racking twice before primary

I have been trying to get the most from the grain and my brew system as I can and it drives me nut when I see liquid left in the lauter tun or boiler. The question I pose here is ...How about draining all of the contents from the boiler (hot break, cold break and hops ) then let it sit for a day then rack it out of the carboy when I can see it. My boiler is a 15 gal keggle and I have a drain tube which comes off near the bottom. I can't drain completely because I use a immersion chiller and then the drain tube would get in the way. I would leave about 2 or 3 quart of liquid with the 90 degree drain tube the way it is set up. I have tried whirlpooling. I don't get good whirlpool action with the temp probe and drain tube. , and lots of liquid still left. I tried using the stainless steel tube mesh.........not good, or should I say too good. The cold break rendered it useless in less than a minute.

I read in the "Bock" book by Darryl Richman about racking the beer off the trub before the primary starts. Something like 12 to 24 hours. How do you know when to do this? Would pH be a good indicator? If I am doing a lager and they are bottom fermenters am I leaving behind yeast with the trub?

Any Ideas besides saying "dont worry leave the liquid".

I think one thing you risk... infection.. if you don't get yeast in the wort and get it happy, and active fast, that leaves more time/room for another wild yeast/bacteria to do the same.... It's not guaranteed, and if your sanitation is good, its not as big a worry, but I think that's the point of pitching asap, you get that yeast in charge of the wort faster. I don't understand the detriment of leaving too much of the sediment in primary... but maybe that would be worth the risk? I never worry about it, leave it in primary, and lose it in racking to secondary/keg.

That's what I'm thinking, you're going to leave some behind when you rack it anyway. Maybe a more open mesh?

I was in a hurry when I wrote the first question. I failed to mention that in Richman's book he did pitch the yeast with all the goodies ( hot and cold break and hop ) let it all settle while the ferment lag is going on. Then rack before things get stirred up during the primary. That was the 12 to 24 hour wait. So with that said, is pH the indicator that the yeast is doing it's lag "stuff" and somehow a gauge of when to rack? I guess I could just sit there and watch it for 12 to 24 hours and as soon as I see movement happening rack immediately. Silly, I know, but not out of reach for me since watching beer ferment is as good as a TV. The book made it sound like it was the common practice, but I have not seen or heard of anywhere else. What is the worst that can happen by leaving it around for the primary and racking off into the secondary later?

Ok, next......I know it's eveywhere on this site but I am still not solid about having all the breaks and hops residue( I use pellets) in the primary. You guys both elude to the fact that it is all ok in there. Right???????

if you racked just after the lag phase it seems like you would loose a lot of yeast, just my 2 cents.

Ok maybe we are nuts but we dump everything in the carboy and let it go. why waste anything. We used to be very careful and go from primary to secondary no we just skip the secondary.

But we have a trial in works that might be interesting as we were wondering about all that stuff left in the bottom of the brew kettle
So about a month ago after making our normal batch we took all the trub which was about 1 gallon and used our 1 gallon primary and put in some yeast.
Let you all know how it turns out in 3 weeks

I feel your pain on leaving all that wort in the boil kettle, I used to use the same setup you have ( the stainless compression dip tube) and was also leaving 3 quarts of wort in there, I was thinking, man what a waste, so I tossed the 90 elbow, then made my own dip tube out of copper that reached nearly to the bottom of the boiler, and now only leave maybe 2 ounces, and that feels so much better if ou are interested I used a threaded copper fitting, threaded on one end to fit the 1/2 female coupler in the boiler, and open end one the other end for soldering a 1/2 inch copper pipe, then a 90 degree elbow and another 1/2 inch pipe to app 1/4 inch from the bottom of the boiler, sorry for the long post

I dump 100% of the wort and break from the boiler into the fermenter. I'm just finishing up the bottles of my first AG and the second AG is half drunk now. I can't detect any off flavors or negative impacts from adding the break to the fermenter at all. Now, I've not won any competitions either so take my observations for what they're worth.

In researching this question on these forums though my own findings were HBT seems to be split 50/50 on strain vs ferment and I've not seen the strain camp present any real data which indicates a drawback from fermenting the break. Hot break is supposed to taste foul but it is also supposed to settle to the bottom of the fermenter and get consumed by the yeast to a certain extent. Hope this helps.

Boar Beer said:

Ok maybe we are nuts but we dump everything in the carboy and let it go. why waste anything. We used to be very careful and go from primary to secondary no we just skip the secondary.

But we have a trial in works that might be interesting as we were wondering about all that stuff left in the bottom of the brew kettle
So about a month ago after making our normal batch we took all the trub which was about 1 gallon and used our 1 gallon primary and put in some yeast.
Let you all know how it turns out in 3 weeks

Click to expand...

I too don't worry much about break material or hops getting into the primary. My beer tastes great.

we dump it all at my place too. Let it sort itself out in the primary and the secondary (if i do one.)