Whirlpooling

I whirlpooled for the first time on my last brew. I had a great cold break, but still got most of the old break in my fermentor somehow. I was whirl pooling manually with a spoon. I feel like every time I tried to slowly stir the wort the cold break mixed right back in. Can you guys give me some pointers on how to do this correctly/effectively?

Get a good whirlpool going, then let it settle for 30-60 minutes before racking. This will give everything time to settle.

I too seem to have the same problem. End up putting all the cold break into the fermenter. It ends up settling out pretty quickly in the carboy. I'm just leary of waiting that long before racking into the fermenter.

gunmetal said:

I too seem to have the same problem. End up putting all the cold break into the fermenter. It ends up settling out pretty quickly in the carboy. I'm just leary of waiting that long before racking into the fermenter.

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Before I started using a CFC I used to just Pour the wort through a large kitchen strainer that covered my bucket and it accomplished two things, first was it filtered out about 95% of the cold break and second it really aerated the wort well, give it a try.

If your primary is a Carboy they make large funnels with screens in them that accomplish the same thing.

Should I take my immersion chiller out before I whirlpool? I found that when I pulled the chiller out, it disturbed a lot of my cold break.

I take my immersion chiller out before whirlpooling. After w/p, it's extremely important that the kettle not be moved, or the wort disturbed. Put the kettle where you'll be racking from, whirlpool it, cover it and let it rest, then carefully rack.

I whirlpool with an immersion chiller to temp, then:
- Take out the immersion chiller
- Get a good whirlpool going
- Let it rest covered and undisturbed for at least 30 minutes. I have gotten busy bottling before, and left it for over an hour. Clearest wort into the fermenter ever.

Irish moss/Whirflock at 10 minutes helps, as does a quick chill.

Thanks. I'm going to try it out next weekend with my hefeweizen.

This is one of those things where the devil is in the details. My buddy has no pickup tube on his kettle which leaves a bunch of wort but also trub in the kettle. I tried to whirlpool with a side pickup tube, just a copper 90, and towards the end of the draining process the sludge pile in the center just collapsed and moved to the tube and got sucked up (using whirlfloc). I think for this to work with no trub you will have to leave .5 gal or more in the kettle. Would love to be proved wrong.

I would also like for anyone to explain how they pump whirlpool with pellet hops. I can't seem to do this without clogging the screen, and if you reduce flow you don't get a good whirlpool.

I'm just going to be transferring with an auto-siphon to my fermentor. I don't have a valve on my kettle. I'm hoping to reduce the grub tat gets into the fermentor.