Squeezing out whole leaf hops. Yea or Nay?

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runningweird

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I just brewed a beer using lots and lots of whole leaf cascades, and since I have no hop filter I used a sanitized spider(metal, used for frying) and took them out after I had chilled the beer. I was draining the kettle and thought: I bet there is a bunch of wort in those hops! so I pressed the crap out of them over a colander and poured the wort back into the kettle.

before this I have brewed almost exclusively with pellets - so no problem.
does anyone else do this? votes to squeeze or not squeeze?
 
I believe Gordon Strong mentions in his book "Brewing Better Beer" that we should avoid this. I'll try to find the quote later.
 
my thinking was that if i am using pellet hops then everything from the hops is ending up in primary anyway and at a much more chewed up scale. I can't imagine that squeezing hops will get me any weird flavors or anything. if that were the case then pellet hops would not have been usable.

hops= good, maybe I should have just brought them inside and vampired the wort out of them while I watched Deadwood, spitting the dry husks on the floor like a bar with a sawdust covered floor.
 
To tell you the truth I squeezed the crap out of the hop bag when I pulled it for about twenty years... Guess I'm cheap and hops are expensive. I recently read a number of beer expert books and was told at some point this is a no no. My last four batches have been on my new brew stand using a whirlpool technique during chilling that precludes the use of leaf hop in the keggle (other than in a bag), and have noticed no major changes with or without a good squeeze at the end, but time will tell.
 
People say lots of things are no-nos in brewing... the only way to find out is by experience. I just brewed a BIPA on Saturday that had 8 ounces of leaf hops. They must have been hanging on to a gallon of beer. Better believe they got squeezed.

I also heard compressing your grain bed to get extra wort is a no-no. I'm calling BS on that one. I tasted the wort coming out, and it was just as sweet as the rest of the second runnings, if not more so.
 
actually I like using whole leaf better because I end up with less crap in my fermenter, plus the blowoff goo doesn't look like baby poop.
 
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