Brew kettle output

[wentsj28]

Hello everyone,

My brew kettle has an output valve near it's bottom, as I'm sure many of yours do as well. Approximately one gallon of liquid is left after I let it drain all the way out without tipping the vessel. My question is how should I factor this into my calculations? For instance, when I'm collecting my runnings from the mash tun and trying to calculate the amount of sparge water I need, should I just subtract one gallon from my total? So if I run off 9 gallons, figure it's actually 8?

Thanks!

 

[LovesIPA]

You can either do it that way or tip the kettle. I'm cheap and I like to get every bit of sugar out of the grains so I make an effort to waste very little.

 

[wentsj28]

I usually do end up tipping the kettle a bit, or just straight dumping the leftovers into the fermenter, but what about all that cold break? Is it ok for that to enter the fermenters?

 

[dkevinb]

I usually do end up tipping the kettle a bit, or just straight dumping the leftovers into the fermenter, but what about all that cold break? Is it ok for that to enter the fermenters?

A lot of people just dump the cooled kettle straight into the fermenter. I have, though nowadays I usually whirlpool and use an autosiphon to leave most of the trub behind. It works fine, either way. If you do dump trub into the fermenter it'll just settle to the bottom, along with the yeast when it flocculates. Just avoid siphoning that trub into the bottling bucket as much as possible.

 

[30Bones]

I have stopped caring about trub into the primary. That said I don't dump it all in. I calc my volume in my BK to net me ~5.5 gallons of wort into my carboy without the need to tip or dump.

 

[heckels]

I factor that in as waste. So, if I'm looking for 10 gallons of beer in the carboys, all of my calculations are based on 11 gallons of wort and leaving behind the extra gallon.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[LovesIPA]

I get all the standing liquid out of the kettle that I can. I usually end up with a lot of pellet hop debris in the kettle and most of the break material ends up in the fermenter along with quite a bit of the hop debris. After the first ~2 pints off the keg, the beer is as clear as you could want. I use Whirfloc at 15 minutes and aside from cold-crashing dry-hopped beers, that's all I do for clarity.

This is a pint of Caribou Slobber that I brewed a few weeks ago. No cold crash.