Straining Hops

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mrwizard0

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Hey everyone,

Just looking to see if anyone had any really easy ideas for how to strain hops so that they dont make it into the fermentor. I tried some mesh tea balls, they seem to keep the hops out, but im not sure if they are keeping too much of the hop aroma, flavor, etc out

thanks!
 
Using hops pellets I haven't even worried about this. I just put everything in my primary, and haven't had any problem with getting the hops to settle out with the trub.:mug:
 
24" x 36" straining bag. put inside the boil kettle, collects all the hops and protiens/break material. saves time, you dont have to whirl pool, simply pull the bag out. It also helps the cool down process as all that heat containing solids are now out of the wort.
 
So far, I've just what happens to siphon from the pot to the fermenter in there and it settles out. I just picked up a fine mesh hop bag today for my next batch but since I am typically using pellets, I suspect that it won't hold a whole lot back.

The hops that land in the fermenter won't hurt anything - I think they've already given what they can give during the boil, so they've can't really over-hop your beer or anything. They'll just make your trub green.
 
The 24" x 36" paint straining bag mentioned earlier works great. I tried out a small hop bag today that I had to attach with fishing line and it was terrible, all the hops went right through the mesh. I might as well have just thrown the pellets into the wort. The paint strainer bags catch 90%+ of the pellets hops in my experience.
 
the one i talked about is a lot bigger than the paint strainer. it completey fits in the bottom of the kettle and it sits there for the whole boil.
 
was just thinking about this today. I brewed an ipa a few months ago and didnt strain the hops out.

I brewed another ipa about a month ago and added 1/2oz more hops at the beginning of the boil to get a little more bitter...but this time i strained it all out, and its alot less bitter

whats the general consensus on straining hops?
 
Another thing you can do (assuming you have a bottling bucket) is to pour your chilled beer into the bottling bucket, and let it rest overnight. Then, transfer to your primary fermenter the next day. You could add the yeast whenever you want. It will probably be fine if you add the yeast after transfering, but if you are worried about infection (or if its really hot out) I bet it would work fine if you pitched it when it was in the bottling bucket.
 
my normal kitchen strainer happens to be one of those screen mesh ones, and the mesh is pretty fine. i run the wort through it as it goes into the fermentor. this gets a lot of the spent hops out. The rest settles out in the trub generally.

Sometimes I'll make a style that I'd prefer to have NO hop bits in the fermentor at all. when this is the case I add one of those micro-mesh screens that you can get at homebrew stores to my funnel. It is extremely effective, but drains very very slowly, and clogs quickly so it's a pain. If you want no hops in your vessel, this works well but it's very tedious.
 
2804-hops-sac.jpg
 
Whole leaf go in 1 gallon paint strainer bags...really cheap at the hardware store and fine enough mesh for whole. Plug or pellet just go in the boil and settle out in the fermenter. I used to strain with a kitchen strainer but that is slow. Now after boil, I just pluck the bags out with sterilized kitchen tongs and squeeze the bejesus out of them to get the wort out. I try to dry hop with pellet and let it settle in a secondary. Unlike the trend, I prefer to always secondary.
 
Straining pellets versus leaf is a huge difference.

I've tried a variety of techniques for pellet hops, but the only easy, consistent one is using a bag during the brewing process. Once they get into the beer itself it is usually a PITA to strain them out because they're fine enough to clog most filters. If you need to get them out, then you can put a cheese cloth screen around the end of your siphon tube and strain them out that way. It's still not smooth though, and the two beers that I used that technique on have aged much more quickly than expected, which makes me think they were getting exposed to too much oxygen.

Leaf hops are another thing entirely. I have a large, bucket mouth sized strainer as well as a large filtered funnel like Idlehanz links to, and depending on the fermentation vessel, I just use those. Leaf hops don't clog strainers as quickly (or as completely), and it's much easier to work with them. (This is incidentally why I've started growing hops, more of the leaf convenience with less of the higher price).
 
I ferment in buckets usually and just put a sanitized paint strainer bag over the bucket and pour the wort through it. Great aeration and strained wort at the same time.
 

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