoning myself with some chemical that leaches out of PVC at boiling temperatures...

Hopefully, I'm just being paranoid!
 
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