Separating hot/cold break

I have a turkey fryer with no valve. basically im boiling, chilling, and then dumping everything in the kettle into the fermenter. It seems like im dumping a large amount of cold break in with the wort.

How do YOU separate the cold break out?

Do you skim the hot break off when YOU start your boil?

Thanks

I usually skim the hot break, but sometimes I don't. If I am standing there I will usually skim it, if nothing else than to keep myself occupied and actively monitoring the situation while waiting for the boil to get going.

With no valve, what I would suggest if you want to separate from the cold break is to whirlpool your wort for about 10 minutes, let it settle for another 10-20 minutes while you are chilling it, and then use a racking cane to rack the wort of the settled trub.

Is cold break all the hop sludge and stuff that coagulates into a ball on the bottom of the kettle?..

It's one of those things that is a matter of personal preference and nothing else. Some dump everything in, without straining, just pour it in the bucket or in the funnel....Some use a big strainer that fit in the funnel for a carboy, or a sanitized 5 gallon nylon paint strainer bag in the bucket...

I have done it all ways. It really doesn't matter...anything will settle.

In other words, there is no wrong way to do it, or better way, or way that will make the best beer...they all work...the choice is what will work the best for you. That's how you develop you own unique brewing process. By trying all ways and deciding what works best for you.

What I do with my IC, is chill the wort, then I lean the bottom of my autosiphon about two coils up from the bottom on the metal of the siphon. That rests it above most of the break material and trub, then I rack it to the fermenter until I'm down to that and carefully lower the siphon down into the gunk, just trying to get as much of the wort as possible without letting in the hops and break matter.

A whirlpool helps.

But pretty much up until I got my immersion chiller I just dumped for the majority of my batches. And I still managed to do well in contests...

I find that long primaries render my beer just as clear, and crisp tasting regardless of whether I dumped it all in or not....so I just do what works for me.....

You have to realize that in brewing there are many way to achieve the same goal, and they all work. There's rarely a single right way or best way to do something, just the way that is best for you.

LyonsViper27 said:

I have a turkey fryer with no valve. basically im boiling, chilling, and then dumping everything in the kettle into the fermenter. It seems like im dumping a large amount of cold break in with the wort.

How do YOU separate the cold break out?

Do you skim the hot break off when YOU start your boil?

Thanks

Click to expand...

Why would I want to try to separate out the cold break or the hot break when the yeast are so efficient at it. I dump it all in and let the yeast use any of it that they want and then it all settles into a nice layer at the bottom of the fermenter.

Thanks for all the answers, I think I might try the strainer method with my malty beers and stick with the just dump it in the hoppy ones. I like to keep the hops in the fermenter, Im not sure if i get anything out of them but it cant hurt.

I have a counter flow chiller (CFC) so all of the cold break ends up in the fermenter. No issues with that.

Personally I whirlpool then drain to fermenter. If I didn't have a valve then I'd whirlpool then rack. But that's what works for me.

Like everyone else says, it doesn't really matter. If you dump it all in it'll settle in a few weeks anyway.

The only time I bother is if I know I'm going to be washing or reusing the yeast, and I want to keep some of the trub out of it. In that case, I line the fermenting bucket with a 5-gallon paint strainer bag before I pump the wort into it. When all the wort's in, I pull out the bag. It gets most of the hops and some of the cold break, and definitely leaves the yeast a lot cleaner.

Get yourself one of those $14 10" mesh strainers from any LHBS and pour your wort through that into the fermenter and save yourself a headache of having all of that **** in your bucket.

I just did my first all grain batch right before Christmas, and I used a sanitized 5 gallon paint strainer bag from home depot. Put it in the plastic fermenter, poured contents of kettle into fermenter, and raised bag up bringing with it most of the stuff I didn't think needed to be in the fermenter. This method works pretty good if using a plastic fermenter.