Beginner's Questions

I am new to the brewing game and I just have a couple of questions. First, what is the best way to remove the hot break from wort after my boil has cooled? Also, I'm using a 6.5 G carboy for my Primary, what is the best way to aerate my wort? Since I'm not using a bucket, it seems a bit tricky to aggressively pour my wort into the fermenter. Thanks in advance for your advice!!

1. Use an auto syphon or a funnel with a strainer to get the wort out of the kettle. This will remove as much break as you can. 2. The funnel method also provides some aeration. Once inside the carboy, give it a good rocking back and forth making sure the liquid shakes up

Same here, when moving my wort from the kettle to the carboy I use a siphon with a paint strainer on it. This helped in aerating the wort before I bought an O2 bottle.

I don't know if any body else does this, in fact I never heard anyone but me and my son doing it. I don't like the idea of shaking a glass carboy filled with 5 gallons. I put an auto siphon into the carboy. Then attach a tube to other end and stick it back into the carboy as a return. Don't submerge end of tube in wort, just stick in carboy towards top. You can hold it in place as you pump it 50 to 100 times. I have not had a problem with aeration yet.

For removing the hot break, you can stir the wort for 2-3 minutes and get a good vortex going, then let it sit for a few minutes and then syphon the wort, from the side of the pot. The vortex causes the hot break to settle in the center of the pot.

As for aeration, shaking or pouring will do the job.

For aeration I use the aquarium stone, regulator and 02 bottle. This is the William's brewing version;



Mine didn't have the tubing, so I took a broken piece of racking cane, cut a tiny piece of the hose as a bridge connect and rigged up my own. And I just use the regular red 02 bottle from my hardware store.

So far, I'm only 7 brews experienced, I just pour through a strainer into my Ale Pail to get a lot of the solids out, then I rack to secondary after 2-3 weeks to get off the rest of the material. Hasn't caused off flavours so far. I wasn't concerned after reading that some people just pour everything into the fermenter without straining.

I try to pour as turbulently as possible to get air in. As an extract brewer, I do a 3 gal boil, so after the pour I top up with another 10 litres sterile water that is in big plastic containers which I shake the shyte out of with some air in them before adding to aerate it more.

Its working so far, aside from one underpitched stout thats pretty shaky.

I use something like this: http://cgi.ebay.com/AIR-PUMP-20-wat...emQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item45eea940fc
But mine's 1.5 cfm, (this one is about 0.8 cfm).

It's a beast, but it sure aerates the crap out of the wort. I had the pump left over from another project, (darkroom active air filtration system that I had more fun building than using). I attach tubing to the pump, and a racking cane to the tubing, and drop it into the wort for 20 minutes. I usually have a foam puddle 2 feet in radius around my carboy by the time it's done, but that sucker is AERATED.

More simply, you can pour through a funnel, as suggested, or get something like this:


A wine degasser, which you attach to a drill, stick in your carboy, and whip the crap out of the wort.

Finally, as for hot break, some don't even care, and dump it all in.

If you don't want to dump it all in, (I don't), you can whirlpool, where you stir your cooled wort around the boil kettle until it makes kind of a whirlpool/tornado, then let it settle for 20 minutes. All the crap should collect at the center, (though it never does for me), and you siphon from the side.

This also works really well, especially if you do it after whirlpooling: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/cheap-easy-aeration-gadget-68218/

I dump everything, break material and all, right into the fermenter. It can be a bit hairy pouring five gallons of liquid, but I ferment in buckets and don't have to worry about trying to hit a funnel.