Do you strain/filter your wort?

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timrox1212

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I've glanced at some articles and some threads on here mentioning straining your wort before putting it into your fermentation bucket. Do you do this? What are the benefits? What are the bad things about straining? Thanks guys/gals.
 
Strain yes, filter no.

Why?.. to remove as much hot break and trub from the wort in brew pot before going into the fermenter and pitching yeast.
 
Does this just help with clarity or does it affect flavor as well? How would this affect a flame out hop addition or a hop whirlpool?
 
I've never strained or bagged and have been told my beers are world class. So I don't think its necessary. I might give it a try to see if its worth the extra effort.
 
Assuming you are doing a whirlpool or hop stand, meaning adding flame out hops and letting them spin and soak for 20 minutes (shorter or longer), it should have little or no effects. It is helpful to strain out the break and hop matter going into the fermenter to reduce trub loss, and theoretically prevent off flavors. Many will argue that step is unnecessary. The hop flavor and oils extracted in the whirlpool are dissolved into the wort. There is a slight benefit of oxygenation going into the bucket as well, by breaking up the pour into more surface area... but I wouldn't rely on that alone for enough O2.

I find my beers clear more quickly when I keep out as much of the break material as possible from the fermenter, but cannot say it has improved flavor. I tend to load up on flameout hops - and need to strain/filter to keep hops out of my plate chiller as well... some always seems to get past my false bottom. Plate chillers are a PITA to clean sometimes.

You need to decide if it is necessary for how you brew.
 
Does this just help with clarity or does it affect flavor as well? How would this affect a flame out hop addition or a hop whirlpool?

Honestly, I have no idea on flavor, ect.. It simply makes it easier later.. less crap in the bottom of the fermentor , means less crap transferred to keg or bottling bucket.
 
I agree. I start with a cleaner product when straining into the fermenter, yielding less trube.
 
Ok thanks guys. Im just trying to improve my beers as much as possible. Trying to go from making OK beers to good/great beers. Clarity is one issue I've been trying to tackle.
 
Ok thanks guys. Im just trying to improve my beers as much as possible. Trying to go from making OK beers to good/great beers. Clarity is one issue I've been trying to tackle.

Fining agent and cold crash has worked well for me..

Irish Moss last 15 min in the boil, 3~4 days at 34 deg f. drops everything to the bottom and makes for a hard cake. Really helps me get more beer and almost no yeast/junk when racking to keg or bottling bucket.

On something I put in secondary (mostly just because I needed the room in a primary) it might get some gel as well for good measure.
 
I whirpooled and filtered 2 of my batches. Everything else has been 99.5% transferrred to the bucket (just the hop trub left behind). I noticed zero difference in the finished beer, outside of the filtered ones having about half the trub in the bucket at racking.

Benefits that I observed were very little. I rack above the trub, so clarity is not improved when pre-filtering. I suppose you gain more primary headspace with less trub, so maybe you have a little less chance of a lid blowing off. If I want increased clarity, I rack to secondary, cold crash in primary, add gelatin, or some combination thereof.

Disadvantages of filtering/whirlpooling were longer time, increased risk of infection, and some loss of wort that could have been beer.
 
Depends what I'm planning on doing with the yeast cake at the bottom. If I'm going to rinse it or reuse some for the next batch, then yes I will try to avoid getting too much other stuff in there. If I'm just going to throw it out, I usually don't care as it will all settle out anyway.
 
I've never strained or bagged and have been told my beers are world class. So I don't think its necessary. I might give it a try to see if its worth the extra effort.

I've strained a couple, and not strained the rest. I've never noticed a difference.

Yesterday I brewed a beer with only two hop additions (60 and 10), and I bagged the leaf hops but left the pellets lose in the boil. It all went into the fermenter, except for the very thick 1/8" on the very bottom of the kettle (about 1/2 quart) and that's typically what I do.

My beer tastes pretty good, and the clarity is always excellent.
 
I use a strainer most of the time, which in my mind helps more with aeration than anything, if using hop pellets. If I am using whole hops, and don't have a hop bag available, then a strainer is a must.
 
So it's basically up in the air then lol. I think I'll try and strain my wort and see why happens. My biggest concern, other than clarity, is that by straining my wort I won't get good hop utilization out of a flameout or whirlpool hop.
 
I always strain from the BK into the fermenter. I use paint strainers, not filters, and it really keeps the volume of trub going into the secondary at a minimum. I take two paint strainers, stack them on top of each other in a metal strainer, and rack on top of them/ thru them. The really little stuff goes thru, and the bigger stuff gets trapped in the strainers. That way I can completely empty the brew kettle, and not leave a layer of wort in the bottom. It also assists with aerating the wort.
 
Sounds like a great opportunity for a test. Take half of a 5 gallon batch and strain it into a fermenter. take the other half and don't strain it into a separate fermenter and wait a month to taste the results.
 
I just have a wire mesh kitchen strainer that fits nicely across my fermenting bucket. When I went all-grain I just whirpooled and then siphoned through the strainer into the bucket. As another post said, I think it helps with the aeration of the wort as well.
 
Sounds like a great opportunity for a test. Take half of a 5 gallon batch and strain it into a fermenter. take the other half and don't strain it into a separate fermenter and wait a month to taste the results.
The Basic Brewing Radio podcast did run that experiment. I don't quite remember the exact results, but I think there were some slight differences between the batches with some trub in the fermenter and none. But I think the differences were small.
 
The Basic Brewing podcast was really interesting. Generally folks had a preference, but about half the time it was for the trub-removal process and the other half was the ferment-it-all process.

I tend to remove my trub, with the recognition that I have no basis for doing so.
 
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