How do you keep the gunk out of the fermenter?

I tend to brew beers with a lot of hops and I always use pellets. After chilling in the BK, the last 1-2 gallons of wort is loaded with hop matter and break material. I even use a Jamil-style whirlpool wort chiller and I still have a hard time not throwing away a crap load of potential beer. Also, the ball valve on my boil kettle seems to always be below the level that the gunk starts, so I can never pull out clean wort.

How do I extract the most amount of clean wort from the boil kettle and only discard half gallon or less of sludge? What techniques are people using to minimize their waste?

I've only done 2 batches (plus a wine), so take my advice with a grain of salt. I filter it through a grain bag folded over a couple times and placed in my funnel. I still let a little sludge into the porter I made the other night but very little compared to what stayed in the mesh. I had cacao in there too, so it was extra grimy...

EDIT: Also, if your not already, make sure you put the hop pellets into a mesh bag as well and not just chuck them into the kettle. I threw them directly into the boiling wort when I made my first batch and it was quite the mess.

Edit (re-read the post)
+1 for pellets in the mesh bag
Get a good cold crash
Having a dip tube going to the bottom for your kettle , or to the side
helps keep the gunk out.

If the pickup tube/valve opening is on the side, you can whirlpool. Stir the wort vigorously to get it moving in a whirlpool fashion. Wait a few minutes for the "current" to cease and all the "gunk" to settle. Drain the kettle. Most of the "gunk" should be piled in the center of the kettle.

After I boil, I do an ice bath, then dump the whole thing into the fermenter. Everything settles down. More trouble than it's worth for me to try to remove it.

Even with a whirlpool in my keg I have quite a bit of trub. I have a stainless braid and use a hop bag. Leave about a quart behind.

ODaniel said:

After I boil, I do an ice bath, then dump the whole thing into the fermenter. Everything settles down. More trouble than it's worth for me to try to remove it.

Click to expand...

+1 to RDWAHAHB

I whirpool and let settle. I then drain from the side of my kettle into a container. When most of the break/hop trub settles, I siphon into my fermenter leaving all the crap behind.
A bit more work, but it keeps the crap out and at the end of fermentation leaves me with cleaner yeast to reuse.

Lots of hops soak up lots of wort. Figure on losing a cup of wort per ounce of hops. There's no way to prevent this from happening. You can bag, filter or let the hops settle out, but you still lose the same amount of beer.

Hop sludge

I have a spigot on my kettle, but don't use it. I rack from Kettle to primary with my racking cane and manage the level of the cane so as to not pick up the trub at the bottom. As I get close to empting the kettle I tilt it the Trub stays behind untill just the last bit. I get about 1/2 -3/4 gal of trub in the bottom, but I adjust my water and ingrediant bill accordingly to get the 5 gal I want. Yea... wastefull I know... But I like my beer to clear and find that the ones where I have had the trub get into the primary, take a long time to clear.... sometimes 1/2 way through the keg.. Then they are BRILIANTLY clear...


but you could just say I'm "not patient enough".... Heck it's beer and I want to taste it.. So sue me.

I've tried the filter bag on the bottom of my racking cane but that just increased the "Airation" of the wort in the cane... Grrrr. So Now I just rack carefully and adjust for the lost wort.

Isn't this stuff called trub and is there a serious problem with leaving it in there or is it only if your trying to make something "perfect"

I tend to leave a lot in my fermenter.

I listened to a podcast on TBN recently and Charlie Bamforth (Prof at UC Davis for brewing/food science) said something about trub being good for the yeast, but not from a nutrient point of view but from a physical one. He said the yeast will latch on to the trub and during feremtnation the stirs up the trub more allowing more of the yeast to float around the fermentor. It was a podcast about Haze. I can't expalin it nearly as well ad Dr Bamforth did, but he's a very interesting guy to listen to.

I've been told my multiple people (not to say they are right) that the hop sludge and cold break can provide some needed yeast nutrients for during fermentation. Usually if I do a lightly hopped beer, I will dump the whole thing in there, if its an IPA or such, I will increase my recipe to 5.75g vs 5.5, to offset the loss to hop sludge.