Thoughts on hops absorption of wort...

Whole hops especially absorb a lot of wort--what, if anything, do you do about it?

If you bag them (I have some very coarse mesh bags that work well for whole hops), you can fish them out of the cooled wort with a sanitized spoon and press them against the inside of the kettle to squeeze that wort out. Or you can do about the same thing in a large strainer.

Its a little tougher with loose hops: I've thought about pouring through a colander and then pressing them with the outside of a metal bowl or something (the same size as the colander.)

I've also thought about putting on rubber gloves, sanitizing my (gloved) hands, and just squeezing the juice out.

I'm guessing that, in a hoppy beer, I'd lose at least a quart, maybe two, to hops absorption, if I did nothing to strain that liquid out.

pellets work for me

if I used whole i'd bag em, and squeeze w/ a rubber glove.

I remember seeing someone on this board who left the trub and a lot of the bottom wort in the kettle when transferring to the frementer. In order to not waste the left over wort, he later squeezed it out in a fine strainer and froze it for using as starters. Since it will be boiled again you don’t have to be as concerned about sanitation. Sounds like an effective way to use all the wonderful wort. If someone does this I would love to hear if there are any cons?

What I do, and it seems to recapture quite a bit....I use whole hops exclusively....is that I dump off slowly into my strainer (like a tomato processing type), when it gets down to the bottom of the kettle, I slowly pour off the hops into the strainer and let them sit. The nice thing is they filter almost all of the break like this. I don't get all of the wort back but gravity helps get quite a bit out. I don't touch them with my hands.

I do a hopback with my MLT. Make it really easy to strain into the carboy, too, because my MLT has a spigot that I direct right into the funnel strainer. Then, so long as I still have room left before I reach 5 gallons, I sparge the hops with a little bit of warm water. There you go.