Travestian
Well-Known Member
I use one of the bigger filters (6") during recirculation to clean up the break material. I found that my 4" filter was clogging so I went with the 6" one and am happy after one brew...sample size too small to mean anything. I used the 4" one yesterday to recirculate through my plate chiller and I was EXTREMELY happy with how little (NONE!) break material ended up in the screen on my carboy funnel. I usually get enough break material on that screen to clog it 6-8 times for a 10 gallon batch, meaning I have to stop, clean the filter, start filling, rinse and repeat. Yesterday it was fill one carboy most of the way, move to the other, top off the first (foam from filter so had to let that die down), then top the second. Basically filled two carboys with clean wort as fast as I could pump. Yesterday I filtered about 1/2 the time through the 4" but later decided to filter through the hops in the 6" one. It filled up near the top once, but I sprayed the outsides of the basket down with the wort a bit to knock hop/break material off and was able to resume recirc through the larger basket...this made me happy!! I only had about 4 oz in the basket as I had 8 oz of leaf hop which I just tossed into the boil, so I definitely want to try this with a big IPA w/ all pellet and see how it goes. Push comes to shove, I reuse my 4" guy as a break filter and give up on recirculationg through pellets. Best case, I can recirculate through the pellets and capture break...that is what I am hoping for! I took some pix I will try to post if I ever get out of work...
I assume you used a pump to recirculate your entire kettle through the 6" filter?