Blichmann boilermaker and plate chiller

Just got my 20 gallon pot and have a few questions.

Does any one use this with a plate chiller and hop spider that does not use the hop blocker or any other filter? reason I ask is in my old pot I had a home made spider with the 5 gallon paint strainer bag and a bazooka tube. I had good success with that but the Blichmann does not have a connection for hte bazooka screen just the dip tube.

I did order the hop blocker but after reading it looks like that is hit or miss.
With my previous setup I would recirc through the plate chiller till I hit 80 then reduce flow and into the fermenter.

I guess what I am asking is if anyone just uses the dip tube with no other screen but a hop spider that has had success and no chiller clogging.

I use a hop spider on a 15 gallon blichmann with no other filter going into a plate chiller

i have a 15G BM w/ hop blocker, and a therminator.

The hop blocker is better than nothing, but not good enough to filter out enough hops to prevent plugging (the smallest pieces floating in the wort can get through).

The first time I tried to do a recirculating chill down with an IPA it was plugged almost immediately. I think some lighter beers that only use a few oz of hops could do the job without plugging, but i haven't tried just yet.

For the record i've always used a hop spider since the plugging incident. It was very difficult to recovery from.

schematix said:

For the record i've always used a hop spider since the plugging incident. It was very difficult to recovery from.

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Big +1 on this... I'm still traumatized!

So you guys are saying that just using the hop spider should be good?

It will help a lot. The hop spider has its own issues (in my experience there is slightly less utilization for bittering hops, and much flavor/aroma for late hops), but it will greatly reduce the risk of a plugged therminator. I'd definitely try it out.

I use the Electric Brewery hop strainer.

How does that work for you? Not many rave reviews out there...

freshhoarse said:

How does that work for you? Not many rave reviews out there...

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Works great! I've used it about 4-5 times, the last time was a IPA with 12oz of pellet hops.

Nice... thinking about it.

So I did my first 15g batch with my new pot and top tier. I used a stainless mess hop spider from stainless brewing and kept the hop blocker in the kettle too. I filtered from the mash tun (cooler) to the kettle with a paint strainer I had been using with my home made spider. Did not pick up much and at the end there was a bunch of cold break material on the bottom of the kettle. I am thinking the cold break material will not hurt the plate chiller too bad. I flushed with PBW when done and it looked good.

I do think the hop blocker kind of worked and I will leave it in there the next time. I started to pump through the chiller recirculating back into the kettle till the temp came down to below 100 (I did not stir). When it was done there was a bit of a cone of break material but the rest of the bottom had a good bit. Just over 15.5 gallons when chilling started and ended up with just over 14.5 in the fermenter.

I am going to try the mesh screen on the hop blocker likethis post from a couple years ago