How much trub is acceptable to transfer into Primary?

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DM3MD157

DM3MD157

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I am on my 5th batch of beer now and I have a noob question that I can't seem to find the answer to here. When I am transferring the wort into the primary from my kettle, how much trub is acceptable to transfer? I know that you don't want to transfer much if any, but I am finding that I am not hitting my OG on my last couple batches (now that I am checking). I have seen many posts saying that with extract kits it is not likely to not be hitting the OG, however I am THOROUGHLY mixing the wort and taking measurements with a hydrometer and refractometer. My hypothesis is that I am not transferring enough wort into the primary before adding the additional water needed to hit 5 gallons. That said I am very careful to transfer as little trub as possible (I use whirlfloc tablets). Perhaps I am not waiting long enough for the trub to settle? (I usually wait anywhere between 30-45 mins after cooling with my wort chiller). Any suggestions is much appreciated!
 
Anywhere from all of it to none of it. There us debate whether it makes a difference. Basic Brewing Radio did a nice experiment on the issue. (podcast is on basicbrewing.com). Personally, I try to limit it, but I dont worry about it.
 
LabRatBrewer said:
Anywhere from all of it to none of it. There us debate whether it makes a difference. Basic Brewing Radio did a nice experiment on the issue. (podcast is on basicbrewing.com). Personally, I try to limit it, but I dont worry about it.
Click to expand...
My thought is that I am leaving too much wort in the kettle. How long do you wait until you siphon into the primary? TIA.
 
Unless you are re-pitching your yeast and not leaving your beer on the yeast longer than 3 weeks, I wouldn't worry about the trub too much. I've brewed several beers that I dumped everything into the fermenter that were great beers. I was putting all my beers through a secondary as well to make sure that they were as clear as possible. Now I'm letting them go about 2 weeks (provided they have finished) and transferring into kegs. I let them settle and dump the first pint or two that are full of yeast that were left in suspension. I've read that some believe the trub provides more for the yeast, but I've made pretty darn good ones with filtering every bit of the trub out possible and from those that I've just dumped it all in... YMMV
 
I've made perfectly good beer dumping all of the trub into the fermenter, as well as leaving as much trub in the boil kettle as possible. In my experience, the only difference is that minimizing trub in the fermenter makes it easier to get clearer beer.

That said, I always use Irish moss in the last 15 minutes of boil, whirlpool, and carefully siphon off of trub. I like having extra-clear beer....
 
You still planning on secondary? Dump it all in the primary except for leaf hops if you use them.

Did you try whirlpooling the wort? Once it is cool, get it spinning really fast, drop the lid on and let it sit for 30 minutes. The trub should make a cone in the middle.

If you are going to not secondary (which is my preference), you can get a 5 gallon paint strainer bag, sanitize it and pour your wort through it on it's way to the fermentation vessel.

Another suggestion would be to jam the end of your racking cane with the cap on it down into the trub at the edge and leave it there. It will suck some trub and create a well for the beer to flow into the racking cane. This works pretty well for me when I can find my whirlfloc tablets.
 
I've found little difference in taste in my experiments when I sieve out solids from the kettle and when I just dump everything in. However, I'm not a beer judge so perhaps I miss the subtleties. Having said that I also aim to have super clear beer.

Nowadays I dump everything in the primary and everything settles nicely by bottling day. Then, when I batch prime I now filter the beer entering the bucket and the results have so far been fantastic:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/technique-filter-wort-424371/

If you really want to minimise the amount of solids getting into the primary yet maximise the amount of liquid, try placing a fine mesh flour sieve (from any baking section of your supermarket) in your funnel to the primary and pouring your wort through that:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003N3F7CM/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Unless I missed something about your process, there is little that can go wrong if you follow the directions implicitly. X-quantity water with X-quantity extract, equals X-value OG. I wonder, have you been adding your top off water to the fermenter after you have not poured all the liquid from the brew kettle into it? If so, there is the problem solved. Am I close on this one?
 
Thanks for all the responses everyone! I have always been under the impression that transferring trub is a no-no when going into the primary. Thus far when I have transferred the wort, I have left a small clear layer of wort left in the kettle because trying to draw it into the primary would suck the top layer of trub. The next batch I may try transferring more trub and then later moving it to a secondary. BTW, I have heard so many different opinions on when to transfer to the secondary. About 4 days normal?


MindenMan said:
Unless I missed something about your process, there is little that can go wrong if you follow the directions implicitly. X-quantity water with X-quantity extract, equals X-value OG. I wonder, have you been adding your top off water to the fermenter after you have not poured all the liquid from the brew kettle into it? If so, there is the problem solved. Am I close on this one?
Click to expand...

I never transferred the whole contents of the kettle into the primary. I do add water to make it 5 gallons. That said when transferring less wort and adding more water would throw off my OG.
 
1
dm3md157 said:
thanks for all the responses everyone! I have always been under the impression that transferring trub is a no-no when going into the primary. Thus far when i have transferred the wort, i have left a small clear layer of wort left in the kettle because trying to draw it into the primary would suck the top layer of trub. The next batch i may try transferring more trub and then later moving it to a secondary. Btw, i have heard so many different opinions on when to transfer to the secondary. About 4 days normal?

my reply: normal? Compared to what? No, i am not being a jerk, there are too many variables to say on x-day, fermentation is done. What temperature did you pitch the yeast at? What temperature was the space the wort was in? How much yeast did you pitch? You get my point, right? Okay, the only accurate way to tell if the yeast is done is checking the specific gravity with a hydrometer. Keep in mind, as the fermentation gets closer to being done, the temperature of the wort gets cooler every day. So if there are visually no bubbles in the airlock, that still doesn't mean the fermentation is done. Your hydrometer is calibrated to a specific temperature, usually 60* f, and the beer temperature will change the readings. For example: If the hydrometer reads 1.012 at 65*f, the actual gravity is 1.012. But, if the hydrometer reads 1.012, and the temperature of the beer is 70*f, the actual gravity is 1.013. I realize the difference is only 0.001, but it might be the difference between normal bottle conditioning and bottle bombs. So , yes it is critical to hydro test before bottling. To sum it up, be patient, and wait 2 weeks before you start to use your hydrometer. Your beer quality will thank you.


I never transferred the whole contents of the kettle into the primary. I do add water to make it 5 gallons. That said when transferring less wort and adding more water would throw off my og.
Click to expand...
 
I always dump everything into the primary, I've been happy with the results so far.

As for when to go to the secondary, the instructions for the kits I've been using call for transferring when you're within 3-4 points of your target FG. That's usually around seven days but it has been as long as six weeks.
 
Tippsy-Turvy said:
I've found little difference in taste in my experiments when I sieve out solids from the kettle and when I just dump everything in. However, I'm not a beer judge so perhaps I miss the subtleties. Having said that I also aim to have super clear beer.

Nowadays I dump everything in the primary and everything settles nicely by bottling day. Then, when I batch prime I now filter the beer entering the bucket and the results have so far been fantastic:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/technique-filter-wort-424371/

If you really want to minimise the amount of solids getting into the primary yet maximise the amount of liquid, try placing a fine mesh flour sieve (from any baking section of your supermarket) in your funnel to the primary and pouring your wort through that:
http://www.amazon.com/Fine-Mesh-Flour-Sifter-Stainless/dp/B003N3F7CM
Click to expand...

For those of us that use buckets, there are filters specifically designed to be used in 5 gallon buckets. They are made by US Plastics, and they are also available at Amazon.com. http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&ke...vptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_4a0x0o30h1_b
 
I think most people would love to leave the trub behind, but the fact is - it isn't easy to do. If trub is in your carboy, it compacts nicely in the bottom of your fermenter and won't affect taste - unless you plan on leaving it there for months and months.

For most brewers, after a few weeks they are usually transferring it to a keg and/or bottling anyway. For beers that require extended aging, you would transfer to another vessel after primary fermentation is over, but most of the time you don't have to worry about it.

Last night I brewed a big crazy Double IPA, with tons of hops, and used WhirlFloc - holy crap I had the most trub that I've ever seen in 17 years of brewing. I was laughing as the greenish gunk oozed into my fermenter. I think I'm gonna end up losing close to a gallon to the trub once I transfer to a keg - but oh well.
 
DM3MD157 said:
BTW, I have heard so many different opinions on when to transfer to the secondary. About 4 days normal?
Click to expand...

Secondary should be done until you are very near or at your final gravity. You want the yeast to get your beer finished and then clean up after themselves. I never transferred to secondary or even to my kegs until the beer is finished and ready to be cleared about 2 weeks in.
 
The bucket strainers from Duda Diesel work great, but it's better to buy them direct than through Amazon. Duda sells a set of four (100/200/400/600) cheaper than buying them individually.
 
I brewed 2 IPA's nearly 2 weeks ago. Instead of using my usual hop sacks in the boil,I decided to try dumping them in loose once again just for comparison's sake. I also use 1/4tsp super moss @ 10 minutes left in the boil. So I used my dual layer fine mesh strainer on top of the plastic FV's-one ale pail,one Cooper's Microbrew FV-& pour quite a bit of the settled wort through it to aerate as well as strain out most of the gunk.
Then I get to the soilent green ooze at the bottom. I pour it into the strainer to the top of said strainer. I then spray my old Cooper's spoon (long handled plastic spoon from brewing kit) with Starsan & start folding the gunk back & forth to get the liquid out. But no pressing at all agains strainer sides. The gunk would seem to need much persuasion to go through the mesh. I wind up dumping 3C+ of soilent green ooze. Then I pour in the couple gallons of well chilled local spring water I made the wort with (pb/pm biab)to top off & rapidly bring the temp down from 75F-ish to 64F. This has the added effect of getting a good cold break settling out the poofy fine stuff from the grains & hops. It's 2L worth,or about 2" or so. This compacts down to between 3/8" to 1/2" every time.
So I can leave most of it behind,but the cold break seems to settle out the finer stuff the strainer can't take out. We'll see what loose hops in the boil & straining into fermenter have on the overal flavor/aroma when fridge time comes.
 
ThatGeekGuy said:
The bucket strainers from Duda Diesel work great, but it's better to buy them direct than through Amazon. Duda sells a set of four (100/200/400/600) cheaper than buying them individually.
Click to expand...
Are these a one time use or are they washable.
 
trub has no real discernible effect on the finished beer so there is no harm in it going into the beer. there is also no harm in filtering it out either. the local breweries that i have visited all use plate chillers so everything goes into the fermentor which i think is a common practice industry wide. many breweries filter their finished beer but many do not and it is still clear. i'm not saying that anyone should do anything different than what they are doing just that trub/break material is not the cause of cloudy/hazy or otherwise unclear beer.
 
CA_Mouse said:
Secondary should be done until you are very near or at your final gravity. You want the yeast to get your beer finished and then clean up after themselves. I never transferred to secondary or even to my kegs until the beer is finished and ready to be cleared about 2 weeks in.
Click to expand...

or, for most beers, you could just skip the secondary and let everything settle in the original fermentor. cold crashing is even better if you have the capability; everything drops out and the yeast cake turns to stone.
 
I transfer all of the trub into the fermenter too although I do hop in a 200 micron mesh bag. If anything gets out, it is very fine.
 
Tippsy-Turvy said:
Hi Unionrdr, just wondering how your experiment turned out. Notice any discernible difference in tastes?
Click to expand...

Well,the Cougar Country IPA I bottled 10/11/13. The flavors even then were superb! The loose hop kettle additions are def,noticably better than using hop sacks in the boil. The bottles are already crystal clear,especially since I remembered to do the super moss @ 10 minutes left in the boil. My PM beers def need it. In theory,since you're making the wort manually,rather than extract,you have to use a clarifying agent. I love the Fivestar Super Moss so far.
So it looks like the loose kettle hop additions give more of an edge to the hop flavors. Even the bit of grapefruit flavor seems "juicier" & on the back. A couple more weeks till fridge time!...
 

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