Hops in fermenter?

Silly question, but how carefully do you filter out all the hops when pouring the wort from the brew pot into the primary? Do you stop pouring when all that's left in the pot is the hoppy-trubby mess? Or do you pass it all through a sieve and hope everything gets filtered out?

For my first half dozen batches I put my hops in a mesh bag. The bags stretchy cotton grain bags seem to keep 90+% of them in the bag and I just throw it in the compost bin when done. If you do use a bag make sure you leave lots of extra room. The hops will swell considerably when wet and you still want plenty of room for the wort to circulate around to extract all the goodness.

Now, I don't use a hops bag and I do not filter or strain when using pellet hops. I seem to get better extraction when the little bits are floating free during the boil. Then I just pour it all into the fermentor. The hops settle out very well and are trapped in the trub at the bottom of the fermentor. I also rack to a secondary to batch prime for bottling. I let the beer sit in the secondary for 20-30 minutes before bottling to let any stray bits settle out.

Soon as you flame out stir it up until you get a fast moving whirlpool. As your are chilling and the whirlpool is settling all of the sediment goes to a little cone in the center. It takes a bit of time for it to settle right, and you gotta be careful not to disturb it. At that point if you have a ball valve just open it up and drain. If not don't tip the kettle, get an auto siphon and siphon it from the edge of the pot away from the junk in the center.

You should be able to avoid most of the gunk this way. The rest will settle out in primary.

I just pour everything in the fermenter. When you rack to secondary or bottles keep the siphon an inch or two above the trub and you shouldn't pick up too much of anything. If you want to go even finer than that you could go so far as putting some kind of mesh filter (nylon brewing bag or muslin bag) over your siphon tube.

SmugMug said:

I just pour everything in the fermenter. When you rack to secondary or bottles keep the siphon an inch or two above the trub and you shouldn't pick up too much of anything. If you want to go even finer than that you could go so far as putting some kind of mesh filter (nylon brewing bag or muslin bag) over your siphon tube.

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+1 on this. I just rubberband a hops bag over the intake of my autosiphon, sanitize and rack.

SmugMug said:

I just pour everything in the fermenter. When you rack to secondary or bottles keep the siphon an inch or two above the trub and you shouldn't pick up too much of anything. If you want to go even finer than that you could go so far as putting some kind of mesh filter (nylon brewing bag or muslin bag) over your siphon tube.

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That's what I do too. I just pour everything in, unless I'm using a ton of leaf hops that are easily strained out.

For a different take - I siphon into my carboys using a 1/2" racking cane. The hops form a filter bed and that keeps most of the hop material and some of the cold break out. Of course a bunch of stuff still gets in though, but very few hops. This will NOT work for pellets!

If the flow slows down I lift the end of the hose until it back flows about 2 feet, then I put it down again, and it's pumping fast.

The extra benefit I get is that I use a funnel into my carboy, so by directing the wort around the funnel it aerates it pretty well on the way in.

I find this is the easiest way into a carboy. Pretty clean too.

I like to just pour through a kitchen strainer. It lets some small stuff though, a bit of break material and filters out a portion of it without my having to be too careful or work too hard.

ChshreCat said:

I like to just pour through a kitchen strainer. It lets some small stuff though, a bit of break material and filters out a portion of it without my having to be too careful or work too hard.

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That's what I do as well. I have a big plastic strainer with handles that fit perfectly inside the bucket opening. Seems like it does a good job at aerating the wort plus keeps most of the big particles out.

On my current batch I have about 4.75 oz of pellet hops in the fermenter since I accidentally racked the trub into the carboy. Its actually fun watching the hops take the ride up to the top with the yeast and then fall back down. Looks like a freshly shaken christmas globe.

I usually keep my beer in primary and then cold crash it before I keg it, and it turns out perfectly clear. Or i'll take 2 or 3 layers of sanitized cheese cloth, let it hang pretty far down into the carboy and rubber band it to the outside of the carboy and then rack from the boil kettle into the carboy through the cloth and I get perfectly clear beer.

The whirlpool method mentioned earlier works well to siphon away from the cold break, and straining works just fine too. I wouldn't stress too much about stuff getting through, most of it will settle out in the fermenter.

I line my fermenting bucket with a 5-gallon paint strainer bag (sanitized). Then when I pour the wort in I lift up the bag. Gets out most of the hop gunk and other trub and helps aerate the wort to boot.

But it probably doesn't matter too much either way - there are a ton of threads here about this issue and lots of people don't strain at all.

Wow, I didn't realize so many people didn't even bother straining. Does leaving the hops in affect the flavor at all? I would think it would result in a more bitter beer, since the hops has more time to impart its hoppy goodness.

eightbt said:

Wow, I didn't realize so many people didn't even bother straining. Does leaving the hops in affect the flavor at all? I would think it would result in a more bitter beer, since the hops has more time to impart its hoppy goodness.

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The bittering comes from the boil. Leaving some hop particles in the fermenter won't leave you with super bitter beer.

eightbt said:

Wow, I didn't realize so many people didn't even bother straining. Does leaving the hops in affect the flavor at all? I would think it would result in a more bitter beer, since the hops has more time to impart its hoppy goodness.

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marubozo is right, the bittering comes from the boil. leaving hops in won't make the IBU's different. Alpha acids aren't isomerized below boiling temps.

However, it isn't correct to assume that leaving the hops in won't affect flavour at all. By this point, we all know enough about brewing's many nuances to know that virtually every choice we make can affect flavour. I will say that doing so won't ruin your beer, that's certain.

So while it won't necessarily make better beer, or worse beer, leaving hops in the beer when fermenting exposes your beer to hops differently than if you removed them.

Hops you add at flameout (0 mins) don't stop contributing flavour when you pitch the yeast. They will keep doing so for many days, some falvours can be good, some can be bad. So while not 'dry hopped' this is very similar, the major difference being that the hops were initially put in the wort at higher temps, near boiling. So all else being equal you may get more flavour from leaving them in the wort than removing them.

Also, hops have anti-bacterial properties. We all agree on that. Well, hops can slow yeast the same way they slow bacteria. Again, the effect isn't huge, and it would take a lot of hops to slow all 200-300 billion yeast cells we're pitching. Depending on how many hops and how much yeast you pitched the yeast will still ferment well, but attenuation could be affected.

I'm just listing this stuff to outline some issues that are worth knowing. These aren't major consequences.

Ohhhh, fancy..."isomerized". Sound so scientific. (-:

That's good information, and it help confirms my suspicion that the beer making process is pretty hard to mess up.

The reason I asked is because I boiled up my second batch last weekend and when I went to pour the wort into the primary I stopped when the hoppy sludge started coming out. My friend, who was helping me, accused me of wasting perfectly good protobeer.

I whirlpool to settle things in the kettle (6 gallon pot with no spigot), then use my auto-siphon to rack most of the wort. The top part of the wort is very clear, but eventually I reach a point where the auto-siphon begins to pull in the cloudy stuff - usually only about a gallon or so left at this point, so I stop the auto-siphon and pour the remainder into the carboy. I pour into a large funnel with a sanitized (boiled) large grain bag inside the funnel as a filter, and use a large nylon spoon to move the sludge around to help the wort drain through the filter. Oh, and while I'm using the auto-siphon, I have a venturi in the tube for aeration, plus I get more aeration from the funnel filtering, then when it's all racked, I shake the hell out of the carboy for a few minutes.

You should keep in mind that having a certain amount of break material in your fermenter is healty for your yeast if you're worried about trying to leave it all behind.

ChshreCat said:

You should keep in mind that having a certain amount of break material in your fermenter is healty for your yeast if you're worried about trying to leave it all behind.

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Totally - yeast can eat lipids to grow the same way they eat oxygen. So break material can be good.

On the flip side though, some feel it's better to avoid break material for lager ferments because it can affect the cleanliness of some lighter beers.

Everything in brewing is some sort of contradiction I find!!

ChshreCat said:

I like to just pour through a kitchen strainer. It lets some small stuff though, a bit of break material and filters out a portion of it without my having to be too careful or work too hard.

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I think I'm going to do this for my next batch. Thanks.

ChshreCat said:

You should keep in mind that having a certain amount of break material in your fermenter is healty for your yeast if you're worried about trying to leave it all behind.

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Filtering through a grain bag catches most of the pellet hop residue, but seems to let the other stuff through - I mash the stuff in the bag down with a spoon to help the wort flow through and when I'm done, it looks like mostly just hop particles in the bag.

DeafSmith said:

Filtering through a grain bag catches most of the pellet hop residue, but seems to let the other stuff through - I mash the stuff in the bag down with a spoon to help the wort flow through and when I'm done, it looks like mostly just hop particles in the bag.

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I do the same with my big kitchen strainer.