So here is my yesterday experience. It may not be entirely on-topic, but it leads to a discussion about whirlpool that I had with my friend, so please bother with me.
I brewed a SMaSH experiment using Target hops and a peat smoked malt from a certain Czech malting company, to see how much smoke intensity and what smoke character I would get.
Pre-boil the wort was pretty clear, actually I think my clearest yet (I am currently focusing on getting the lautering process done as good as possible). Unfortunately I did not take any pictures, but you can believe me, it was pretty clear.
I moved it to my boil kettle, made a normal boil, adding only hops. After the boil I chilled the wort pretty fast (some 15 minutes to 20-30°C).
Next I whirlpooled and everything went fine, hops formed a nice cone some 15 mins later.
BUT here is the problem - at some point during the boil the wort got pretty cloudy and it never cleared again.
Later that day I sat in a pub with my friend, who studies brewing in school and described to him my process.
He was quite surprised, that I whirlpool AFTER chilling, since all the breweries whirlpool BEFORE chilling and pointed that out to me as an obvious mistake.
I can pretty much understand, why anyone using a plate chiller (all commercial breweries AFAIK) would want to separate the wort from hops trub and hot break before sending it to the chiller.
But I did not get the reason why it would matter for anyone on a homebrew scale, who uses immersion chiller. Our aim, if I understand it correctly, is to ideally remove all the trub, consisting hops material, hot break, AND cold break if it is possible (and it indeed is, by chilling BEFORE whirlpooling).
He still argued his point, that it is better to whirlpool at near boiling temperatures and THEN chill, because of air exposure at cool temperatures the other way around.
I went through this thread and seen some advantages to both pre-chill and post-chill whirlpooling. As usual, my search for an answer to single question did not bring forth a definite answer, only more confusion with addition of another solution into the mix - whirlpool WHILE chilling, which seems to combine the best of both.
So I call out to the great minds of brewing on this forum to help me getting this thing straight.
To whirlpool or not to whirlpool, that is not the question But do it before, after, or while chilling? What are the
proven (ideally)pros and cons to each?