Blichmann boil screen for pellet hops

BrewBeemer said:

Why not have three different diameters of screen holes for a more gradual filtering plus preventing the smallest bottom perforations from being plugged up as much? Even make the bottom row of perforations slightly smaller in diameter and allow the middle section to handle more of the hops load with smaller perforations? Three equal steps vs large then small perforations is my thinking with suggestions. This without pissing off the Blichmann manufacture, JMO's here.

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Manipulating the "cover" would be relatively cumbersome with a 3-level system. I think that a 2 level is much simpler for the homebrewer to work with. I can see an advantage to making the device a bit more of a crescent shape to permit more efficient whirlpooling and also having fine perforations only on the outter perimeter of the crescent. Having the fine perforations only on one side obviously decreases the surface area but would also reduce the risk of pulling trub off of your central cone allowing for faster and safer draining of the last of the wort.

dantodd said:

Manipulating the "cover" would be relatively cumbersome with a 3-level system. I think that a 2 level is much simpler for the homebrewer to work with. I can see an advantage to making the device a bit more of a crescent shape to permit more efficient whirlpooling and also having fine perforations only on the outter perimeter of the crescent. Having the fine perforations only on one side obviously decreases the surface area but would also reduce the risk of pulling trub off of your central cone allowing for faster and safer draining of the last of the wort.

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My design the screen is locked down or fixed only the shield is pulled up no added hands or tools needed to hold down the perforated filtering system while pulling up the shield. Two fingers on a pull, if you can pick up a pen you can pull up the slide shield. Two sizes of perforations holes, i'll stick with three perforations sizes with my idea. Kind of like a Honda car tire is good enough for a pickup, sure it will work but how good? I'll take three different sizes in perforations thank you.

Finally got a chance to try it out. This is only 1.25 ounces of hops. Even though I forgot to whirpool it did pretty much as advertised. I still ended up with a good bit of hop debris in the Therminator probably due to the no whirpool.

For some reason I had the same amount of hop debris stuck to the inside "ceiling" of the HB too.










This was after flushing with 4 gallons of boiling water. Still had this amount left inside the Therminator.

just think what a 15 gallon net in the corny's to tap system would add up to as the hops passed or missed thru the system?
Sorry to hear about your results Rob, to me this acts like a dam or brick like obstruction in the whirlpool flow stuck in the bottom of the BK not allowing for a smooth clean whirlpooling action like the BK had no object at all inside preventing this smooth round inteior radius flow for a perfect whirlpool action process I've got a planned that will not only allow more surface area than what is manufactured, (someone stated my design would be less in surface area, they are WRONG!) as more surface on my design of perforated area exposed than what is manufactured) plus three stages of screen perforations reductions plus the unit stays mounted solid with only one finger used to hook and lift the shield up as needed during the different draining stages as time progresses on. Remember the "KISS" system? I'm a little guy not a big manufacture i'm just thinking all the time on better ways to do things not dollar signs being the first new item on the market. JMO's, Carl........

Thanks Carl. Even though I didn't whirlpool at flame-out, you can see the loc-line I use to recirculate and that's what created the pile in the bottom. I am thinking some or most of that hop debris got into the Therminator because I went straight to recirculation instead of whirlpool first??

Rob, remember after the strong whirlpool you must wait and let things settle down like 10 to 15 minutes then you can drain off nice and clear vs the particles still in suspension not settled out yet.

A quick question on the Hop Blocker. Is the bottom open or is it similar to the top. I'd like to see what the bottom end looks like. Could someone please post a pic of the bottom? I'm considering using one of these on my converted keg, so it won't be plug and play like with a Blichmann kettle.

The bottom is open.

Open bottom. less labor, materials plus fits a flat bottom blichmann pot vs your keggle conversion, a win win for Blichmann to get you to buy their pot.
Smart business thinking. I can already hear the fur fly, LOL!

Thanks guys!

BB,

I'm thinking I might rig it up to sit on top of the FB I am currently using in the converted keg. The FB has a flat top, so it wouldn't be much different than sitting on the flat bottom of a kettle. I will probably have to make a new hole through the side of the HB for the dip tube and plug the original hole somehow. That shouldn't be too difficult. The HB will then be in the center of the kettle instead of off to the side. Someone like GreenMonti should consider fabricating something similar for use with the kegs It might work even better if it was maybe twice the diameter and enclosed on the bottom. I see no advantage to having the bottom open other than what you mentioned above. I'm still trying to figure out if this could work for me or not. It's not all that expensive, so I may give it a try.

We keep this up and Blichmann will be PO'ed at us, oh the joys of thinking as a homebrewer. Sounds like you have a plan, plasma does wonders with SS, Tig to add SS back.

BrewBeemer said:

We keep this up and Blichmann will be PO'ed at us, oh the joys of thinking as a homebrewer. Sounds like you have a plan, plasma does wonders with SS, Tig to add SS back.

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BB,

That thought did cross my mind, but he shouldn't be too upset as I'm probably going to buy one of his HB's and if I can make it work on a keg, I'll report back and his sales may increase as a result. There's also nothing preventing him from marketing an alternate version more suitable for use on a converted keg. There are a lot of kegs in use as BK's out there. When you build your version, maybe keep that in mind and use it to your advantage if you decide to market them.

Come to think of it, maybe he should offer one without a dip tube hole and enclose the bottom. That way one could cut the hole as needed to customize it and it would also work on converted kegs with the concave bottoms.

I bet Blichman farms out all his items like this HB hence "KISS" to keep the price down without adding a sealed and slanted bottom to match our keggles. Why should he make these additional units when a possible flat kettle sale can be added netting him another sale item and another profit vs a pot sale loss? Look at it from a business standpoint, in it to make money. With the very few that can design and make plus are DIY brewers with a Tig, Mig, Plasma, lathe and Bridgeport mill at hand plus a head full of wheels turning having many new ideas pop into their head. Example, NASA wasn't built by one person either.

Well, the first thing that comes to my mind is how utterly cheap most home brewers are. Not a lot of them will want to spring for the Bling kettles just to be able to use the HB gizmo. OTOH, you are probably right to some extent as there can't be much of a margin on the $59 HB thingy.

So I brewed a Pliny clone and I have to say the hops were blocked but so was the wort. I can say due to the fact it was a huge hop load it worked well for the circumstances.I didn't get blockage until I got to the fine mesh, but the hop load was the culprit. I will have to try it on a regular beer and see what I come out with.

Catt22 said:

Well, the first thing that comes to my mind is how utterly cheap most home brewers are. Not a lot of them will want to spring for the Bling kettles just to be able to use the HB gizmo. OTOH, you are probably right to some extent as there can't be much of a margin on the $59 HB thingy.

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I wouldn't call us "cheap most home brewers are", we in our own way have our design ideas to add or change to a given product from a planted seed that has become avilable to us. Adding to this the satisfaction of building it ourselves vs just shelling out money for an item offered by any given manufacture at the moment. Just because it's available doesn't mean it's the best, maybe at this moment it is but can be improved upon over time with better ideas coming up daily. Those constant thinking minds working 24/7. I bet 5 years from now what's considered the best product on the market would look like it was used during the prohibition era. We progress forward all the time.

I used my 10 gallon BoilerMaker & HopBlocker for the second time last night and both times have been a major failure for draining resulting in me pouring the wort out of the BK like I did before I got my BoilerMaker. Both batches have had leaf hops so I am not sure if the leaves are messing things up. Last night's batch had 3 oz of pellets and 3 oz of leaf and the HopBlocker ended up completely FULL of hops. That might have been my fault though because I caught the hook of the HopBlocker on the IC when I was pulling the IC out of the BK. I wish they had designed it with the hook on the side.

I have tried to get a good whirlpool and wait 15 - 20 minutes but it seems virtually impossible with 5 gallons of wort in a 10 gallon BK with all the other stuff in the BK...HopBlocker & Temperature Probe. I think my next batch is going to have no leaf hops so that I can see if they are causing any of the issue.

Any suggestions or thoughts (especially on how to get a good whirlpool) would be greatly appreciated. I am keeping an open mind so far, but I have to say as of right now my BoilerMaker and HopBlocker are more work then my old BK with no valve.

k1200rsvt said:

Any suggestions or thoughts (especially on how to get a good whirlpool) would be greatly appreciated. I am keeping an open mind so far, but I have to say as of right now my BoilerMaker and HopBlocker are more work then my old BK with no valve.

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I had the same problem as you. Doing a 5 gallon batch in a 15 gallon pot does not allow me to make a whirlpool using just a spoon. The hop blocker is only 1-2" from the top of the wort and you cant stir in a circular motion without hitting it. So I just bought one of those grout mixers/paint stirrers to try on my next batch. I tried it out with water and it seemed to make a pretty good whirlpool.

So are you holding it in on an angle at the side of the pan and using the propulsion to form the whirlpool?

Per the manual we recommend using a large muslin grain bag for whole hops if you have trouble with plugging. (1) you will get significantly better batch yield since the hops absorb so much wort and (2) hop utilization is negligibly affected in the large bags. (3) cleanup is much easier. When the boil is done just fish out the bags, squeeze out the wort and discard/compost. This will resolve the trouble you are experiencing. Hops that have been boiled for an hour or so get pretty soft and non-permeable so are prone sticking to the filter. Late hop additions don't seem to be as big of a problem.

Immersion chiller - just leave it in the pot the whole time - including draining - that should reduce the chances of hitting it.

As far as starting a whirlpool with 5gal in a 15gal pot - pretty big pot for such a small amount of wort so not a surprise that it is a problem. I use a paddle on a drill myself and that works great for me. But I haven't tried it on a batch size smaller than what the pot is intended for so can't comment further than that.

I must be missing something (I never did a whirlpool prior to getting my BoilerMaker). I can't figure out how you are getting a whirlpool to form with an IC in the pot. Then again I have been trying to do it by hand with a spoon so maybe some mechanical assistance would change that. I will have to see if I can find a paint stirrer or paddle for a drill and play around with it.

Thanks for confirmation that the leaf hops may be causing a lot of the problems.

When I was using an IC I just whirlpooled before putting it in. THe whirlpool slows pretty quickly so after about 5min I put the chiller in and 10min later turned the water on after it was heat sanitized. Or you could whirlpool after taking it out I suppose, but you'd need to make sure everything was sanitary at that point. If you're worried about it hitting the finger pull you could just spin it toward the back for the boil, and when you have drained it below the finger pull you could rotate it into position to clear the dip tube when you lift it. I don't think the small amount of fine perf showing would be a big deal.

Thanks for the additional input. I will play around with it. I can't wait to get it dialed in so that I can be 100% completely happy with my new BK.

It's like one of these.

I just attached it to my cordless drill, put it in the middle of the pot (making sure not to hit the hop blocker or sides of the pot), started slow and got faster which started a whirlpool.

snail said:

It's like one of these.

I just attached it to my cordless drill, put it in the middle of the pot (making sure not to hit the hop blocker or sides of the pot), started slow and got faster which started a whirlpool.

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Those small diameter paint stirs plus the rpm's you mentioned above "and got faster" will suck in air and aerate your hot wort. Going with a larger diameter slower speed stir away from the cold break pile to let you increase the mass in the BK for a better whirlpool. A slow stir then let it settle vs keeping it in suspension stiring will benefit you better. This is what i've found with my trials and errors in the past.

Those of that have one, would you recommend it to others? What about large leaf hop loads?

Mine's sitting on the shelf if you want to buy one.

This seems like a never ending engineering problem to solve. After experiencing every chiller style there is and playing around with just about every hop separation design I've ever seen with both pellet and whole hops, it's clear to me that each solution is better suited to different scenarios. It's also interesting that my observations have conflicted with others so who knows...

Chilling with an IC adds cold break to the "filter load" so finer meshes really choke out fast, especially if you're using pellet hops (hopstopper designs). Fortunately, fine filtering is NOT necessary when you use an IC and I'd even argue that filtering hops out is completely unnecessary when you use an IC. Just put your pickup tube off to the side and let it rip.

On the other hand, Hop filtering is of utmost concern when you use an external chiller. The filtering can be very coarse for a large diameter CFC tubes but must be finer for a plate chiller. The hop stopper (fine mesh) style seems to work best for this requirement and is greatly helped by having at least a small portion of whole hops in the mix. The wort has to be run out pretty slow once the level drops to near the screen.

For me, the ideal solution (although it's not what I have at the moment) is an offset siphon tube with a very coarse screen (bazooka tube mesh size) to deal with whole hops. Bag ALL pellet hop additions for bittering and flavor and try to use whole hops for flame out free floating in the wort. This is for external chillers specifically. If you have to use pellets for finishing, bag anything over 2 oz but make up for the utilization issue by aggressively sloshing it around in the wort.

I can appreciate why Blichmann and the hopstopper dude are trying to solve the problem because it's one of those things all brewers are struggling with. If you use an IC, I say screw it and let the hops into the fermenter.

Bobby_M said:

This seems like a never ending engineering problem to solve. After experiencing every chiller style there is and playing around with just about every hop separation design I've ever seen with both pellet and whole hops, it's clear to me that each solution is better suited to different scenarios. It's also interesting that my observations have conflicted with others so who knows...

Chilling with an IC adds cold break to the "filter load" so finer meshes really choke out fast, especially if you're using pellet hops (hopstopper designs). Fortunately, fine filtering is NOT necessary when you use an IC and I'd even argue that filtering hops out is completely unnecessary when you use an IC. Just put your pickup tube off to the side and let it rip.

On the other hand, Hop filtering is of utmost concern when you use an external chiller. The filtering can be very coarse for a large diameter CFC tubes but must be finer for a plate chiller. The hop stopper (fine mesh) style seems to work best for this requirement and is greatly helped by having at least a small portion of whole hops in the mix. The wort has to be run out pretty slow once the level drops to near the screen.

For me, the ideal solution (although it's not what I have at the moment) is an offset siphon tube with a very coarse screen (bazooka tube mesh size) to deal with whole hops. Bag ALL pellet hop additions for bittering and flavor and try to use whole hops for flame out free floating in the wort. This is for external chillers specifically. If you have to use pellets for finishing, bag anything over 2 oz but make up for the utilization issue by aggressively sloshing it around in the wort.

I can appreciate why Blichmann and the hopstopper dude are trying to solve the problem because it's one of those things all brewers are struggling with. If you use an IC, I say screw it and let the hops into the fermenter.

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+1 Bobby, and I'd say that the same goes for a tube-style cfc, like the chillzilla. Really, the fine filtration is reserved for the plate chillers....too much of a headache if you ask me.......

No headache at all once you get it sorted out. My filter bag setup works very well and I see no issues with utilization. In fact my latest IPA (which was made with a hopsack) was dubbed "the best IPA I've ever had, commericial or homebrew" by the brewmaster of my local brewery. I'd say that's a damn good endorsement.

I made the recipe up one day at work during an especially boring meeting.

Whats the point of using the hopblocker if your using hop bags? Is it just for hot and cold break? I have an electric element in my BK so nylon sacks are out for me.

Irrenarzt said:

No headache at all once you get it sorted out. My filter bag setup works very well and I see no issues with utilization. In fact my latest IPA (which was made with a hopsack) was dubbed "the best IPA I've ever had, commericial or homebrew" by the brewmaster of my local brewery. I'd say that's a damn good endorsement.

I made the recipe up one day at work during an especially boring meeting.

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It's either one or the other. I tested the hopblocker and wasn't impressed. So I'm sticking with hop sacks. You have an electric element so you are even worse off as whirlpooling isn't ideal so the hopblocker isn't your solution, and neither are hop sacks.

My bad, when I read your post it made it seem as though you were using both. I just got done talking with Jaybird; I'm having him make me a custom hop filtering device. Hopefully it works. I've also thought about making a "hop sack" out of SS mesh.

I've considered stainless mesh as well. I hope it works out for you. In your case, stainless mesh sounds like a viable option.

So im thinking about getting the HopBlocker but i need it to filter out the trub more than the hops. Does it do a good job doing that. or is it more just for hop filtering. Im trying to find a solution to having to brew extra to compensate.

Ryan, the HopBlocker will work for trub as well. But I do need to reiterate that it is really designed specifically for pellet hops, not loose leaf hops. For leaf hops we recommend using large muslin grain bags for two reasons - the main reason being wort loss. With the bags you can retreive a large portion of wort that would normally be lost. The second is to keep them out of the HopBlocker. The HopBlocker will then filter out trub and any pellet hops you've used that remain.

Of the feedback I have gotten where brewers are struggling with the HopBlocker, it has been a matter of technique. This product works much differently than a typical strainer so following the technique in the manual is vital:

(1) Ensure that the shield is pushed all the way to the bottom of the screen and both are resting flat on the bottom of the pot. If you are using a keg (which has a rounded bottom), you will need the filter centered on the bottom. Note that this does decrease the effectiveness of the HopBlocker.
(2) At the end of the boil use your stir paddle to feel for the HopBlocker and confirm that it is still sitting properly on the bottom of the pot and not at an angle. Use the paddle to right it if needed. Normally this is not a problem and the product rights itself after being bumped.
(3) Stir the wort vigorously with a stir paddle to create a whirlpool. This causes the hops and trub particulates to settle to the bottom center of the pot away from the HopBlocker. Allow 15-20 min for the thermal convection currents to slow and allow the break material and hop particulates to settle before begging to drain. Alternately, stirring gently continuously for 10 min followed by a 10-15 min rest works very well. Failure to whirlpool and let it settle will limit the filtration efficiency of the product.
(4) Drain your pot until you see the top of the kettle drain fitting.
(5) Reduce the drain flow rate to about 1/3 the initial flow rate. (this will allow the wort to slowly permeate through the hop break material and flow to the HopBlocker without carrying the break material with the wort. Again, this is vital to proper performance of the product.
(6) Use your stir paddle to hold the filter down and quickly pull the shield up with a gloved finger or a racking cane (or similar) so that it is out of the wort completely. It is important to move quickly through steps 6-7 so you do not lose the siphon which will stop flow.

There are pics in the manual that give more detail.

Great thanks. This is going to be my next project. I do BIAB and have a problem with a lot of trub so this will be great. I just need to add a valve and then get a plate chiller. i figure that this will not work well with a wort chiller.

I'm resurrecting this thread with a quick question:

As I understand it, at flame out you are supposed to whirpool for 10-15 minutes and then wait 10-15 minutes for the hops and break to settle. After verifying the hopblocker is seated properly using the mash paddle you are supposed to begin draining through a plate chiller if you have one. Do any of you have any concerns with aerating the wort during the whirpool before cooling? Everything i've read says to avoid aerating before chilling at all costs... what am I missing?

You're not going to cause any issues by whirlpooling. According to Charlie Bamforth; hot side aeration on a homebrewers scale doesn't cause any noticeable oxidation issues. He claims that storage is really the main culprit behind oxidized beer.