suggestions please... reducing cold break material

I would like to reduce the amount of cold break material that gets into the fermenter. Needless to say after the chill, the cold break material is beginning to settle, but not concentrated nearly enough. I seem to be ending up with far more trub in my fermenters than I really want....... I don't see any practical way to filter it out, particularly as I don't pump, I just pour the wort from the kettle into the fermenter.......... In a perfect world, I'd have a centrifuge I could spin it in to compact the cold break material.......but that's a bit impractical.

H.W.

Why do you want less trub into the fermenter?

thekraken said:

Why do you want less trub into the fermenter?

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I believe Owly does 2 or 3 gallon batches. When your size is small, losing 2 to 3 quarts to break material/hop matter/ yeast cake can be a little saddening. Getting another 3 beers on a 24ish beer batch is a 13% increase in your final batch size.

I try, halfheartedly, to keep my trub material down, I do similar batch sizes because I'm space limited. It has nothing to do with fear of the trub causing off flavors.

hannibalmdq said:

I believe Owly does 2 or 3 gallon batches... It has nothing to do with fear of the trub causing off flavors.

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I kind thought as much. Do you already filter out at least the hops before it goes into the fermenter? I used to put a paint strainer in the fermenter, siphon wort to the fermenter through the strainer, pull the strainer and all it's junk out with it. I found this much easier than trying to filter junk before the siphon... Filtering that would give a little extra space but the question is about cold break and I don't know. Good luck.

thekraken said:

Why do you want less trub into the fermenter?

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A couple of reasons........... A large trub buildup is a nuisance, both in terms of yield and yeast harvesting. It also often ends up above spigot height. My batch size as Hannibal said is small (2.5-3 gallons). It contributes nothing.......... just takes up fermenter space.

H.W.

How about using whirlfloc, give the break a couple hours to settle after cooling then transferring to fermenter? Or whirlfloc and transfer to fermenter and put it in the fridge over night then rack it to another fermenter and pitch yeast?

Or what about no-chilling to avoid the cold break all together and just live with the chill haze in the bottles?

thekraken said:

How about using whirlfloc, give the break a couple hours to settle after cooling then transferring to fermenter? Or whirlfloc and transfer to fermenter and put it in the fridge over night then rack it to another fermenter and pitch yeast?

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I haven't tried this, but it sounds like a good enough idea...........

H.W.

Once I had to attend to something right after chilling the brew. It sat for a few hours. I returned to a pot full of the clearest wort I'd seen to date, with all the trub settled toward the bottom. I siphoned the clear wort into the carboy, and left most of the sludgy wort behind. Don't get too greedy or it defeats the purpose of the clean transfer.

There can still be a lot of good wort mixed with the trub on the bottom, so you don't want to waste it. I usually strain leftover trubby wort through a fine mesh hop bag lying in a large funnel with an upside down spoon on the bottom (to ease draining) into a large, 1/2 or 1 gallon growler. Depending on how sanitary that transfer is, I either pitch yeast directly, or give it a boil first to repasteurize. Those become my experimental (small) batches or starter wort.

I use a juice strainer, the type with a plastic stand that can sit on the fermenter.

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I let mine settle out for a few hours and siphon off the clear wort. I also use whirlfloc and shoot for 5.5 gallons post boil. This gives me right about 5 gallons to the fermentor, less for a really hoppy beer but I adjust post boil volume for that.

I also got a bucket top strainer (200 micron? it was only a few bucks on amazon) that I dump the sludge left in the bottom into to drain overnight, covered. I then pressure can this for starters or keep it in the fridge and boil before use. For those really hoppy beers, I've taken the strained stuff, pasteurized it, and added it to the primary after vigorous fermentation was done.

EDIT: I use this strainer. 200 micron is a bit fine, drains really slow, so I might go with the 400uM

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Looks like a combination of strategies might make sense....... I don't use whirlfloc, I use Irish moss.... Is there an advantage of one over the other? I don't have refrigerator space to cold crash, though that sounds like about the best strategy...... I'll try the strainer as soon as I can lay hands on one....... the truth is that I don't like the idea of leaving wort around unpitched anyway.

H.W.

My actual brewing process takes care of it for me. Most likely not applicable here but for others that use Keggles:

The port on the side of my keggle is about 3" above the lowest part of the concave bottom. I use a dip tube on to get to the bottom. Before filling the keggle I put a SS chore boy-type scrubber on the end of that dip tube.

As long as I use at least 1 ounce of leaf hops in the boil (with finished yield of 8-9 gallons to the fermenter, this is not much) the hops settle around and on top of the scrubber and the cold break on top of it. This acts as a natural filter that in concert with Wirfloc I get crystal clear wort as soon as I am finished taking the hydrometer sample.

I have been using this method for almost 20 years and I think a total of 5 SS scrubbers have died so that I might have clear beer. A side benefit is that I have something handy to clean up the boil kettle after the dump and initial rinse.

Not originally my idea but I cannot remember who I stole it from

Owly055 said:

Looks like a combination of strategies might make sense....... I don't use whirlfloc, I use Irish moss.... Is there an advantage of one over the other? I don't have refrigerator space to cold crash, though that sounds like about the best strategy...... I'll try the strainer as soon as I can lay hands on one....... the truth is that I don't like the idea of leaving wort around unpitched anyway.

H.W.

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Whirlfloc and irish most are the same thing. Whirlfloc is just in a convenient tablet form. I use whirlfloc.

Whirlpool is the way to go to get rid of the cold break. There's some dynamics that must be appreciated to get the whirlpool to result in a nice cone at the bottom, and clear wort at the top. Like said above, the key is to chill fast and, once it's chilled, give it a really good whirl then leave it alone, covered. 30 minutes later the cold break will all be at the bottom. Then just rack carefully.

I don't do this since I use 6g fermentors to give me the extra space. Plus, the beer is better with the trub in there, plus it's easier for me not to worry about it.

Owly055 said:

I would like to reduce the amount of cold break material that gets into the fermenter. Needless to say after the chill, the cold break material is beginning to settle, but not concentrated nearly enough. I seem to be ending up with far more trub in my fermenters than I really want.

Click to expand...

Owly055 said:

A couple of reasons........... A large trub buildup is a nuisance, both in terms of yield and yeast harvesting. It also often ends up above spigot height. My batch size as Hannibal said is small (2.5-3 gallons). It contributes nothing.......... just takes up fermenter space.

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Brew a larger batch, use boil finings, let settle longer after chilling, leave more wort behind in BK. That will solve your problem of trub in the fermenter. It may cost a slight bit more per batch but if the goal is trub-free wort in your fermenter then this will work.

As for yeast harvesting, the trub is not a problem. It may "bulk up" your harvested yeast but you can simply estimate how much slurry is trub. Or you can rinse your yeast to get cleaner yeast for starter purposes.

Last, it is well known that CFC and plate chiller folks end up with nearly 100% of the cold break in their fermenters.

I guess one more option is a conical fermenter that you can allow to settle and drain the trub prior to pitching.

I've had a similar experience to some posts above: after chilling quickly then waiting a few hours before transferring will drop a lot of material out.

I've tried two strategies so far. The first was a bucket screen.............. which had two problems. One was that it was 100 micron.... I really need a series of two, and the other was pull my immersion chiller out at about 100F, and finish chilling using a water bath. The slow chill worked quite well to settle out the cold break and hops trub. Instead of fast chilling to pitch temp in about 10 minutes, I fast chilled to 100, and let it sit covered in a sink full of running water for half an hour or so. Neither method has worked as well as I'd hoped, but I have more ideas ;-)............My favorite is to simply leave it for 12 hours, and then use a 100M push down screen form fitted for my brew kettle. Since the trub is already on the bottom, the screen shouldn't clog if it goes down slowly enough.


H.W.

The way I see it, wort/beer is going to get lost every time you transfer off of trub. If I try and leave the trub behind in the kettle, I'm losing a small amount of wort that will now never have a chance to become beer. Then come bottling day when I'm racking off of the trub that settled out in the fermenter, I am losing another small amount of beer.

However, if I just dump everything from the kettle to the fermenter, yeah I'll have more trub in the fermenter but it is made up for by the fact that I didn't lose any wort in the kettle, every drop went into the fermenter and became beer. Now the only time I will lose any beer is when racking from fermenter to bottling bucket.

I guess you could build your recipes to account for trub loss in the kettle to avoid this, but then I feel like that is just money wasted on more ingredients that you're just going to discard.

This is how I've been doing things since my third batch or so (clearing a stainless strainer that is clogged with kettle trub while transferring to fermenter got old fast), and it works for me. Just something for you to consider.