It seems that people that set the filter on the bottom of their kettle during the boil have trapped some wort and scorched it....
Not only that, but in another thread users reported that by placing the basket or the stainless ring (on a slightly different basket design) on the bottom of the BK, instead of it forcing the boiling wort to go
through the bottom mesh the wort goes around the basket, following the path of least resistance apparently.
I think that there is a solution for this although I'm still not convinced that it does anything for hop utilization based on my observations (except maybe eliminate stirring as the bubbles coming up through the basket will agitate the hop matter for you).
If there is a solution, someone please point to it.
One user even went to the extreme of getting a basket that fit his entire BK to force more wort to go through the bottom mesh. He found that most of the boiling wort still preferred to go around the outside, spurting out from the sides now, creating bigger problems than he had foreseen, as you can imagine.
I've been following this thread closely and am ready to order one of these, except I'm not set on the size yet, and now again, the screen aperture issue.
Size:
One of my recent brews had 6 oz of hop pellets in a 5 gallon batch. For an experiment I saved out all the trub this time, and it yielded 2 quarts. This is 2 take-out soup containers full of expanded hop fiber!
When I stack these on top of each other they are about 4" wide and 10" tall, taking up nearly the whole space of a 4"x10" hop basket. This made me wonder about this mass creating severe circulation restrictions within the basket, if I were to use one that size.
Given I don't brew hoppy beers like those every time, it is enough to consider a larger size.
I don't know how you guys fare with a 4x10" or 4x14" for
10 gallon batches, but you must be ending up with pretty full baskets, even for moderate hop bills.
What are your findings here?
My 8 gallon brew kettle is 14" wide by 12" tall. I'm thinking of getting a 6x11" hanging off the edge. Or even an 8x11".
Screen aperture:
For recirculation purposes it seems that 400 micron is preferred over 300. In earlier discussions here 300 was preferred over the 400 for better hop fiber filtering. So we may be at the compromise/optimal point here.
Whatever matter makes it through the 400 micron basket, I am doubtful a bazooka screen will really filter it out, those are pretty course. I saw some pictures of the false bottom trapping a lot of that fine sludge, which is remarkable, given the size holes in those.
At the moment I use a stainless braid on the bottom as my only trub filter, and although nothing gets through, it also clogs badly at the onsight of any trub, as soon as I switch the pump on for recirculation or feeding my plate chiller. So the hop basket will remedy that issue very quickly. I'm leaning toward the 300 micron for better filtering.
