New way to control Pellet Hop gunk!

Strongbad52 said:

Marcb, if you don't mind my asking, where do you order the grains from and how much is it shipped?

Click to expand...

I have been mostly using breworganic.com for base organic malt and Munich (organic) and buying bulk (several sacks) at 10-15% off to cover tax and shipping as they are only about 30 miles from my house in CA. I also use Williams brewing for my Belgian pilsner grain and candi sugar and end up paying about 65-70$ 25 kilo sack shipped. They had the best price on candi sugar if you bought 12 or more it was about 3.50 per lb for imported candi sugar. All my yeast is white labs and comes from morebeer and then I make starters with organic light dme.

Kyled93 said:

Brewed my vanilla caramel cream ale this morning. The filter worked out beautifully. The only item in the bottom of the kettle was a little bit of hot break.

That being said when others brew with this filter, do you leave in the filter until you transfer to your fermenter or remove it during cooling?

Click to expand...

I usually remove it when I cool/whirlpool except for recipes that call for flameout hops.

StainlessBrewing said:

I just want make sure some are comparing apples to apples as far as the actual size and price paid for Chad's baskets vs ours. A lot of pictures on here show 6" but the $29 basket on Ebay has a description of 4". I feel we're pretty fair on price as well compared to Chad's. Being a homebrewer myself and a preferred vendor we can always help out with cheaper alternatives. I'm not knockin on Chad's products or trying to steal anyone's thunder, I just wanted to point a few things out if some didn't see that we're not far off on price.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f41/stainless-accessories-328846/index29.html

Click to expand...

chads454 said:

Now now lets not get into a price war...

Click to expand...

High prices only help the seller, the taker of the money; price wars benefit all the consumers and the little guy who ain't got much in his pocket.

Has there been an attempt to make one for a keggle? It would have to be centered and not hang off the side.

BullGator said:

Has there been an attempt to make one for a keggle? It would have to be centered and not hang off the side.

Click to expand...

Yep, Stainless Brewing done had one made

BullGator said:

Has there been an attempt to make one for a keggle? It would have to be centered and not hang off the side.

Click to expand...

Here's one I put together the other day.
It's just a prototype. Thoughts?

chads454 said:

Here's one I put together the other day.
It's just a prototype. Thoughts?

Click to expand...

Looks good, one thing would be to move your cross bars as far to the outside as possible so the opening is bigger.

Got my 300 micron last week and it works like a charm. Been trying to solve the hop remnant problem for years and now I have.

***Recommended Buy***

TD

Used mine this past weekend. It was awesome. No hop gunk was to be found outside of the filter. Mine is the 300 micron sizing

Can hot/cold break be removed by pouring the wort through this into the fermentor, or will it break up and go through?

meadmazer said:

Can hot/cold break be removed by pouring the wort through this into the fermentor, or will it break up and go through?

Click to expand...

I would say from trying to filter through similar items that it is just going to clog. The best way I've found to remove break material is to put the lid on the kettle after cooling and let it sit for an hour. If you got a good break 95% of the material will settle down to under the ball valve. Then just drain and leave the crap behind. You'll lose a little wort, but I just shoot for slightly higher volume and it loses me maybe 2% efficiency overall.

bottlebomber said:

I would say from trying to filter through similar items that it is just going to clog. The best way I've found to remove break material is to put the lid on the kettle after cooling and let it sit for an hour. If you got a good break 95% of the material will settle down to under the ball valve. Then just drain and leave the crap behind. You'll lose a little wort, but I just shoot for slightly higher volume and it loses me maybe 2% efficiency overall.

Click to expand...

Or just don't worry about it . I use a 15 gallon kettle with a ball valve and try to leave the hot break behind, but since I also recirc and use a plate chiller, **** gets stirred up. Still, I haven't noticed any difference in the clarity of my beers after a week or two in the keg.

Brulosopher said:

Or just don't worry about it . I use a 15 gallon kettle with a ball valve and try to leave the hot break behind, but since I also recirc and use a plate chiller, **** gets stirred up. Still, I haven't noticed any difference in the clarity of my beers after a week or two in the keg.

Click to expand...

I don't worry about it affecting clarity of the finished beer, I am just all about getting really clean beer to the bottle and for me that means keeping as much crap out of the fermenter as possible. I was so ready to get a plate chiller, and then suddenly read a lot of threads about people having trouble with them draining incredibly slowly. I think a CFC with a recirculating ice bath is going to end up being the way I go eventually.

bottlebomber said:

I don't worry about it affecting clarity of the finished beer, I am just all about getting really clean beer to the bottle and for me that means keeping as much crap out of the fermenter as possible. I was so ready to get a plate chiller, and then suddenly read a lot of threads about people having trouble with them draining incredibly slowly. I think a CFC with a recirculating ice bath is going to end up being the way I go eventually.

Click to expand...

Of you don't have some form of filtering your hops (I currently use 5 gal paint bags), a plate chiller will absolutely clog... it sucks.

chads454 said:

Here's one I put together the other day.
It's just a prototype. Thoughts?

Click to expand...

I like it!! How Much $$$.

I use a hop spider to contain my hops. Can someone who used to use a hop spider and now uses one of these give a rundown of the plus and minuses of this stainless steel screen? Thanks.

BullGator said:

I use a hop spider to contain my hops. Can someone who used to use a hop spider and now uses one of these give a rundown of the plus and minuses of this stainless steel screen? Thanks.

Click to expand...

Hey BullGator, if your in the South Florida area you can come see the one I bought. Let me know.

I finally got to put my 300 micron screen to use today. I brewed a Russian Imperial Stout with just shy of 7 ounces of hop pellets. As you can see the residue remained in the screen and there was nothing in the wort. Also, I had no problems slipping the IC in beside the screen (my pot is 13.25" ID.) Clean up was easy (after it cooled, just dumped it into a bag and then hosed it off. After that a quick clean with soap & water and it's ready to go again!)

Great pics. Most people finding the same perceived bitterness after using these?

I finally pulled the trigger on this a couple days ago. Looking forward to finally solving the leftover hop gunk problem.

rickski8014 said:

I like it!! How Much $$$.

Click to expand...

Still a work in progress,

Here's the latest 6x14

Here's a couple new requests.

Kyled93 said:

Hey BullGator, if your in the South Florida area you can come see the one I bought. Let me know.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the offer but I moved to Charlotte a few years ago. I would have took you up on that if I was still down there.

BullGator said:

I use a hop spider to contain my hops. Can someone who used to use a hop spider and now uses one of these give a rundown of the plus and minuses of this stainless steel screen? Thanks.

Click to expand...

Anybody?

Not having to weight the bag down (I've used butter knives and stainless nuts in the past) and not worrying about hops sticking to the sides of a constantly twisting bag would be two major pluses that a ridged "cage" would have over the traditional spider. Another plus I am looking at (as an electric brewer) is that a cage would be built at a specific length whereas each time I use my spider, I have to re-measure the length of the bag to avoid letting it contact my heating element. Like so many things in brewing, the only real drawback to a cage would be initial cost versus a spider.

Mine arrived yesterday, ahead of schedule. Pleasantly surprised by how sturdy it is.

IPA time this weekend. Thanks, Chad.

StainlessBrewing said:

Jukas said:

These looked interesting, but I believe that vendor is doing themselves a great disservice by displaying a $30 price, only to find that it's really at least $80.

I messaged the ebay seller to see if they would do customized versions.

Click to expand...

I just want make sure some are comparing apples to apples as far as the actual size and price paid for Chad's baskets vs ours. A lot of pictures on here show 6" but the $29 basket on Ebay has a description of 4". I feel we're pretty fair on price as well compared to Chad's. Being a homebrewer myself and a preferred vendor we can always help out with cheaper alternatives. I'm not knockin on Chad's products or trying to steal anyone's thunder, I just wanted to point a few things out if some didn't see that we're not far off on price.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f41/stainless-accessories-328846/index29.html

Click to expand...

I know I'm a bit late on the reply, but I did want to clarify my comment back on page 1 that you referenced. I wasn't saying anything negative about your product, or even that it wasn't possibly worth the price tag.

I simply commented that I didn't care for how you (or your web guy) had laid out on the site that shows a $28 price with a drop down showing higher prices when you selected basket type.

I personally probably would have laid it out paragraph style with radio buttons, but that's just my own personal opinion.

There are pro's and con's to both your offering and Chad's and at least the most similar models seem to be within a few bucks (20 +/-) of each other so consumers can make the decision that works best for them.

Gabba said:

High prices only help the seller, the taker of the money; price wars benefit all the consumers and the little guy who ain't got much in his pocket.

Click to expand...

I can't agree with this. Constant price wars, coupled with other external elements are what's led to so much manufacturing being moved overseas, mainly to China. This has a trickle down effect of loss of skill manufacturing labor, jobless, lesser state and federal tax revenue which leads to less available funding for state and federal infrastructure etc etc etc.

Sure, it's driven pricing down to the consumer at the expense of product longevity and sometimes toxic health risks. Tools for example I will always spend extra to buy USA made, even if it's 50% higher or more. The original cost savings of buying price warred foreign manufactured tools is quickly obliterated when they break/fail/wear out quickly and have to be replaced.

Cool. I love it when new stuff comes out and is made by "regular" guys.

I've done lots of experimenting with mesh...for the purposes of filtering grains as well as hops. I was originally working on a system that would filter the mash with a huge mesh basket, then once cleaned out it could be used for whole or pellet hops. I couldn't find the sweet spot. 30x30 mesh is just about right for pellet hops...but too fine for grain. 20x20 mesh is almost right for grain, but too coarse for hops. I was either passing grain through or having the mesh clog and overflow.

I kinda reverted back to the traditional mashtun w/FB but kept looking at options for the boil. Something like this with rigid sides is better than a bag which envelopes the hops and forms that "softball" too quickly...when the hops ball up you're barely getting to what is in the center...try it and see....sometimes the pellets stay whole.

IF you were to do a big hop bill around a pound, you might want to consider using 2 of these filters. That's just too much sludge and you won't get any diffusion.

OR, you could try to stir the hops inside.

OR, you could run wort slowly into the filter thereby forcing wort through the hops...be careful not to overflow. In fact, if you get overflow, that is a big indicator of too fine of a mesh. Scraping the sides can help.

Another option is to split the hop bill between leaf and pellets, then free float the leaf while you filter the pellets. If you have a bazooka screen or diverter on your pickup tube, it should be fine.

Lots of ways to brew beer, none are wrong.

Marcb, did you ever do your Pliny clone with the 300 micron version? If so how did it hold up?

Jukas said:

Marcb, did you ever do your Pliny clone with the 300 micron version? If so how did it hold up?

Click to expand...

Unfortunately not---I get to brew 60 gallons of it next weekend on a commercial rig though! For 20 gallon batches I need over 16 oz of hop additions for Pliny so two of these will probably be necessary. I think one is fine for 10 gallon batches though!

I wonder how much whole leaf I could shove in the model on eBay. I have a 11gal pot, and normally buy my hops in leaf early in the season for the bulk of my purchases..

I do some IPA's that have roughly 1/2# in them easily, and swelled up 8-9oz of whole leaf is a fair bit.

So I can confirm that the 300 actually does work for straining out break material.

I brewed yesterday and unfortunately was on auto-pilot at the time of the first hop addition. I dumped them right in and forgot all about the strainer sitting in the bucket of sanitizer next to me. So, crap, but I figured if I wasn't blocking them during the boil, I'd try to strain them out at the end.

So, after I cooled my wort and let it sit for awhile, I gently lowered the strainer into the pot, put my siphon inside it, and took out a few gallons of crystal clear wort.

As I got to the bottom of the pot, this stopped working, because the screen was pretty much clogged and wouldn't allow clear wort in as quickly as the siphon was taking it out. So I removed the strainer, hosed it off, re-sanitized it, and then hung it on the side of my fermentation bucket. Then I just poured in what was left in the BK. There were probably two quarts worth of wort, hops and break material left at this point. It didn't drain quickly, but I got another quart of good wort out of it, leaving at the end this:

Not bad... I might try one and modify it a bit.. I use whole leaf, which should drain WAY better than pellets, but sometimes I have to use pellets for certain hops I don't have on hand.

Used mine for the first time the other day. Sure beats using hop bags and its a lot less of a mess. I even think I got better hop utilization too ! Clean up was a snap, love it !

Here's a couple new ones.
First is a 4x10 with 3" drop tabs.

Second is a 8"x20" custom

Do you mind if I ask how much the 8x20 ran you?

That one sells for $90
Let me know if your interested in one.

Is the bottom screen recessed up off the bottom lip any? Or is it completely flat in the bottom? I'm interested in one, need to measure my kettle so I can get one big enough to deal with leaf hops as well.

I wonder how 2 of the 4in by 10in ones would be in the pot....

FATC1TY said:

Is the bottom screen recessed up off the bottom lip any? Or is it completely flat in the bottom? I'm interested in one,.

Click to expand...

its on top of the bottom band so it's 1/2 off the bottom.

chads454 said:

its on top of the bottom band so it's 1/2 off the bottom.

Click to expand...

Thanks..

Here's a 1" drop tab in the kettle.